Haircut

[sasha]

I was in the barber's chair one warm Saturday morning, the only customer in the shop, idly watching the pretty young women outside walking by in their sundresses & halter tops. Chet’s clippers buzzed reassuringly at the back of my neck, and the insistent, firm stroking of his comb was sending me off into a happy lethargy. I felt as lazy and contented as a silverback gorilla receiving grooming from another member of the troop.

The other barber, Barney, sat in his own chair, gazing vacantly out into the street. A snack-sized bag of potato chips sat on his ample belly, and he mechanically conveyed its contents to his mouth one greasy fistful at a time. So enrapt was he in each crunchy mouthful that he didn't even bother commenting on or tracking with his eyes the fetching young mother whose heavy breasts were obviously constrained by nothing other than the skimpy tank top she wore.

There was a sudden loud and reverberant crash from somewhere in the vicinity of the backroom. I jumped at the noise, but neither barber seemed to pay it any notice. "What the hell was that?" I asked.

"Dumpster," Barney answered without so much as breaking stride.

Chet grunted in assent. Then, feeling that his partner's answer demanded further explication, added, "One of them automatic compacters, right out behind the shop" He paused to gesture up towards the ceiling with the clippers. "They's four or five floors of apartments above us. Someone just dumped their trash out."

"Yup," Barney said.

"Oh," I said. That seemed to settle things, then. I resumed my surveillance of the sidewalk traffic while he put the clippers down and set to work with the scissors. After a few moments he stopped to look at me.

"It's got like an arm and a lever inside," he said.

I had become engrossed watching a child across the street struggling to control her frisky young black lab. Roused from my reverie, I asked, "What?"

"The compacter. It's one of those automatic ones with an arm and a - a - like a lever..." pronouncing it LEE-ver "...that squashes the trash against the wall."

"An actuator," Barney chimed in. He made a show of suppressing a burp. "It's called an actuator I think."

"Whatever," Chet said. He tentatively resumed snipping. "It don't work every time you drop something into it, though. Only after so much trash has piled up."

"I see," I said diplomatically, though I was beginning to think that they were far more knowledgeable on the subject than I cared to be.

The scissors played deftly around my ears, removing lingering strands the clippers had left behind. "Each floor's got a chute," he continued, stopping again to gesture. "When you want to get rid of your trash you, you know, pull this little door thing, like a bucket," and he mimed pulling open a bottom-hinged hatch. "And you dump your trash into that."

"Oh," I gamely said, wondering how much longer this dissertation could possibly continue. "So that's how it's done."

"Don't forget the signs," Barney said. He crumpled the empty bag and tossed it towards the trash. It bounced off the rim and landed on the floor atop a pile of hair. "Tell him about the signs."

"What signs?" Chet asked. He sounded a trifle irked at his colleague for putting his authority on the subject to the test.

"No glass," Barney said. He had reluctantly pushed out of his chair to retrieve the bag and deposit it into the trash. "And all tin cans have to be clean."

"Oh, yeah." He stopped to look directly at me again. "They's signs next to every one of the chutes saying you ain't supposed to throw glass down there. And you've got to wash all your tin cans."

"Can you imagine how bad it would be if no one did?” Barney asked. He pinched his nostrils shut. "Phewww! Get to smelling pretty bad, 'specially in this weather!"

"Enough to make your eyes water!" Chet agreed, and we all laughed at the hilarious image of a dumpster reeking in mid-July heat, full of rotting garbage, cockroaches, and disease-infested rats. Casting a surreptitious glance towards the wall clock, I wondered how it was that an unrinsed tin can was deemed more offensive than a spoiled chicken or the contents of a litter box, but thought it unwise to ask.

While Chet returned his attention to my head, Barney wandered over to a windowsill piled high with magazines. He sifted through them for a few minutes, and returned with one whose title I couldn't make out (my glasses were next to the cash register), but thematically appeared to involve large motorcycles driven by scantily-clad women. He returned to his chair to peruse its contents, and I began to hope that I was now sufficiently initiated into the lore of dumpsters.

"And they mean it," he said, spinning me around to face the mirror.

I had no idea what he meant, but didn't wish to reopen the previous thread. "Really?" was all I said.

"They check," Barney stated without looking up. I glanced over at the cover of his magazine, and found myself questioning the wisdom of straddling the Naugahyde saddle of a Harley wearing nothing but a thong.

"That's right," Chet agreed. "Ever so often someone from the city comes by and checks to make sure there's no glass or dirty tin cans being thrown in."

"Mmm," I grunted, not sure what to say. "Doesn't sound like a job I'd want."

Tilting his head to one side, Barney said thoughtfully, "I don't know. They say it pays pretty good."

"It'd have to," I ventured. "All the same, I think I'll hold off sending in my resume for a while."

Dry humor evidently not being to their liking they said nothing until a bright yellow VW flashed by the shop, unleashing an unlikely torrent of associations involving the Beatles, 60s music in general, the Vietnam fiasco, and how the US government had never been able to prove that the moon landing wasn't a hoax.

A haircut and all this for only $13!

[beekay]

Nicely done, Sasha! You had the video running through my head through the whole thing...

[judih]

Me too. Still, I wouldn't complain about seeing a before/after haircut pic

[sasha]

abandon all hope...


.

[Doreen Peri]

Loved your story! I felt like I was watching a movie.

Nice haircut, too!

What's your dog's name?

[judih]

Haircut shots! Thanks Sasha!

[sasha]

Loved your story! I felt like I was watching a movie.

Nice haircut, too!

What's your dog's name?

Thanks, & thanks! His name is Kane. I adopted him a little over a year ago after he was picked up by the police, abandoned & wandering one of our back roads without any ID - no tags, no collar, no microchip. He's a high-energy pup, so I briefly considered calling him "Joules" (it's a physics thing) - but I wanted a one-syllable name with a hard consonant I could bark if necessary, and wanted it to have some kind of significance - so I went with Caine (for canis albus, "white dog" in Latin). My sister, the family genealogist, suggested the Gaelic spelling Keane, since it's an old family name - but living as I do near the city of Keene, NH, I didn't want to have to explain the pronunciation every time I introduced him. So I registered him under the contemporary spelling "Kane".

Haircut shots! Thanks Sasha!

Most welcome! I usually try get it cut once every fiscal quarter...