At the Hair Schnitters

Even we bald people like to get a good haircut. Putting aside my fear that I might exit from the friseur (hair salon) looking like a neo-Nazi skinhead, I walked up to Anne's and, looking in the glass, opened the door with tentativeness, fearing the people within would regard me as if I were trying to enter the women's locker room. Hairspray and estrogen hung in the air like steam from a shower. Although the sign out front indicated the salon was for men as well as women, I wasn't so sure: the feminine mystique was palpable. The work stations were five bedroom vanity tables all in a row, thrust up against the wall, each table with a mirror. In front of each table was a wooden, low-backed chair, and in each sat an elderly or middle-aged woman having her hair done by another middle-aged woman.

All eyes turned to me. My mouth dried as Anne (I think) stepped back from teasing a skinny tower of blonde hair and approached me. "Sprechen sie Englisch?" I asked softly, my voice shrinking back inside me in fear and embarrassment. "Ein bischen" (a little), she replied--just what I say when someone asks me whether I speak German. Together, with a mix of language bits and gestures, we established the schnitt: using the distance indicated by thumb and forefinger for side length, a finger-line to indicate a slight raising of the sideburns, and the near-miss gesture of palm skimming over pate to indicate trimming off the few solitary hairs on top that stand like teeny, isolated telephone poles in the North Dakota landscape. The plan complete, Anne called over one of her hair dressers and rehearsed in German what my schnitt was to consist of. Next, shooing me with her hands as if I were a small child, Anne ushered me into an adjacent room with a solitary chair in front of another vanity and mirror. "For men," she explained. I was to witness no more of the secrets of the Misty Cave of Lesbos.

I was seated by the newly introduced hair dresser, who told me in German that she knew no English. Anne, just before returning to the ladies' portion of the salon, asked me "Zomezing to trink? Water, coffee, beer?" Intrigued though I was at the idea of drinking a beer while having my schnitt, I declined. I never clearly got the name of the hair dresser who began to administer my cut. She was quite tall, with shoulder-length bleached-blonde hair. First she worked with scissors and comb on the sides and with a straight razor on the sideburns and edges of my hair line. She seemed kind, if intense. Something about her reminded me of a bird of prey. She had a beak nose and small, intense eyes, and when she snipped the lone hairs on the top of my head, she would stand back to get a change of light gleaming from my shiny scalp, squinting her eyes and crinkling her brow, trying to spot an isolated, solitary hair spike, and then dive at it with her scissors as my heart raced in anticipation of getting lacerated. Job done, she unwrapped me from my cloth cocoon and released me to the wild. Fifteen euros for a good haircut and a warm, sweet smile from my hair dresser, and a kind wave and farewell from Anne as I exited. Auf wiedersehen! Auf wiedersehen....