1. The Barber College

The Ohio Barber and Beauty College. A two-story building in the satellite lot of Northland Mall. An Eisenhower-era crew cut in poured concrete and low-slung steel. Sterile and stern. Everything set at ninety degrees to everything else.

The temperature drops as we walk from our Dodge Dart to the front door. Holding the tarnished chrome handle for my mom and little sister, I smell the bitter ammonia of the hair dye and the musky Wella Balsam conditioner and the alcohol solution that disinfects the scissors. If the veterinarian’s office smells anything like this to our dog, Rex, I understand why he pulls so hard against the leash.

I’m fourteen and hyperaware of my body and the various tufts and patches that cover it. I tirelessly monitor my hair, measuring its response to wind and wool sweaters and my Milwaukee Brewers cap. I can’t walk past a parked car without checking my reflection in the windows.

My mom is at the counter talking to a man in a white lab coat and army-issue glasses. My sister and I are sitting on the vinyl waiting area couch, flipping through year-old copies of People and Life. On the glass coffee table is a glossy book that looks like a magazine but is really a hundred pages of glamour shots compiled by some beauty product company. Perms. Parts. Bangs. Feathers. Layers. Colors. Six models with six different hairstyles on every page. They look like the most style-forward senior class in high school history. The Alberto VO5 class of 1984.

“So, did you find the one you want?” the woman asks. She’s got smoky blond hair, moussed into submission. A few long, loose strands are stuck to the V-neck and shoulders of her pea-green smock. Her blush is too red, her shadow too blue. The fluorescent lighting gives away the scars from a long bout with acne.

I touch the oily bumps on my own pimpled chin. “Huh?”

“Did you find the style you want, hon?” She takes my hand. My legs make a sucking sound as I rise from the couch.

What do I want? I want to be Tom Cruise in Risky Business. I want the Ray-Ban Wayfarers and the Porsche 928. I want to have sex with Rebecca DeMornay on a fast-moving elevated train.

She walks me back toward two long rows of barber chairs. Sitting in each chair is a kid with off-brand tennis shoes and in desperate need of broccoli. Or a fat lady in Chic jeans, bursting with phlegmy laughter. Or a wiry man whose vein- and tattoo-laced forearms are locked stiff on the armrests. Student-barbers circle the chairs, their scissors snip-snipping away. The barbers wear identical pea-green smocks and black high-top Reeboks as they dance through fuzzy piles of clipped hair. A few serious men and women in starched lab coats pace from chair to chair, offering instruction or muted praise. A bent-over black guy pushes a broom across the green speckled floor.

I stare up at the white ceiling tiles as she dips my head back into the u-shaped groove cut in the plastic sink. There are a thousand little pencil holes poked into each square tile. The night sky in negative. She massages the shampoo through my hair, her charm bracelets clinking against my forehead as she works her way around my scalp. Her fingernails are moving in expanding and collapsing circles. I’ve forgotten how good it feels to have someone wash your hair. She guides the warm water from the spray nozzle away from my eyes, pushing it back over the top of my head. She reaches for the conditioner, and I catch a whiff of her perfume. She’s right over me, blocking out whole galaxies of ceiling tile. I look up into the V-neck of her smock and see a full inch of brown lace. I’m getting hard under my red shorts. I’m suddenly thankful for the loose plastic apron I’m wearing.

She straightens to open the bottle. “Look,” she says, taking up small sections of wet hair and smoothing them between her fingers. “You’ve already got a receding hairline.”

“Yeah,” I say. But I don’t know what she means.

2. The Shave

My wife, Kate, and I are in Kusadasi, Turkey, on our honeymoon. We’re strolling through narrow streets, grinning and shaking our heads as politely as we can at the carpet salesmen and their offers of apple tea and lessons in the finer points of Oriental rug-making. This is early May, the low season, and there is no behemoth cruise ship in port to make the bright little fishing skiffs look like bathtub boats. We see no other tourists in this tourist town.

At the fringe of a bazaar, where wrinkled women in silk scarves sell evil eye amulets and bootleg Calvin Klein underwear, we come to a barbershop. The barber himself is the only person inside. He is sitting in his own chair. Seeing us, he hops up and gestures for me to take a seat in that red Naugahyde contraption, so similar to the ones in which, as a balding teenager, I spent a hundred uncomfortable Saturdays.

I’ve been shaving my head skin-bald for six years—ever since the morning of my twenty-fourth birthday, when I first took a dollop of Barbasol and a single-blade Bic to my disloyal scalp. Not knowing how to say anything in Turkish other than thank you and good night, I point to my stubbled head and make a palms-up what-are-you-gonna-do shrug. The barber laughs and with mock forcefulness takes my elbow, leading me into the shop. I turn that same resigned shrug toward Kate and climb into the chair, thinking, This is the setup to a bad joke: “So this bald guy walks into a barbershop . . .”

First he applies lotion that smells of sage to my head and face. He massages my skull and kneads the thick cords that run the back of my neck. He rubs my shoulders and down my arms. He pushes his thumbs deep between my shoulder blades. Then he squeezes a dab of cream into his palm and presses his hands together for several seconds to warm it.

The shop is fluorescent-orange and immaculate. It smells like lemons. We don’t say anything, the barber and I. We can’t say anything. Instead we exchange an occasional roll of the eye or uptick of the mouth. We point and nod. And I’m at home in the hands of this Turkish stranger.

He smoothes the shaving cream over my head and under my cheekbones and breaks into a smile as he pulls out a four-inch straight razor. In the mirror I can see Kate holding her breath. The barber sees it too. He turns and gestures in a way that says not to worry, he is a professional.

Two parallel wrinkles form above the bridge of his nose as he concentrates on the razor. After each pass, he swipes it clean with white rag. The high-carbon steel makes a pleasant scraping sound as it erases twelve hours of stubble. Soon there are only a few random streaks of shaving cream left on my head. He wipes those away with another freshly laundered rag and motions for me to feel how slick my scalp now is. I know I’ll never have a closer shave.

I’m smiling at Kate in the mirror when a blue flame appears in my peripheral vision. Kate’s eyes grow wide and worried. So do mine. The barber has taken a long cotton swab, dipped it in alcohol, and lit it on fire. He cups my shoulder to hold me steady as he quickly waves the burning swab past my ears, singeing the thin baby hair from the outer folds. He moves to the other ear and then goes to work under my nose. Except for my eyebrows, not a single hair escapes.

He finishes by rubbing a blend of alcohol and lemon oil into my scalp, my cheeks, my neck. Then he claps his hands as if to say Voilà! He is a proud man. He takes his craft seriously. As Kate pays him, he nods and says what must be the only English he knows, “Okay. Bye.”

I shake his hand and say everything I know to say: “Tesekkur ederim. Iyi aksamlar.”
Thank you. Good night.

For twenty years Joe Oestreich has toured the U.S.A. in a beat up Ford Econoline as the singer and bass player for Columbus, Ohio’s Watershed. His most recent work appears in Esquire, Ninth Letter, and the Cimarron Review, and he is an honoree in the 2007 Atlantic Monthly Student Writing Contest.