"You need a haircut..." he says to me, and he's right, it's been about 8 weeks since my last one and really I should get one every week but I'm lucky if I get in to see the barber once every 3 months.
I'm in the "hood", deep Forest Lawn checking junk shops and thrift shops and the guy speaking to me is a black guy wearing a pirate eye patch. It turns out he runs the "hair salon" next door, and he hands me a couple of flyers for it, he's just in watching the junk shop on his break.
Coincidental, really, in that I had already stopped this morning at my regular barbers, the Lebanese boys who cut hair as a front for their drug running cartel, and despite what the sign said on the front of the shop they definitely weren't open. Maybe they were on vacation, or in jail, but it was a trip wasted to the south side for nothing.
So as I'm leaving the shop I tell the black guy that if he wants, if his shop next door is open, I'll take the haircut. Why not, it's only hair...and besides, maybe somehow or another the coolness of black and the hood will rub off on me.
Well, that's stretching things a bit...
In any event I'm the only one in the salon apart from a very bored receptionist who gets my name and then goes back to watching black and white detective shows on TV. It's "Perry Mason" on Fox. The black guy, the stylist, he gets in and begins to cut my hair. Now his eyepatch has the skull and bones on it and I'm pleased to discover that his haircutting apron has the same logo. Triple cool - black barber, the hood, and now he's a pirate as well. I want to tell him to make me look just like him, or Johnny Depp if he can do it, but I figure just let him do his thing and I'll be sure to look like one or the other when he's done.
So he cuts my hair and makes light hairstyling conversation, about what I do and how the barbers in the malls don't know what they're doing and how I should massage my head for 5 minutes daily and how he can't believe anyone can cut hair in 15 minutes, it takes him at least an hour...
...at least an hour....
and I'm trapped in the chair as he goes over it and over it again with the shears and the scissors and then goes "deep" on my eyebrows and nose and ears with a straight razor and then goes back over my head with the clippers and talks to me about everything that barbers talk about and the day off, it's slipping away, through my fingers...
Not a single other customer comes through the door. Not a one.
In the end, an hour and some later, it's a good haircut.