“Thanks.”
I take a seat in Luigi’s, an old-school barbershop in downtown Palm Springs that hasn’t changed in decades. This is where Elvis, Sinatra and Dean Martin got their hair cut when they played in the desert, and their photos still line the walls.
Luigi’s sits in the middle of La Plaza, one of the first shopping centers in Southern California. It opened nearly a century ago and even contained a three-level parking garage. It became a successful model for open-air malls, and though the original tenants are long gone, La Plaza retains its original Spanish architecture and vibe. It is now home to retail shops and great restaurants, from the fabulous Farm to the popular burger joint Tyler’s whose scent of french fries wafts through the open door of the barber shop.
I have come here today to have my demons cast out. This is my equivalent of being dunked in the river to be saved.
When I was a boy, my mother so loved my curly blond hair and was so terrified its beauty would be destroyed if I got it cut that she let it grow and grow until people in our little townthought I was a little girl. My father, angry and embarrassed, picked me up from school one day and drove me to the country barbershop to have my golden locks shorn. When the elderly barber lifted the clippers to my head, I shrieked. When he was done, I wept.
“I’m bald!” I cried. “I’m bald!”
My mother yelped when she saw me.
“My baby!” she moaned, which started me weeping anew, until my father slapped me.
“Shut up and be a man!” he said before turning on my mom.
That day, I hid in the root cellar, curling up on the cool floor next to a sack of potatoes, a bin of Vidalia onions and my mother’s pickled okra and beets, kicking the walls, damning God, myself and the world, eventually doing the unthinkable: ripping out hunks of what remained of my hair until my scalp bled, hoping the physical pain would remove the emotional hurt. It took the longest time—until the last week, to be honest—to finally understand that it is our addictions—Teddy’s drinking, Barry’s need to be wanted, Sid’s self-flagellation, my desire to please—that slowly kills us.
That is why I am here. To end the insanity.
I have never stepped foot in a barbershop again until today.
I cut my own hair growing up, until I discovered The Curl Up & Dye. I believed that my hair was my superpower, my armor and my protection, like Wonder Woman’s lasso.
Unlike Gaspar’s, there is no champagne at Luigi’s, only talk of sports, a subject I am not fluent in. I stay glued to my cell to avoid the chitchat.
“You’re up!”
I nod at the owner of Luigi’s, a man with kind eyes.
He holds out his hand before me in a fist. I stare at him blankly.
“Fist bump?” he asks.
I continue to stare.
“It’s a way to say hello.”
He shows me again, and I hold out a closed fist. He bumps it with his. I will never understand the way straight men think or act.
I take a seat in the same chair that Elvis likely sat in and then take a final glimpse at myself in the mirror, likely feeling as Aaron Presley did when he was drafted into the army and had to get his hair buzzed.
“What can I do for you?” the owner asks.
“New start,” I say. “Cut it short.”
The barber looks at me. He touches the top of my carefully coiffed curls.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He grabs a spray bottle and wets my hair down. He combs it high and retrieves his clippers.
I jump when they begin to whir.
“You okay, man?” the barber asks, placing a hand on my shoulder.
