Feaverish

I just got back from the wildest, most intense haircut of my life. A lesser author might call it “a hair-raising adventure!” Not me.

My barber (total male-model-school dropout wearing a tanktop and cockeyed trucker cap; not a good sign, but in Venice you’re lucky if your barber’s wearing pants) was, and I say this with complete sincerity, an artist. He did at least half a dozen things I’ve never seen done before, all of them with such confidence and aggressive arrogance that I was left with a mouthful of hair in my dropped-jawed mouth.

Aggressive is le mot juste, too. Even when doing something simple like tilting my head, you’d have thought he was Steven Seagal snapping terrorist neck. And he couldn’t just hold his scissors up to my head and snip away like a normal barber, either; each movement was a full-body affair with a twisting torso and an arm darting in and out of my mop. Remember in Edward Scissorhands when he goes apeshit trimming the hedge? Like that, only as the hedge’s locum I was terrified of getting sliced to bits.

With apologies to all the bald men in the audience, you know how to thin your hair the barber will usually weild those weird scissors that only cut like one hair in four? Am I right, thick-haired fellas? Well let me tell you: those scissors are serious amateur-hour. This guy just buried his normal scissors in my hair and took out huge chucks. In a cartoon, this technique would have left me with hilarious circular bald patches, but in real life it worked great.

When he was done, he pointed at a chuck of too-long hair left sticking out the side of my head and said “We’re keeping this.” I just nodded. Two of the other employees came over and fawned. “You’re an artist,” one said. “I saw this guy when he came in,” said the other, pointing at me, “you worked a miracle.”