Male Pattern Boldness

My local barber is on holidays.

I know. I was devastated and my hair was starting to take on that Western Cape Buffalo look, parting down the middle of its own accord, curling up at the back, a proto mullet.

Just a little off the sides thanks

But it was desperate times, a job interview was around the corner. There was nothing else to do. I went back to my old haunts in Sydney's Inner West and back to the same barber I went to for 8 years while doing the share accommodation thing. Because it was cheap. And they used a switchblade.

It's a guy thing almost by definition. Hairstyles come and go, but guys like old school when it comes to getting their hair cut. There are some other musts too. The barber must speak with a European accent. Hair must pile up around his (never her) feet. It must not take more than 5 minutes. And there must be old girly magazines (formerly Picture, now FHM, Street Machine or, my all time fave, Guns 'n' Ammo) to flick through while you wait.

Travelling the world during my backpacking days proved to be a real challenge - there aren't too many Greek barbers in Phnom Penh. In Hue, a small town in Vietnam, I couldn't resist the '$1 Haircut' sign - if the cheaper a haircut back home the better then this must be the best ever. I walked into the shack by the side of the busy road. There was no waiting and no girly magazines, but there was a switch blade so I felt reasonably comfortable. The haircut itself was fine, trimmed all round, short enough and presentable, but there was more to come.

At that time in my life, at 25, I'd given little thought to rogue hair. Women seem to spend a lifetime plucking eyebrows, waxing bits that never see daylight and destroying razors. Men wake up one morning and see a hair growing out of a nostril and suddenly realise that they've turned into their Father. My moment was in Hue. I was waiting for the switchblade. I enjoy the feeling of cold metal on skin. There's a lot of trust involved. One slip and you could be dancing in a jugular fountain. The switchblade was poised and began its descent. It probably briefly reflected the glare from a motor scooter headlight, or the setting red sky. Its arc followed the time honoured path to the side of my face where my unruly sideburns demanded attention. But then it stopped, turned 90 degrees towards my ears, and scraped off - EAR HAIR. "I have hairy ears". Devastated. Absolutely devastated. He scraped both ears. Top. Sides. Front. And then grabbed scissors. And trimmed my nostril hairs.

Adolescence over I paid my $1 and mumbled some thanks. But for what? For discovering that for the rest of my life I'd be engaged in a never ending battle to not look like Cousin Itt?

By the time I got to Turkey six months later I'd more or less come to terms with my hirsute status. I'd even grown a goatee because a straw poll of western girls on the ferry from Penang in Malaysia to Medan in Indonesia liked them. But in reality I was trying to learn to embrace my hair. The shoulder fuzz was also descending south, it was a losing battle, like when Andre Agassi shaved his head after years of a ridiculous mullet but sort of in reverse.

Freaky huh?

The Turkish barber not only spoke with an accent but he spoke Turkish. Extraordinary I know but in my eyes you couldn't be more credible than that. And the haircut was extraordinary. I have no idea why some barbers can cut hair and some can't. Certainly no woman has ever been able to cut my hair, clips all over the place and millimetres chopped off at a time. One had the gall to claim I had a 'crown' of hair which was why she did a shit job. But the Turkish guy was the best. But something was missing, the switchblade. While my eyes scanned for it he reached for a cotton bud. And a bottle of flammable liquid. And a cigarette lighter. He dipped the cotton bud in the liquid and lit it and proceeded to burn the hairs off my ears and my temples and the back of my neck. It smelt like burnt hair funnily enough, like when your dodgy gas stove finally roars into life and you burn the hairs on your knuckles. And it was then that I realised that ear hair could be fun. Or at the very least it could be the topic of an interesting tale.

I was expecting no surprises in Newtown. No one expects surprises in a barber shop. Certainly you don't hope for them as the most likely surprise in a barber shop would involve spurts of blood. Other customers were coming in asking for all sorts of combinations such as short sides but no top as tops are 'out' at the moment (what is this - 1980?). I asked for a haircut and the barber just started cutting. How did he know that I don't know?

Like many barber shops, this one had a mirror in front and a mirror in back so you can check your front, back and top (if they happen to be 'in') at the same time. My current barber only has the mirror in front, so it had been a number of years since I'd seen my top. And you know what - my top was on its way out.