The pain that has no gain

Location: Tony's Barbershop. The thought running through your mind: what is it that I ever expected out of 'letting my hair grow?'.

 

Once your hair was ordinary, you always blended in with the boring old crowd. And you got fed up with that, right?

So on a certain point in history, the Great Growing commences. Your once ordinary haircut makes room for Slightly Long Hair. No-one notices it yet. Just wait for the Long Hair marker, it's when people will start making comments. That doesn't get any better by the time you've passed the Immense Bush 'O Hair stadium. But the worst has to be when you've arrived at David Hasselhof 1984. Classmates, colleagues, even passers by in the street find your haircut hilarious. Suddenly you realise: you are now nothing but that what is waving on your head whilst riding your bicycle. A grotesque shapeless chunk of whipped cream, floating around on a cup of P&O coffee at the nightly ferry.

 

It takes months before you can even begin worming every hair that allows it into an elastic. Every damn three of those hairs become your new pride. For the first time you can look in the mirror and say to yourself: 'I am no longer a wobbling dairy product, I have little resemblance with a guy who talks to a car named 'Kit'. From this day on, I am: The Guy With Long Hair'.

 

Hell yeah.

 

However you have never felt more comfortable at festivals or rock shows, you do start to notice these strange side effects when you mingle with that boring old crowd you hated being identified with in the first place. Not that you care about comments or glances from  'ordinary people' anymore (you're there remember? You're that dude with the long hair. Fuck ordinary people!), it's the other longhaires that start to annoy.

Soon you will become conscious of how longhaired dudes feel a strange urge to make nonverbal contact. It might be a glance, it might be a frown. But there are two dominant shapes of recognition. Dominant in annoyance, that is.

For instance you might be waiting for a bus, when a 'fellow' longhaired dude gives you the grin. The Grin is stupid. It has a subliminal message to it. God I hate the grin.

 

(grin).

 

There's only one thing worse than the grin. And that is the nod. It's that nod of appreciation, that gesture of sympathy for your pain. That understanding of all those horrible things you went through whilst not getting your hair cut. I can't stand it when people feel your pain. Especially when there isn't any real pain.

 

(nod).

 

It's those grins, those nods and numerous of other annoyances I haven't even mentioned (like the long haired dude's perverted obsession with standing still in windy places) that bring you to the conclusion.

 

Inside Tony's Barbershop you let your hair dry after having it washed. You receive a seat with a mirror, and take one last glance at what's stuck to your head these days. A Rotan chair in a small flat with lots of frustrated cats.

Tony approaches you with a bunch of scissors, combs, a huge bunch of hair in a tail and an extremely stupid grin on his face.

 

"Get rid of it."

"Are you sure?"

 

You nod.