When I am feeling depressed I sometimes go and get a haircut. It makes me look a little different and makes me look a little younger and so makes me feel a bit happier as well. The past week had been particularly tough; I had been stood up and stamped down. I was feeling particularly vulnerable and I felt like a haircut.
I have been going to the same hairdresser for years. Rocky is a young savage looking Lebanese man with a vicious short cropped hairstyle, steroid-pumped muscles that bulge under his tight white t-shirt, sinister tattoos on his thick, dark neck and a voice as soft and delicate as a 4-year-old girl.
“How would you like me to cut your hair today?” he whispered in his little girl voice.
I slumped down in the chair and stared at myself in the mirror. “You can do what you like.”
Rocky’s eyes widened. “Really? Are you sure?”
“Yes, do what you like. I want to look young and groovy.”
Rocky needed no further encouragement. I sat in the chair for hours and that haircut still holds the record for the longest time I have ever sat in a hair salon.
When rocky was finished I sat in the chair and stared at my new young and groovy self. Rocky stood beside me with his hand on my shoulder. He was so proud; tears began to well up in his eyes.
“That is beautiful! Now, you look young and you also look groovy.”
I paid Rocky two hundred dollars and walked out of the salon. I was still depressed. I still felt stood up and stamped down but now I also had short cropped bleached platinum hair with lightning bolts shaved down both sides of my head. (more…)
