Covid is our Big Yellow Taxi moment—reminding us of the travel, hugs, friends, and restaurants we only missed once they were gone.  That’s not to say that some good hasn’t come out of the pandemic. For example, bringing back home haircuts.

I am no stranger to home haircuts. Back in elementary school, when my friends were waiting their turn in Jack Papa’s barber shop—pretending to read the interviews in Playboy—I was getting my hair cut by my father in our basement. 

He did an okay job—at least I was never embarrassed by the results. What I mostly recall is the quiet barber/son bonding as my father lifted, tilted, and lowered my head while he worked— a rite that continued through high school, college, and beyond.

The downside was that by the age of 24 I remained a hair salon virgin, with no clue how to instruct a real barber, how much I should pay, or how to tip. This ignorance set me up for a string of hair-cutting faux pas when I finally ventured out on my own. 

By then the men’s-only, striped-pole barber shops, with their combs marinating in jars of blue disinfectant had mostly gone out of fashion.  So, I searched the Yellow Pages and phoned a place called The Bisou Lifestyle & Spa Salon. 

One might imagine that a haircut would be like a brake job. They should be able to tell you upfront what it will cost. But The Bisou required a Hair Consultation before providing an estimate. If they had just told me ninety bucks over the phone, they could have saved me the trouble and embarrassment of settling for a half-price trainee. The trainee also meant forgoing their signature Effleurage which promised to wake up my hair follicles. This was okay by me as I hadn’t even known mine were sleeping.

My trainee stylist introduced herself as Michelle, pronouncing it Mee-Shell. Every time I visited her, I studied the customers around me, and concluded that no one’s haircut looked any better than mine, and certainly not twice as good. So, I stayed with Half-Price Michelle for several years, until the owner Richard (he pronounced it Ree-Chard) informed me that I would have to pay full boat. I felt exactly like I did when I was asked to leave that so-called All You Can Eat Smorgasbord in Copenhagen.

My Bisou experience drove me to Haircuts for Less, which was exactly what I wanted. They offered just a haircut—no estimate or scalp massage required—for a third the price of my trainee-cut at The Bisou. 

On my first visit, I got into a fight with the female patrons on either side of me who were arguing over whether Jennifer Lopez should give her engagement ring back to Ben Affleck. I knew nothing about the etiquette regarding intra-chair hair salon banter, or the ring controversy.

My hairdresser, an aloof, gum-snapping, she-thinks-she’s-all-that, 20-something, had a bizarre hairdo for anyone, much less a hair stylist. Her hair protruded forward and upward in a gravity-defying wave—like the crest on a dinosaur.  As she leaned over me snipping, I nervously eyed her cornice, fearing an avalanche. Also, she kept calling me “hon.”

The woman in the chair to my left had her hair layered in aluminum foil—which reminded me of the way my uncle used to rig up Reynold’s Wrap between the rabbit ears on his tv for better reception (whatever look she was going for, I hoped it turned out better than the picture on my uncle’s television). She drew me into the conversation when she announced, “It just proves she’s a gold digger.”

The woman on my right shot back, “J-Lo could buy and sell that no-talent pretty-boy ten times over!”

“Whoa!” my hairdresser broke in, apparently a Ben fan. “Do we even know who broke it off?”

This question elicited opinions from the two original woman, plus their hairdressers, backed up by facts from People, Cosmopolitan, and Vanity Fair that Ben was a drunk, or that he was two-timing her, or that she was too old for him, or that the 6-carat diamond was pink (so she should keep it), or that it cost two million dollars (so she should give it back). I followed none of their logic.

Accusations and put-downs volleyed back and forth, with me the monkey in the middle. That’s when I heard myself blurt out, “I think that J-Lo’s a tramp.” 

This immediately silenced all five women who stared at me, two of the women frozen holding sharp instruments. The patron on my right, the one squarely in the Ben’s a bum, keep-the-ring camp, aimed her forefinger at me. 

“J-Lo grew up in Castle Hill, which is where I’m from. Does that mean you think I’m a tramp too?”

Hoping my expression didn’t reveal my true thoughts, I simply said the word no, surprising myself when no sound came out. No further reassurances or apologies came to mind as I wondered, what the hell is Castle Hill? 

Now, in this era, it was fashionable to trim men’s sideburns at, or even above where your ear joins the side of your head. So, when I left with one sideburn clipped even with my eyebrow and the other halfway down my ear, I chalked it up to either passive aggressive payback for calling J-Lo a tramp—or just getting what I paid for. 

Surprisingly, I returned to Haircuts for Less (which I now referred to as Bad Haircuts for Less), and my second visit went even worse. 

I was relieved when the dinosaur-woman was unavailable. In her place was a hair stylist who introduced herself as Bev. I told her I wanted a trim, admittedly giving her little to go on, but apparently enough for her to get started.

Now, it’s never my intention to body shame anyone. So, I’ll just say that Bev really liked to lean into her work. Her invasion of my personal space went well beyond claustrophobia, to the point of suffocation. And it wasn’t because she had super-short arms, either. When she stepped back to admire her handiwork—giving me a chance to inhale—I tried to delay her reentry by asking if she had any vacations planned. I don’t mean to brag, but I was becoming a real pro at small talk.

“I’m really hoping to go to Maine,” she said. “But only if I can find someone to take care of my pet pig.”

Picturing something cocker-spaniel sized, I asked, “Is it one of those miniature pot-bellied pigs?” 

“Oh, she’s got a pot belly all right. But I wouldn’t exactly call 300 pounds miniature.”

At this point, with Bev being so judgmental and all, I felt like I needed to defend the pig. “What do you feed her?” I asked.

“Oh, she mostly eats nuts from the acorn trees out back.”

Calling an oak tree an acorn tree should have warned me off, but still curious about the pet reference, I pressed on. “Pigs are really smart though, right?”

Bev rolled her eyes like I’m an idiot who knows nothing about pigs, which is mostly true. “She’s definitely housebroken, but she’ll poop all over my trailer if she gets mad at me.”

I asked the obvious follow-up question, “What would make her that mad?”

 Without a trace of shame, Bev replied, “Oh, like when I push her out of bed.”

Nothing in my years of home haircuts trained me for this moment. I wanted to bolt from the chair with only the right side of my head clipped. But instead, I soldiered through the rest of the appointment terrorized by the knowledge that the woman cutting my hair slept with a 300-pound pig.

If there’s a silver lining to Covid, I am once again enjoying the mac and cheese, comfort-food equivalent of the hair cutting experience. I know that my current hairdresser does not sleep with pigs because I am sharing her bed. But this time around I have surrendered my appearance to a pair of twenty-eight-dollar barber scissors purchased on Amazon and to an unqualified stylist I know and trust. Her total focus removes any pressure for small talk, allowing me to just close my eyes and relax.