This may not be accurate, but I don’t believe I’ve had a haircut since the last day in February. I know I went for one the afternoon before my book’s launch party, but I can’t recall one since. At any rate, it’s become rather shaggy, and at some point in that month-and-a-half-ish, out of some need for symmetry or to not make one or the other jealous or ashamed, I stopped trimming my beard as well.
So I look like a mountain man, or something. Someone in possession of a shack.
I haven’t sworn off haircuts, or anything like that. In fact, I was forced to cut one hair (or perhaps a whisker; it was right at the border) two days ago, about three inches in length, that I gazed into the mirror to find jutting out at a right angle from the side of my head. As to a full haircut, a number of things in the past weeks have taken precedence, the top three, probably, being grading, baby playtime, and episodes of Kitchen Nightmares frequently presented back-to-back on three different stations.
My hair never gets much attention as it is. I get a very simple haircut—2 on the sides and back, 4 on top—for the simple fact that it’s simple and—at least for the first two weeks—I simply don’t have to do anything to it. Just get up and go. After those two weeks, I typically put a ball cap on subsequent to showering and wear it until I get to work. To “hold it down,” so to speak.
Another advantage of my simple haircut is that it’s fast, though many barbers insist on drawing it out, perhaps embarrassed to charge fifteen dollars for four minutes of work. Two haircuts ago, having been lured into a previously unvisited establishment by their $6.99 and up sign, at the fifty-two minute mark, as the barber in question snip-snipped at what appeared to be thin air, I abruptly rose from the chair and announced, “That’s good! That’s good! You got it.”
He then charged twelve dollars.
B.H. James 