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Mode for Caleb Caleb McDaniel

For the past couple of months I've let my normally well-kept coiffure grow to great lengths. So today I called to schedule a haircut.

Narrowly-spread panic ensued when I was told that Jason, my regular barber, was gone. "Gone?" I asked, a frog in my throat. "Yes," came the ominous reply of the receptionist, "he left us about four weeks ago." (And yes, it has been more than four weeks since my last trim.) Where had he gone, I demanded to know. The receptionist professed ignorance, perhaps sensing that I was a customer on the verge of being a former customer. "He just up and left us," she said, vaguely hinting at rumors that Jason had gone to work for his father. No specifics were forthcoming.

This has sparked a minor crisis in my chimney corner. I used to be one of those hapless haircut customers who simply threw my ten or twenty bucks on the counter of the neighborhood cuttery, which more often than not was the kind of place that offered two haircuts for the price of one and threw in a frequent-cut card to boot. But because my former practice was so haphazard, getting my hair cut was always too close to an adventure. Every snip of the scissors brought a wince and a prayer. For about three and a half years now, I've at least known that Jason would be cutting my hair. I could know what I was getting.

But it's not my hair that will suffer most now that Jason is apparently gone. Mine is certainly not a particularly difficult wig to work with. What I'm worried about is going through the complicated process of finding another barber who understands the fine balance between awkward silences and too much conversation. Most people think of the dentist's chair as the most uncomfortable place for small talk, but I've never been good at small talk in the barber's chair either. In my days of wilderness wandering from one neighborhood cuttery to the next, I could expect about once a month to cycle through the usual questions, beginning with "What do you do?" and leading inevitably to "So what are you planning to do with that?"

I suppose the ideal hair salon would be something like its Parisian namesake. But in my personal experience, conversation in a salon rarely rises above the level of introductions to regions of the mind -- unless you already know your fellow salonistes. With Jason, conversation usually did rise above small talk, because our introductions were taken care of long ago. Frankly, I feel sort of like I've abruptly lost touch with a friend I knew fairly well. Of course I wish him the best wherever he has gone, but tomorrow at 1:30, when I drag my hirsute self into Gotti's Classic Cut and mumble about my dissertation, I can't say I won't miss the days when I could get a haircut without having to break the ice.

I'm tempted to close by quoting the first line of the Cheers theme, but I'll restrain myself.

UPDATE: I've had confirmed that Jason has left to work for his father, who apparently sells medical supplies. Jason's replacement is a guy who just moved to the United States a few weeks ago and used to fly helicopters for the Russian military. My appointment, though, was with the owner of the shop. I only mention the Russian because the owner spent the first ten minutes of my haircut trying to talk to the new guy about when he should show up. The questions I was asked during the haircut were, in order: "What's your first name?" and "What do you do?" I volunteered a few things about a new coffee shop and restaurant that are opening in the area, which sparked a little conversation, but not much. At the end of the appointment, I discovered for the first time that Jason had been charging me four dollars less than the usual haircut price. I think the sticker shock showed on my face. I think I'll look somewhere else.