Snip Happens: The Simple Act of Getting a Haircut.
To those who know me, some, nay, all, will enthusiastically agree that I am ‘follically challenged’. Not in the way Friar Tuck was, but let’s say the hair on my head is a little sparse.
Now, to be clear, there is certainly growth, but these days it is confined to the sides of my cranium, leaving the space above bereft of coverage. Left alone, the existing hair behaves as if it has a life of its own, with each strand hell-bent on taking flight and exploring the other side of the room.
To keep this in check, every six weeks or so, I take myself off to my local barber shop to allow one of the three barbers employed there to amuse themselves with my remaining hair for an hour or so.
On my last visit, I was introduced to a new employee whose unfortunate nickname, for some reason, was “Shaky,” which hardly inspired much confidence.
The usual routine began with Shaky fastening a tissue around my neck, the one to stop hair from trickling down my back, but in this case it was wound so tightly around my gullet that it halved my oxygen intake. Next came the ritual of enshrouding my upper body in a cape that restricted arm movement to almost zero. Then, suitably restrained, my head was to be set upon by a perfect stranger named Shakey, wielding sharp cutting tools.
He leant over my left shoulder as if he were about to whisper a sacred secret into my ear, while we held each other's gaze in the mirror for far longer than is considered decent.
“What are we doing today?” he crooned. “Oh, just a tidy-up should do it,” I replied, knowing full well that from here on in he would do exactly as he wanted, since I was technically in a straitjacket. ‘Shaky’, as it turned out, was something of a showman. The performance began with him raising the metal comb and scissors above his head and clicking them together like castanets. One got the impression that he was about to perform a complicated flamenco dance. Then, without warning, he angled the scissors down, as a matador would, before delivering the coup de grâce to a hapless bull.
“Not too short,” I managed to gurgle as we once again made awkward eye contact in the mirror.
The tempo of the clicking intensified. Comb, snip, comb, snip, each pass accompanied by a small flourish of the wrist that seemed less about cutting hair than about impressing an invisible audience. I began to think that perhaps Shaky had confused "barber" with "bullfighter" and had never quite been told which one doesn't end with someone bleeding.
Watching in the mirror, I noticed his hands were, in fact, living up to his name. Not dramatically, no visible tremor that would alarm a bystander, but a fine, persistent quiver, the kind you'd want in a maracas player and absolutely nowhere near your ear canal with an open blade.
The scissors moved rapidly around my left ear with the unhurried confidence of a man who had never once drawn blood, which, statistically, given the trembling, felt less like a fact and more like a run of luck that was about to end.
He straightened, stepped back, tilted my head and stared like a sculptor assessing a block of marble. I felt the steel of his comb against my scalp before hearing three rapid snips that removed every strand of hair, which had, for years, been trying desperately to repopulate a barren field.
"Little more off top?" he asked to no one, since I was clearly not being consulted.
"There isn't a top," I wanted to say, but my mouth had gone the way of my arms — restrained, useless, merely along for the ride.
At last the ordeal was over.
Then came the moment every Bali expat knows, and none of us has solved: the question of the tip.
I mean, I now sported a haircut that could charitably be described as "confident," having survived the machinations of a man whose hands moved as if he had just snorted a gram of Colombia’s finest cocaine.
It was time to hand over a gratuity as a gesture of thanks for services rendered.
I did the maths. Not the maths of whether this was a good haircut, that ship had sailed, been recalled, and possibly torpedoed, but the maths of how to price in the terror politely.
Too little, and I'd be marked as a tightwad as if I couldn't spare a few thousand rupiah for the privilege of not losing an earlobe. Too much, and I'd be signalling that near-death-by-scissors is the going rate for a trim, thereby guaranteeing Shaky's employment for years to come.
I settled on a tip calibrated with the precision of a surgeon performing heart surgery; generous enough to avoid offence, yet restrained enough to indicate encouragement. Shaky beamed. Clearly, in his world, I had just given him a standing ovation.
Six weeks, I thought. Same time, same chair, same barely-controlled panic.
Because that's the thing about follicular challenges in Bali: you don't fix the problem, you just find a rhythm within the chaos. Shaky and I had reached an understanding of how that rhythm worked. I would show up, and he'd keep performing, producing a haircut that, from a distance, in low light, at a certain angle, looked almost intentional.
Paul v Walters is an author living in Bali. Between spells of sloth and procrastination, he writes novels and travel stories. His latest offering, RITUAL, was recently launched at the International Ubud Readers and Writers Festival.
