Marcus comes in early to make an appointment. I give him the first haircut after lunch. He's an enthusiastic, grateful and punctual customer, with a sense of style. His business card say he's a day trader.
I don't have a business card any more, and if I did, it certainly wouldn't say, barber.
Marcus was my only signup, but when I whip off the drape, Joe-Vee calls out, and Terry is right behind him. Terry sits where he can watch me work. This is the first time I've seen him here at Peace House, and maybe he's deciding whether to trust me with his long blonde hair.
Joe-Vee wants a tight fade. I start conservatively and show him the mirror. He keeps saying, shorter.
As I cut, he's near to dozing. I remember those times in the barber chair when I spent money on haircuts. I wanted no chatter. I treasured the half hour I did not have to read or write or talk on the phone or look over someone's work or run off to a client meeting, take notes, sling advice, be on.
Joe-Vee needs the quiet as much as the haircut. When otherwise is it safe for him to close his eyes.
Terry waits at the end of the hall. People think he's waiting for the restroom, and Terry has to keep telling them he's not. Joe-Vee, Terry and I form a triangle of patience.
When I come back in from shaking out the drape, Terry asks me what kind of haircut he should get for prison. I don't know. I've never been inside, I say, but someone here could tell you.
I just want it off, he says.
The ponytail, too?
Square it off and taper it in back, Terry says.
His hair is long and fine, Norwegian blonde with a bit of Nordic grey at the temples.
When did you last get it cut?
About 12 years ago.
I snip off the tail in two hanks. They fall to floor, exposing a patch of gingery brown.
I tell him what I've found, how I plan to blend the unusual colors in the new cut. He tells me he had a girlfriend who liked to color it for him. She's gone, too, he says.
When do you have to go in?
Three weeks.
He can't see himself yet, the new Terry who used to look like every other blue collar ponytail man, stuck in a time warp. Now he's magnetic.
He really is. I forgot my phone today and can't take his picture, so I'm using this photo of Karl Ove Knausgaard, the writer. Imagine Knausgaard roughed up a little, without the beard, hair shorter over the ears and blonder.
I'm not cutting this hair all off, I say. It looks too good this way. I hold the mirror for him.
Maybe I'll go look for job, he says.
It's a joke and compliment and irony. I wish him well on his next three weeks. I wish this work did real magic.
Now Ellie comes over. Ellie's daughter died last month, leaving behind six children. I express my sorrow. She returned this week from the rez, where she had taken her daughter's ashes.
I haven't cut my hair yet, Ellie says. She wants me to clip it down to the scalp in back, ear-to-ear, halfway up her skull. She pins up the hair she will keep. I scribe a line between Ellie now and the past, and make it go quickly.
She doesn't tell me that this is her marker of sadness or reminder of loss. Perhaps it's presumptuous of me to assume this moment carries such spiritual weight. Still, I treat it so, like the time with Terry.
Writing this, I remember seeing Ellie once shearing her hair with borrowed clippers, after a grandchild had died. About two years ago. Enough time to grow the length I removed today.
