My mother has always looked down on the idea of giving myself a haircut. “Give the barbers some business,” she wails examining my poorly shaved head. “How else are they going to feed their families?”
Growing up Dominican, my dad and I frequented the same barbershop. I remember my barber being one of the best evident by an image of him grinning next to David “Big Papi” Ortiz in the same chair I was sitting in myself. Even after leaving his rented booth to go and open his own shop, we visited him for a cut once or twice.
I’ve never seen a man break up with a barber, but I was feeling the rumblings of one. His new shop was clean, new and just like clean, new things, it felt empty. It wasn’t lived in. A barbershop’s greatest currency is its experience.
I remember him being the only barber in the shop, despite a lineup of chairs. The music playing pushed its way in to fill the absent conversations I was used to.
Before his shop opened, our adultering had already ensued. We almost made our regular spot some place closer to home. It had the ambiance. It had the haircut skills. It had Cibaeñas. But it didn’t have the walk-ins. I remember waiting for a haircut for atleast an hour. I had to wait at the last shop too, but that was because my barber was the same person who cut Big Papi’s hair.
I didn’t start cutting my own hair until high school. I didn’t get good until college. All I really need is a vanity mirror, a handheld mirror (or phone) and my own set of clippers. My usual is pretty simple: short on the sides and back. The trickiest part is blending the edge between the top of my head and the rest.
JOHNNY PEGUERO 