Christmas eve from a barber's chair

There is a new barber shop not far from me. It is one of several that opened up not long before COVID. They seem to have sprung up overnight for some reason and are all of a certain ilk. They’re hip and unique and boutiquey. They seem like places opened by the next generation for the next generation. They have young owners and attract young customers.

These are not the Vic’s or Tony’s of my day. They aren’t the bare and basic Italian barber shops of old with their checkerboard linoleum floors. three ancient chairs, and single, wide mirrors, and counters topped by glass bottles filled with combs in blue sanitizer.

They have sofas and flatscreens playing movies. They have style and character. The walls are decorated with pictures or murals painted by someone known to the owner.

I went to a few as my son was transitioning from the age when Super Cuts was cool because “they give you a lollipop, dad” to when Super Cuts was not cool because “It’s Super Cuts, dad.”

He came to like one particular place and I came to like another. So, I go to mine while he suddenly wears his hair longer and doesn’t want to go to a barber at all.

Mine opened RIGHT before COVID. It is owned by two young guys from a majority-minority town about fifteen minutes away. They each worked at shops closer to home before opening this one. There were barbers. Now they are business owners. I want to see them succeed.

So, I stop in far less frequently than I should and get overdue haircuts. I take whoever is available and walk out happy each and every time. There are five or six regular haircutters. All good. There is no one in the lineup who is to be avoided unless you enjoy looking like you cut your own hair in a mirror after maybe drinking several scotches.

There was one of those at the place I got my hair cut as a kid. I think the guy cut Moses’ hair. He was ancient and slow and never said a word. Every time, I’d walk in the door hoping to get one of the other guys and every time, I would get him. And every single time, my inner voice would scream “Just say ‘I’ll wait for Vic.’ like everyone else!”

And every single time, I’d do no such thing and would instead just shuffle over to his chair and sit down, more willing to get another terrible haircut than say something.

Invariably, he’d laboriously work his way through yet another patchy cut and then would sharpen up a straight razor until it was gleaming. Then, he’d slowly lift it up to just within my peripheral vision preparing to trim my sideburns. His hands would be shaking fiercely as he brought the edge close to my face and each and every time, I would think “My god, he is going to cut me wide open this time… I REALLY have to wait for Vic next time…” but then his hands would steady just as he reached my face and I’d leave without a nick. And then a month later, I’d come back and be too much of a wuss to just say “I’ll wait for Vic.” like the other three guys already sitting there WAITING FOR VIC while the one guy’s chair was empty because haircuts should be neither terrible nor terrifying and his were both.

That was and is ridiculous of me, of course… and that is why, now, as a mature adult who can ask for what they want… I… still do the exact same thing.

My god, it’s a sickness.

To this day, when I walk into a barber shop, I take “first available.” It just seems so uncomfortably rude to leave someone’s chair empty while you wait for someone who is already busy. It’s like saying “I realize you are quite free but I think you are so bad at your job, I’d rather we just sat and looked at each other uncomfortably for a while until I your colleague is free to give me my same boring, basic-ass haircut that requires next to no skill but which I still don’t trust you to muster.”

So, hey, when I find a barber shop where “first available” doesn’t mean “worst available,” oh, they found themselves a regular.

Which brings me back to the place that opened near me with the hip vibe and young owners…

Went in last Friday for a haircut and ended up in Roni’s chair. She was new to me and that was fine and off we went.

While she was cutting my hair, we got to talking which isn’t usually my thing per se. I don’t need to have whole conversations when they’re just polite, forced small talk to fill space that would be just fine unfilled.

The owners, several of the staff, and many of the customers are Black or Latino. Not knowing her background, I assumed she might be Latina or part-Latina as well.

Our conversation drifted from thing to thing and then we got on to talking about our kids. I have one. A 15-year old boy. She has two. A 12-year old and 13-year old. They live with her. Their father lives in Mississippi. During COVID, she had been forced to have them move down to live with him because she was working and there was no better option.

It was hard then. And it is hard now that they’re back because they have friends they miss there just like they had friends they missed here. It wasn’t easy. It isn’t easy.

I wanted to ask her where she was from - meaning, family heritage and cultural connection (not place of emigration) whether it’s Pittsburgh or Honduras - but that is not a question that can be asked by a white person without coming off like you think anyone brown, Black, or Asian mustn’t be “from here.”

I wanted to ask because I like to know people’s histories and understand them and hear how they tell the story of who they are and where they’re from. Invariably, it helps me find something shared.

But I didn’t ask and so our conversation just wove its way from topic to topic until we were talking about the racism her kids were exposed to in Mississippi.

As she put it, they were exposed to it first as witnesses when a white person tried to keep some Black children from entering a store. The racist just took it upon themselves to block them from coming into a Walmart without a parent for no other reason than because they didn’t think black kids could be trusted.

Then she went on to explain that they were on the receiving end of it directly when someone at their complex said “somebody should get these Hindus out of the pool because they’re getting it dirty.”

She is Indian not Latina. The person was talking about her children.

And her youngest’s response, they would have been around 10 at the time, was to ask “How could we have been getting the pool dirty? We didn’t even have any toys.”

