Oh boy, am I seeing red today. You're about to find out why.
I have always hated barbers, and have never gone to the same one twice. This is because they invariably butcher my hair and tickle my scalp beyond belief during the shampoo. I cannot stand this, but I also cannot go around looking like a member of the disreputable band Phish. I'm over a barrel on this one, and looking forward to the day when I am entirely bald. There is a nobility in baldness, I have always thought.
Regardless of that, I needed a haircut today if I was going to continue to show myself in public, so I ducked into an as-yet-untried barber shop in the Hidden Hills Annex, "Hair Have You Been?" I guess there is a reason no one had recommended it to me: all of the barbers there were HORRIBLE, BUTCHERING MORONS WITHOUT SO MUCH AS A GRAIN OF SENSE.
First of all, it was a mixed-gender barber shop, more of a "salon," really, and all of the haircutters were women. They made me wait over twenty minutes for a turn, and by then I was livid. My barberess, "Patricia," was a despicably average person in tight blue pants and white platform shoes. She led me to the bowl, where the scalp-torture began and lasted a full five minutes while she chattered on and on with the barberess at the next bowl about god knows what. I could have drowned down there, or had a tickle-induced coronary, for all she knew.
Then it was on to the cut. She was more than a little incredulous when I simply told her I wanted a "good, simple men's haircut." She jabbered at my face using terms like "finger-wave," "tousle," "buzz," "fade," "texture," etc. I just wanted a damn haircut, not a beauty school education, so I dismissed her with a wave of the hand and said, "just start cutting. I'll tell you when you're done."
I don't know what she thought that meant, because she started putting various sections of my hair in all these mortifying pink barrettes. I looked like a damned fruity samurai is what I looked like. Then she laid into another barrage of babble about prime-time television, a subject in which I have not a SHRED of interest. Apparently a man named Kirk or Jason won or did not win a contest held by a celebrity executive, if you see what I'm driving at.
When she was done and handed me my glasses, I just about fell down dead. I looked like a god-damned magazine person. She beamed and fluffed my horrific hair around with her fingers, and said the names of actors I am sure I don't know. I had been transformed from fruity samurai to "alston kootcher," or whatever she kept saying, which the neighboring barberess echoed gleefully. I removed the smock and headed to the reception to settle the bill.
I took out my checkbook (I would naturally stop payment on the check as soon as I got home) and asked how much for the men's trim. The fucking bitch receptionist said "fifty-five dollars." I said "don't quit your day job" and readied my pen to scribble down a more reasonable sum, such as zero dollars or as much as six.
She did that thing where an idiot laughs, and then repeated "fifty-five," reminding me to tip the barberess. I don't need to tell you I wasn't about to stand for that kind of extortion so I closed my checkbook and strode towards the door.
I hadn't noticed the security guard (I guess a lot of people leave without paying for these terrible haircuts!), who promptly tackled me and pinned me to the ground. All my tai-chi training was useless against this Boston butt of a man and so I lay there gasping, planning my litigation.
Things escalated from there and I was manhandled off to jail (or, as I like to think of it, "pre-trial"). I was released on my own recognizance, as well as $10,000 bail, and am at home now looking for a personal injury attorney. I want the nastiest snake in the book, the kind of attorney who will go after each and every barberess's family assets. The coldest of the cold. I want a man who will stop at nothing to destroy the life of every last person on earth besides me (and, to a lesser extent, himself). I am livid. The world needs to be taught a lesson.
—Pat.
