Getting a Hair Cut

As a small boy the barber would sit me on a wooden bench placed across the armrests of his chair. Mirrors in front and behind imprisoned countless copies of me stretched out as far as I could see. There were no doors in those other worlds to escape. I didn’t want to be there. Trapped in a cloak, a paper noose tight around my neck, I would sit immobilised by a welling fear pressurizing to a scream held stoppered in my throat. The flashing jaws of scissors chattered incessantly around my head, sharp bites sending showers of hair flying about my face. I kept my eyes tightly shut. Arrayed in sizes on a table, clippers were lined up like instruments of torture. Back then fingers powered their menacing blades. I would freeze when one began to crawl my neck and nibble the soft skin behind my ears. An impatient hand would sometimes pull away too quick and catch uncut hair in teeth yanking it out in a patch of pain. I would give a stiffled yelp which always went ignored. I thought barbers took pleasure in the hurried over pain of boys. The drag of a razor to clean up the last recalcitrant stubble from a short back and sides unleashed a dread that his hand would slip. I saw myself flooding the floor in blood. The sting of cologne sprayed on raw skin signaled the end. Released, I would slink away from the chair as if diminished. Something of me had been taken. A cold would rush to claim my neck where before hair grew thick. I felt vulnerable, exposed, stripped of what had helped to protect and cover me up. Now, I cut my own hair and grow it longer.