How not to get your hair cut

I wouldn't count myself as a socially anxious person. Public speaking doesn't really deter me, I'm all right in crowds, and I normally greet my work superiors by jokingly ordering them around, in a habit that now occurs to me is potentially going to get me fired one day. I'm a well adjusted person, according to my court mandated counsellor.

Until I have to get my hair cut.

Look, they're waving sharp pointy things near my face and neck, okay? Whatever that person wants, goes. Besides, they take my glasses away, and then I'm kinda blind with sharp pointy things near my face and neck. Tragically, that deference to the person with the scissors coupled with my British desire to not make a scene has seen me get some god awful haircuts in the past.

Some of that blame is on me. I'm male. I have no idea what's a good look for me. What I've wanted for years is a psychic barber who knows automatically what looks good on me, and does it, and they turn out to be in high demand and rare supply. What I get are hairdressers who have nothing to work with as I mumble 'whatever you want, really' whilst they battle with the notion that a bloke wandered in here who doesn't want it all shaved off - and I'm not doing that again. I got out my shower once after shaving my head and thought a escaped naked axe murderer (the worst kind) had snuck into the bathroom by my glanced unfamiliar reflection in the mirror. Yeah. You've never considered yourself feeling vulnerable until you think an escaped naked axe murderer has snuck into you bathroom and is waiting for you patiently to get out of the shower, so you're nice and slippery. Never again.

And then smartphones came along.

God bless smartphones. They prevent me from getting lost with gps, carry a camera that I always forget to bring with me, wake me up extra early so I can get my daily weeping out the way before work happens, carry a secret backup stash of porn, track my position for the NSA's convenience, keep me entertained whilst I poop and distract me from boring people. Also, in this instance, they help immeasurably with my hair. I once heard that hairdressers do better if they have a frame of reference, and so I spent an afternoon on the internet looking at random people online, found a bloke with a decent haircut, saved it to the phone and voilà! Hello, honoured hairdresser, please make my hair look like this photo that I have on my cellular telephone, and I will pay you a shiny thrupence!

This photo, in fact. I specifically avoid the term,  "I want to look like him" on account of the
disparaging remarks about my physique. And attractiveness. And successfulness. Etc.

Follow the photo, and boom! That's not hard. And that's the way it went for a few years. For a few years, my hair looking gooooood. Yes, good, with six 'o's. That's pretty damn good, I have you know.

Tragically, the ability to follow the photo seems to be a skill which is getting rarer recently.

I mean, the warning signs were on the wall. The first sign was that my barber changed management, and became a hairdresser (there's a difference, I hear.) The staff changed. And yet I kept going, presumably because I must of believed that it was the building that contained the magic hair cutting skill, not the people.

So I went to get a haircut, as it was that or buy a truck with truck nuts and I'd have nowhere to park it. Midway through my hair being shaved off one of two employees started complaining about the monumental fuck up they had made with the previous clients hair. Which they had been cooing over before they left. So they lied. Yay. That was the second warning sign. The third warning sign was when I said to take a lot of the top off, she measured up a gnat's anus length worth and nodded to me. I asked for perhaps, maybe slightly more off, and she got out the clippers. Yes, because that's an agreeable escalation. The clippers incidentally that I was sure have never been used for this type of haircut, but yes, it's my head, but she's the hairdresser, she knows what she's doing, right?

Okay, fine, we're one sign number three, that's usually the strike out limit, but I was stuck in the chair. I was committed. Committed to stare at my blurry reflection hating everything about myself forever. It turns out the mirror was slightly warped (god I hoped it was slightly warped) so I spent over and hour looking at blurry me, who looked like an utter fat fuck with eyes that looked in two different directions. I spent over an hour staring at twisted, unrecognisable version of myself wondering if that's what I actually looked like: a manically disturbed obese frog. Do you now how unsettling it is to look at a reflection that's clearly yours but a) Looks's nothing like what you mentally picture yourself, and b) looks like a hideously ugly version of yourself? Let's just say staring at that mirror wasn't doing wonders for my self-esteem.

Also I may of spent a few hours at home obsessively looking in over mirrors to reassure myself I did not actually look like that. I'll have you know in real life I only look like a disturbed frog. It's so different.

The forth sign that I should of got up and ran away was as they were finishing up, they remembered the style was a side parting that splits over one side of my head, not what they were currently doing, which was plastering all my hair in one direction, like I'd been standing in a gale force winds blowing right to left. That's not my look. I think that's a boy band look. I'm not in a boy band, if only because I wasn't willing to do what Lious Walsh wanted me to do. Well, wasn't willing to do what he wanted with the suitable degree of eagerness he called for, at least.

You lied to me! You  said you'd make me a star!

The fifth sign took longer to hit. We were in disaster limitation mode, trying to recover what was left of my shorn locks into the parting I wanted. From the photo. That was right there. Which hadn't been looked at since we started. Anyway. It wasn't utterly awful yet. Sure, it was waaaaaay shorter than what I asked for, but one side sort of looked alright, so there's that, just gotta clean up the second side, cut it into shape.... cut it into shape... cut it into Jesus Christ she's still cutting. She's been cutting for ages. Like, cutting for so long I fear my partner may start posting a missing person report. Like, really cutting. Still cutting. I should say something. Say something. Stop smiling. Stop smiling. For fuck's sake stop smiling she think's you're approving of this god damn it stop smiling you've been smiling the whole time express your reservations you dolt.

No! That is what the photo is for!

It's not working stop smiling say something stop smiling.

It's still fixable!

No, you're worried about possibly going prematurely bald and this woman that your are paying is actually actively doing just that on one side of your head.

It's okay!

It wasn't okay. It's really not okay.

Like, 'maybe I can convince my colleagues I always wore baseball caps' not okay. Like 'Oh god, this looks so bad, I may have to enact scorched ground policy and shave it all off' not okay.

We still have warning sign number seven. Yes, I needed seven god damn signs and I still didn't leave. We have established hairdressers are my kryptonite, okay? Number seven was her burning my scalp with a hair-dryer powered by the fires of Mount Doom. As I frantically tried to leap off my chair, lest my flesh slough off, she admitted that she always did that, and turned it down to Mount Etna levels of fire. By that time the third degree burns that destroyed the pain receptors so it's wasn't a big deal any more.

Artist's rendition on how I felt after the hair cut

At this point, I took one last look of dread at my mangled hair, resigned myself to a month of enforced isolation in case my hideous form emotionally scar small children, thanked her, paid her, and left.

But I didn't tip.

Oh yeah! Feel the burn of that, bitch! Who's the big man now? I just put upon you the greatest insult my Britishness will allow!