Only Assholes Cut Their Own Hair

I’ve noted here before that I have been an amateur, unliscensed hairdresser for more than twenty years. I’ll do it at my place or at friends’ places, I’ve done it in bars, in the desert, even once in a moving vehicle. Unfortunately, I’ll never get to do it on a plane. Alas. In recent history (since ‘99), I’ve been getting more serious about it, cutting strangers’ hair on referral, even taking payment for my services. All hobbies should be for fun and profit if you are into them for over two decades, I feel.

The irony is that I hate, I hate, hate, hate getting my own hair cut. I’ve moved around a lot in those twenty years and I think I’ve seen the same barber or hairdresser in all that time a grand total of twice. As you might imagine, I’ve had a lot of years with really long hair as a result. And just when I found a guy I liked and was willing to stick with, he up and moves to Provincetown, R.I. Why, you might ask, have I hopped from chair to chair, never staying with the same stylists? Because I just don’t trust ‘em.

More self-indulgent blather comin’ up.

I really should stick it out one of these days, I know this. The longer you’re with the same guy, the more he/she gets to know you — your hair pattern, your preferred style, where you’re trying to go with your look, etc. Your relationship with your stylist obeys the law of increasing returns, getting better and better with each visit. I know this from one end of the dynamic at least, if not the other.

It’s not that I don’t trust the stylist, exactly, let me rephrase: I don’t trust that I’m going to be 100% happy with what I see when I get out of the chair, and if I’m not 100% happy, I’m Pistov the Klown. I’ve thrown tantrums. I’ve walked out in the middle of a cut when I saw things were going south. I’ve been an asshole.

It’s really unfair to them, too; here these folks are, just trying to earn an honest day’s buck, and in I come with an arsenal of spite and outrageous demands. I want it longer, differently textured, a less receeding hairline, and please undo all the damage I’ve wrought upon it in the last year, come on, you’re a professional. Not only that, I want them to know all this just by looking in my eyes; they must be psychic, pick it up by visual osmosis, because the hell I’m going to explain it without sounding like a crazy person, please. Yeah, I clearly deserve the disappointment I’m going to feel.

To spare both them and me this miserable experience, I’ve been cutting my own hair now for the last ten years. It isn’t easy, and I often fuck it up, at least in the back. Even with well-lit, mirrored triangulation, I’m stylistically challenged with doing the back of my head by sight because left is right, my hand wants to move this way and it moves that way, and because of the compunded depth perception, I’m suddenly doing it from across the room. My solution: do it with *no* mirrors.

I take a pair of decaupage scissors, the kind with half-inch blades, and sit in front of the television. While watching NOVA or some other non-linear program, I very carefully pull each lock out individually to a fully taut point, gauge the length that I think it ought to be, and *snip*. I spend about forty minutes doing that. Surprisingly enough, inasmuch as I fuck it up, like I said, and then need to visit some nearby barber for a three minute fix-up (which really doesn’t count, he’s just evening out my mistakes), I do a pretty decent job. On the other hand, it isn’t like I’m bringing it down to a really close-crop, either. For simple style like that, sure, I’d go to an eleven dollar barber every time; he’ll do an infinitely better job than I might, cos he does them all day.