I am always, always, ALWAYS angered by barbers. I have received some of the worst hair cuts in human history, haircuts that would make obscure Brazilian tribesmen and their children laugh at me in my face.
I grow my hair out long now because I just refuse to let any so-called 'barber,' aka, 'hack saw artist,' touch it. Every time, and I mean EVERY.SINGLE.TIME. I go in for a haircut it just turns into an unmitigated disaster. How bloody hard is it to cut hair that is down to a guy's shoulders, when all he asks for is a trim? Keep it the exact same shape, I say, I just want it a half-inch shorter. Is that so hard? Is it?! By the time the most recent lady got through with it, it looked like a slightly longe rversion of this:
Seriously. I am not kidding. Do you know what it's like to walk around with hair like that? Do you?! It's like waking up to a cruel joke that gets incrementally crueler as the day goes on. And that's just a
trim. And I've gone to a million different barbers in two separate provinces, but they all, every one, fail miserably. I think they have a picture of a mutant beneath their counter that they pull out for an HPLovecraft special. I am so discouraged. I go in with the attitude of knowing it will be screwed up, but just hoping it's not so bad that I can't salvage it in some way.
I once told my girlfriend I'd only get my haircut (since she wanted me to get it done for some bloody reason, even though I explained to her how hair stylists get a twinkle of glee in their eye every time I enter the building, knowing they geta chance to practice their Gregorian monk cuts they so rarely get to try), if she chose a video game character for me to get it styled after. So she picked Leon S. Kennedy from Resident Evil 4.
Whoa, I thought, that's not so bad. A little emo, but whatever, and I don't have blonde hair, but that doesn't matter. So, I printed off a number of pictures from different angles and took it to some barber in a mall nearby. I seriously should have known better by the dim lights and stale smell of the place when I went in, but it said stylist in the ad. STYLIST! Showing him the pictures of what I want, and the way he freaking told me that he didn't need to look at the ones from different angles because he knew what I wanted already should have been enough to make me run off with my tail between my legs, but I froze. Barbers have this way of just making you freeze and not want to humiliate them by telling them just how terrible they really are. Long story short, I, once again, stepped out looking like I just emerged from a Monty Python and the Holy Grail reenactment. He just cut in a damn circle. A CIRCLE.
Phew. I needed that. It's good to vent. If I could find a barber that actually knew how to cut a guy's hair in this city, I would explode in a fit of happiness. Even women stylists that do complex women doos just assume I want it cut in a circle or a buzz cut. Or both at the same time. It's infuriating. I am already dreading my next haircut.
