Cutting Remarks

With Avis, my trusty local hairstylist out of town on vacation, I make the mistake of walking into the SuperCuts.

The only stylist in the place is a sweaty, ruddy-faced woman. She binds her own dry, thinning hair back with an oversized plastic clip. This reveals the broad, eggy shape of her forehead and emphasizes her narrow-set eyes, pug nose, and tight frown. She barely looks at me or greets me; instead, she growls a single word: “Next.”

Once I’m in the chair, she asks me what I want.

“I usually wear it a lot like a crew cut,” I say. “But a little longer, so I can still brush it flat down when I want to.”

She sighs. “What number trimmer?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

“Can’t thin the sides unless I know what number trimmer.”

I seem to remember Avis mentioning a “Number Four.” I blink. “A four?”

She sighs again. “That ain’t gonna take nothin’ off,” she says. Still, she yanks out her trimmers and starts to work.

Avis applies the trimmers in a series of long, gentle, even strokes. This young woman, however, stands an arm’s length away and, with one hand, swipes the trimmers loosely up the back of my head. Seconds later, there are barely any hairs the dirty blue sheet she’s strapped around my shoulders.

“Eleven fifty,” she says.

“Um, that’s not quite what I expected,” I say. “Maybe you should use a three.”

“That’s gonna make it really short,” she replies, smacking her gum.

“Let’s use a three.”

She makes more long-distance swipes at the sides and back of my head. When she’s done, I look more like I do when Avis cuts my hair … but now the top, as yet untouched, is too long.

“Can we thin out the top a bit, maybe? Take some of the length off the front?”

She shrugs, then gets out a pair of shears. For three minutes, she clips here and there. “Wish my hair was straight as yours,” she says.

“When I was a kid,” I say brightly, “I wanted curly hair.”

She makes a single burst of sound that, I think, is supposed to be a laugh, but comes off more like she’s spitting air. “That’s how life is,” she says. “Everybody wants what they can’t have. Nobody wants what they’ve got. Leastwise, that’s how I’ve lived my life — I never get what I want.”

I’m not sure what to say to this, so I keep my mouth shut.

Minutes later, she tosses her shears on the counter. “You want gel?”

“Maybe some gel … and a blow dry?”

She hands me the dryer. “You can do it. I’ll never get it the way you want it.”

I style my own hair. When I hand her the dryer, she says again: “Eleven fifty.”

I pay and leave.

Avis: hurry home, please.