Cut and dry

I went this morning for a haircut. I find something cathartic about cutting my hair. And how often and how short it gets cut is generally inversely proportional to my overall sense of peace with the world. So the fact that I’d gone almost six months without some drastic shave was impressive in its own right. But, sure enough, eventually I got so angry and frustrated enough with the world, I decided to shave my head.

It’s a quick, rough job that doesn’t require much skill. I went to Lido Hair Salon, a no-frills barber on 2nd Street and Chinamano Ave. ‘I’d like a barber,” I said to the woman behind the counter, her hair gently folded into waves, her white Sunday blouse starched.

She looked at one of the two men standing in the corner talking. ‘Tawa,” she said to him in Shona, ‘This woman wants a barber.”

His lazy eyes dragged over to me, back to the woman, and then back to his friend. He shifted his weight, turned his back slightly, and carried on talking. She waited a moment before asking him again in Shona. ‘Tawa. This woman is a customer. Why are you refusing?”

He slumped his shoulders and walked towards me. He motioned to me to sit in a chair facing the mirror. A low warped chair with curving metal arms and plastic upholstery. He draped a grubby brown plastic sheet over my lap and tied it around my neck. He stood beside me, looking at me in the mirror. ‘So?”

‘Number two please. The whole head.” (Universal barber speak for a close, but not quite bald, shave.)

As he plugged the razor in and got to work, three men came in. One sat on the green plastic sofa pushed against the wall. He turned towards the television, a Sunday morning children’s programme. The other two lurked about the barber and the counter where the woman sat. One came and stood over me, hand on the mirror. He spoke to the barber in Shona, asking about me in the third person, assuming because I am white I would not understand.

‘What is she doing?”

My barber shrugged.

‘Why is she doing this?”

He called to his friends, fishing for an explanation. Clearly a woman couldn’t just walk in and decide on such a short haircut. There had to be something wrong. So they started guessing: lost her child; lost her parents; jilted lover.

I kept my eyes down and my face blank, not showing that I understood. Eventually they lost interest and started flirting with the woman behind the counter.

The barber stopped and unplugged his razor. He’d roughly shorn my head, leaving an uneven punk fringe at least an inch long across the top. I looked at him in horror.

‘Too short?” he asked me in English.

‘Too long.” I said firmly. ‘I said Number 2, the whole head.”

Sighing, he turned back, bent heavily, and plugged the clippers back in. He fished the guard back out of the bin, and set to work again.

‘She’s taking more off?” one of the men said in amazement. The barber shrugged. I looked at the floor.

The men had tired of the woman, and she’d gone outside. The topic shifted back to me. I kept my eyes down, seething at the proprietary way so many men see women.

‘Would you do her?”

‘Never. She’s crazy.”

‘How much would you pay me to do her?”

‘I’d do her for free. Ones like her are like the devil in bed.”

‘You couldn’t pay me enough. I’d never fuck a white woman.”

‘It’s just this one I wouldn’t fuck. Look at her. She’s disgusting.”

I kept my eyes on a small cream patch of chipped paint on the pink wall. The barber couldn’t finish fast enough. The TV programme had moved on to gospel music. The woman was back behind the counter. The barber finished and brushed the hair from my neck. I stood up and walked to the counter to pay $70 000 — hardly more than a loaf of bread.

I leaned across the counter and put my face close to the woman’s. ‘Please do me a favour,” I said to her in Shona. ‘Please tell your friends that they were extremely rude and they disgust me. A lot of white people speak Shona these days. They should watch their mouths.”

The men fell quiet and I knew they’d heard. I didn’t turn to look at them. I put my money on the counter and walked out, feeling the heat of their stares and embarrassment on my bare head. I swallowed the bittersweet satisfaction of having stood up for myself. But it did little to temper the sharp metallic taste of anger with this world, these men, these insults and inequalities.