'What'll it be, Andy? Short back and sides?

I get my hair cut by a girl. In fact, I got it cut by her yesterday. I have used her gentle tonsorial ministrations for well over a decade and will continue to do so for as long as she stays in the trade. I especially like it when she shampoos me. It feels almost too good; sort of like I’m being unfaithful having this pretty lady being so close to my person.

It’s a kind of situational intimacy that is granted certain ‘professionals’ in one’s life, like doctors, dentists, dental hygienists and the like. And, quite frankly, I have always preferred the soft touch of a female to that of a male. Even though my doctor is a nice guy and highly competent, it wouldn’t bother me at all to have a female GP.

Anyway, I like visiting my hairdresser. We’ve become friends over the years and we’re always happy to see each other. Once or twice a year we actually go to lunch together, and we chat and gossip like the long time friends we are. It’s cool.

I have male friends, however, who are rendered uneasy by the idea of unisex hair care. They are more comfortable in the masculine confines of the old fashioned barbershop. These, by the way, are the same guys who are rendered mortified at the idea of being in a lingerie shop surrounded by fluffy, frothy and sheer unmentionables. “Hey, if she wants new underpants she can buy them herself.”

Of course, like most of my generation, I began my hair cutting with the barbershop; those little havens that smelled of bay rum and offered the Police Gazette as reading material. All chat was either about sports scores or the lousy weather. When I first went to the barber – always taken by the old man, of course, never my mother; dames weren’t comfortable in such male bastions – you still had the odd guy getting a barbershop shave. That always fascinated me, what with the steaming towels, and then the Sweeny Todd straight razor that had to be stropped before use.

Do modern young barbers know how to strop? Guess there isn’t much all for it anymore, so it’s probably a chapter that has been deleted from the barber college syllabus. Kind of sad in a way.

Speaking of barber college. My dad was an administrator at a large vocational education centre. One that boasted a barber college. So, guess where his kids got their hair cut for many years. It was OK. Since I was the kid of one of his bosses, the instructor usually saw to us.

In a kind of six degrees of separation thing, I was actually to meet the man again later in my life. Turned out he was the uncle of my second wife. For some reason I felt that would give she and I an even closer and tighter bond. I was wrong about that.

One of the things about getting a barbershop haircut when you are a kid is that there is a certain rite of passage. Less painful than circumcision and less ritualized than a bar mitzvah or confirmation, it is still a big day in a lads life when he is deemed big enough to not have to use the booster board on the barber chair, but to actually have that big old chair all to himself.

Anyway, that was long ago and far away and they no longer publish Police Gazette. I am only grateful that I’ve kept my hair and that I now have Cindy to do the task since she knows just how to do it without me telling her. I’ll have to ask her sometime if she knows how to do a straight razor shave. I always wanted one of those, and I trust her.