It's Good To Be Home (Or, What The Hell Happened To My Hair???)

I arrived in Seattle late last Saturday night, to 37-degree weather that felt nothing short of tropical.

It's good to be home. I just missed the avalanche. Lucky me. Whew!

After arriving at my new digs in Shoreline, I took a day to recuperate from traveling, reconnect with my roomies who I hadn't seen in a long while, and reintroduce myself to the neighborhood. I grabbed a burger and fries, I did some banking, and oh! those damn sideburns are way-hay-hay too long! Time for a haircut. 

I mosey on down the street towards a salon but on the way find a different place offering men's cuts for $9.00. Cheapskate that I am, I'll take that deal. It's five dollah less dan de place up de street! 

The moment I opened the door, I should have turned and ran the other way. I was assaulted by the humid scent of some oriental fish dinner which made me stop in my tracks. Is this the right place? I look at the sign - yep, haircuts for men, women, and children. I shrug and walk in. 

YO! Certainly, NOT me.

"Hey! Hey! You wanna haycuh-t? Clo dooh, clo dooh!" yelled an older Vietnamese lady in black stretch pants and some kind of top in a horizontal zebra-striped print. She's sitting in one of those chairs used for mani/pedi clients, eating what I assume is the rotten fish I smell. "You wan haycuh-t?" I nod. She yells into the back, "Hahy! Cuh-tomah need cut!" in a shrieking Asian falsetto. I'm feeling the pangs of regret already.

Out from the back comes a young, slender Vietnamese girl who, I swear to God, looked like she was about to fall over dead. She's no nonsense. "Seedown!" She gestures at the haircut station. I sit. Just as she begins to strangle me with the hair drape I notice a half-used box of Theraflu and dirty tissues littered all over the counter to my left. She coughs. Or has a seizure. It's kinda hard to tell. "HAAAACK! AAAAACK! ACK!" Oh, my god. I hope her's is a cold and not tuberculosis.

"How yuh wan?" she asks, after regaining her breath. 

"Um, excuse me?" For a second I'm wondering if we're still talking about a haircut, considering that there is a neon sign in the window advertising massages. 

Wish it was me.

She glares at me. "How yuh wan?" She grabs a comb that's about ten inches long and starts pointing (stabbing?) at photos on her mirror of impossibly handsome Asian men that must be twenty years younger than me. "Off the ears, off the neck, shorten the sideburns, and just make it look nice." She gives me a phlegm-filled huff (oh, please not in my face!), grabs a electric razor and goes to town. Hair is flying e-ver-y-where. I'm somewhere off in space. In retrospect, I believe I was suffering from shock.

To my right, through a door and behind a beaded curtain I can hear a young boy playing a video game, murdering pixelated soldiers with wild abandon. To my left, Buddha has a meal that some flies are beginning to take an interest in. Behind me, Grandma Zebra has taken her own client, another Asian woman who can barely communicate with her. As I'm spitting out hair that is falling like snow, I can hear the music in the shop, a kind of oriental-style elevator music. Holy crap! Is that "Guantanamera"?

Nope. It's her.

Fifteen minutes later, I'm standing at the cashier's booth, slightly dazed. "Yuh like! Yuh like!". I can't tell if the girl is asking me or telling me. "Uh-huh," I say as I pay and walk out the door. I passed by a mirror in the window next door and can see the haircut up close. Totally. Butchered. MyHair. For a moment, I felt like Britney Spears - and not "Baby Hit Me" Britney. We're talking self-shaved, drink in one hand, baby-driving with the other hand Britney. As I'm writing this, I'm having one of those maniacally strained giggle-snort-WTF?-combo moments.

FEELS like me, sometimes.

After this incident, I was wondering how I could memorialize this in a photograph. I see myself, wearing the hair drape, hands by my horrified face, climbing backward on the barber's chair. In the foreground, all you see is a hairy arm holding a machete that drips blood. Really, it would be a better comic book cover than a photo.

Thankfully, I can say that after a good wash and a bit of product, this is really a rockin' haircut she gave me. My only wish is that I didn't feel like I just rubbed shoulders with an episode of the Twilight Zone. Welcome home.

Ah. Finally.