Malkidian Geometry

I went back to the Moroccan barbershop today — although I am beginning to think “barbershop” is the wrong word, insomuch as “mechanic” is an insufficient word for the technicians who maintain the Space Shuttle.  A man — nay, a boy! Certainly he was younger than I was — darted about my head and neck, clipping, snipping, even pulling out SPECIAL MOUSTACHE SCISSORS when the situation proved them necessary. I had briefly entertained the thought that the extravagance of my last visit was a fluke. It was not. As soon as I thought one phase was surely the last of the experience, like a roller-coaster whipping around a new looping turn I would be hurled into the next. After the ear-trimming came the eyebrow-threading. After the shampoo came the beard massage. After the blow-dry came the wax product. I am certain if I had somehow gotten stuck there, my head would be whittled down to a perfect spherical skull by now. In a conspiratorial voice, as if he were a sushi waiter clandestinely showing the high-roller customers the whale menu, this man displayed to me his straight razor. I have seen this in the cartoons, but never have I heard a human actually make the sound of a single question mark with no letters attached. He did. Some velvety fragrance was smeared on my neck, my cheeks, and even in that secret sparse hollow on the bottom lip, to either side of the soul-patch. I never even felt the blade. No skin, by the end, was left untouched by this man. During the threading I grasped the chair arms like Arnold in Total Recall. At the end I stared in the mirror at a man far handsomer than I had been. In a tiny building on Venice Boulevard, tucked between a car wash and a marijuana dispensary, there reside modern-day alchemists…whose lead is the man in sloppy flip-flops you entered as, and whose gold is the man you realize you always had the potential to be. 

I went back to the Moroccan barbershop today — although I am beginning to think “barbershop” is the wrong word, insomuch as “mechanic” is an insufficient word for the technicians who maintain the Space Shuttle. 

A man — nay, a boy! Certainly he was younger than I was — darted about my head and neck, clipping, snipping, even pulling out SPECIAL MOUSTACHE SCISSORS when the situation proved them necessary. I had briefly entertained the thought that the extravagance of my last visit was a fluke. It was not.

As soon as I thought one phase was surely the last of the experience, like a roller-coaster whipping around a new looping turn I would be hurled into the next. After the ear-trimming came the eyebrow-threading. After the shampoo came the beard massage. After the blow-dry came the wax product. I am certain if I had somehow gotten stuck there, my head would be whittled down to a perfect spherical skull by now.

In a conspiratorial voice, as if he were a sushi waiter clandestinely showing the high-roller customers the whale menu, this man displayed to me his straight razor. I have seen this in the cartoons, but never have I heard a human actually make the sound of a single question mark with no letters attached. He did. Some velvety fragrance was smeared on my neck, my cheeks, and even in that secret sparse hollow on the bottom lip, to either side of the soul-patch. I never even felt the blade.

No skin, by the end, was left untouched by this man. During the threading I grasped the chair arms like Arnold in Total Recall. At the end I stared in the mirror at a man far handsomer than I had been. In a tiny building on Venice Boulevard, tucked between a car wash and a marijuana dispensary, there reside modern-day alchemists…whose lead is the man in sloppy flip-flops you entered as, and whose gold is the man you realize you always had the potential to be. 

6 months ago

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