And that, to me, was a goddamned gut punch.

It made me grit my teeth angrily at how disgusting it is for her kids to have to experience that.

She, though, told it flatly, matter-of-factly, as if it was just one of any number of like experiences - and it probably was. She went on to talk about how she just waves off stupid, ignorant people saying stupid, ignorant things as if they are just idiots to be brushed off.

The conversation lulled eventually and with her having now brought up her heritage, I said “You’re Indian?!” still somewhat surprised by that.

She said yes.

And I responded by saying, “Okay, I have to show you a picture of my son.”

Now, my son is Whitey McWhiterson.

He is also 1/4 Indian. His maternal grandfather is Indian. Emigrated as an adult to England and then to the United States. He looks Indian. He has an accent. He is Indian.

My son is very fair - which is a product of my vanilla-as-fuck genes and the other side of his mom’s family being pasty-as-they-come Brits - but is he as much Indian as he is British and he happens to be proud of his Indian heritage. As he should be.

I had and still have a soft spot for my father-in-law. I have a soft spot for India with all of its complicated and difficult imperfections. I have been twice and spent weeks traveling from place to place. I will someday take my son. Maybe as soon as this summer.

The rest of our conversation was about Indian things. Where we each go to get real Indian food. There is a town nearby with a slew of places. My son and I prefer one. She prefers a place across the street. Each is frequented by nearly entirely Indian clienteles. My son and I are usually the only white people in each… and as my son puts it “that’s how you know it’s good.” and he is not wrong.

If you ever find yourself in an ethnic place staffed and frequented by anyone other than people of that ethnicity, you are at an Olive Garden. Enjoy your breadsticks. You ain’t in Rome.

And then my haircut was done and I paid and left but not before writing down the name of a place my son and I haven’t tried.

In the week since, I have thought about our conversation often. Early in it, Roni mentioned that her furnace had broken down the night before. She had run out to Walmart to get space heaters hoping to limp by for a while. But that didn’t work, so she had been forced to schedule a repair visit that eve. It was going to cost $200 just to come out and who knows what the repair would cost.

She had mentioned all of this only in response to me asking if she still had shopping left to do. It was one of those throwaway questions you ask someone around the holidays. But she had answered honestly about how she was behind and had just had a problem that didn’t help.

I have been there. I. have. been. there.

I have had those years and they weren’t long ago. In the last ten years, I have had more like that than different.

I have counted every penny and knew what I had to spend and cut corners and carved out enough to make it a good Christmas by the skin of my teeth.

This Christmas has been easier. I have enough. Without struggle, I have enough.

In parallel, per my various other posts here on Substack, I have amassed an accidental little pool of money from selling silly little t-shirts. I pledged to give it all away to good people and causes in the same spirit as someone had given to me a few years ago (see: my post about the anonymous gifts to first me and then my friend).

I have given away $3,000 of the $4,000 I raised. A food bank, a friend, a waitress, a Ukrainian charity.

I thought maybe I’d pass something along to Roni this week. I’d follow the same model as I talked about in last episode of The Diner. I’d have my friend drop by the shop with an anonymous gift.

But then he was busy and this week turned into chaos as my mother had surgery and then an extra night in the hospital and was homebound. And then it was Friday, two days before Christmas, and I hadn’t gotten it done.

So, I broke the model and reached out to Roni directly. I had her number from when she called me to reschedule last week because of the furnace problem.

Hit her up. Asked if she had managed to get her heater fixed. Couched it as a follow-up out of concern as the temperatures around us plummeted to zero.

We traded messages and exchanged CashApp info and then I sent her off enough to hopefully take a bite out of the bill and make things easier.

I have to say, I very much didn’t like it not being anonymous. The same way I didn’t want to tell a barber to their face that I don’t want to cut their hair, I don’t want to tell someone that I am giving them something. I don’t want or need thanks. I don’t think it is really deserved or appropriate to be honest.

I am giving away money that isn’t mine that I raised to give away. That isn’t generosity. It is thoughtful maybe. It isn’t generous. It is not generous to give away money you can easily live without.

Aside from the discomfort of not being able to do it anonymously, the opportunity to pay it forward on a Christmas that is easier for me than others, well, that has been the very best thing of my Christmas season this year.

Life is hard. We all do our best and struggle and carry on. We put our kids first and do everything we can for them and find a way even when that’s hard. And throughout, we do our best to keep from them just how hard that is sometimes.

People deserve breaks. They deserve better than the misfortunes that make already hard lives harder.

I have been there and been helped. Now, there is nothing whatsoever that brings me more joy over Christmas than being able to pay it forward. After these past ten years, Christmas - a good Christmas - is an opportunity to fully savor the very blessing of having arrived at better times and help people who have yet to reach them.

Like all of my posts, this one took too long and I am now very late. My shopping is still unfinished. It will be a frantic afternoon. And then it will all be done and I will go home to a warm house and a healthy family thankful for each and thankful for the chance to write this post.

And now I am going to hit post without proofreading because I am really, really late. Be gentle, in your tolerance of my typos.

Merry Christmas. Good years and bad, we are all in this together.