Today I got a haircut.

Oh my God, Skot! Tell us more! Yeah, this is all I've got any more.

I do not really know how anyone else decides when to go to the damn barber. All I know is that I do not go nearly enough. Usually around a month and a half after a typical haircut, I notice my hair in the mirror and think, "Whoop! Time for a trim!" And then I wait another month and a half before actually making the appointment, so by that time, it just looks like there's a dead okapi stapled to my head. Look, it's just not one of those things that I think about on a daily basis--I have to wait until I've achieved deceased mammal status. Part of this is, I don't really like to look in the mirror that much, because I'm kind of funny looking without being cool funny looking. I mean, I don't even have any interesting scars. Which is actually also all right with me, because scars mean physical damage, and in addition to being kind of funny looking, I'm also sort of a pussy. You see my dilemma.

Anyway. I showed up at the salon--yeah, I know--a good fifteen minutes early. But H. was ready for me. He showed me to the chair. I like H. He doesn't fuck up my hair--then again, how much damage could he do to a guy with middling self-esteem?--and best of all, he's not a talker. I have been known in the past, when making hair appointments, to request the least chattiest employee. Call me a misanthrope, but making small talk while a guy whips razor-sharp blades around my ears just isn't in my repertoire. H. is a brutally efficient hair assassin. I like that.

(The guy to the left of me was getting his hair done by a drag queen. The drag queen was discoursing loudly about, I shit you not, "the Di-vine Miss M." It may have been my imagination, but more than once I felt a certain urgency creep into H.'s snipping, as if he were suppressing a deep desire to murder the drag queen.)

I mused happily as I sat in the chair and explained to H. what I wanted. "Uh . . . make it shorter!" And it really is always a relief to get my hair cut, as I like to have my skull as aerodynamic as possible. Anything that reduces the drag on my hair as I run to the store for cigarettes is appreciated. H. got to work.

Unexpectedly, he did not immediately escort me to the sink to wash my nasty hair. Hey, what the fuck? Do I not merit a shampoo? H. coldly appraised my okapi and then grabbed the clippers. I sat glumly during the damning assessment, and then H. deployed the comb, and started shaving giant hunks of hair off of my noggin. He said nothing during the procedure, which I usually like. Then I started to feel awful. Oh my God, I thought. I'm such an asshole that the chatty queeny hairdressers won't talk to me. They won't even wash my hair! I sat in existential hair despair as H. deftly disposed of months of ratty growth. Then he bonked me on the ears and neck a few times with some sort of secret barber brush.

"Let's go give you a wash," he said. Purest relief flooded through me. He didn't hate me! He just realized that there wasn't any point in tackling my hidelicious mop without some advance demolition. It just made sense. I bet Brazilian waxers do some brute push-mowing before getting down to the detail work.

In due course, H. was all done. He then squeeze-bottled my head with some crap and professionally ruffled my hair. I never know what to do at this stage; the hair people always seem to try something funky with my uniquely uncooperative follicles, and it usually ends up looking like some sort of spectacularly ruined noodle dish. H. put a bunch of hair crap on his hands finally, and smoothed it into my skull, creating a lustrous blond helmet that sat uneasily on my bean, like a vervet monkey nervously perched on a pale basketball.

"How's that?" H. asked.

"Perfect!" I screamed, desperate to leave. Why do even good hairdressers inevitably fail horribly right at the end? It's like a wedding cake designer who tops every gorgeous confection with a tiny dollop of his own feces. "I really love it!"

I do have to say that my hair was extremely skull-fitting. Aerodynamic. He must have known I needed to buy some cigarettes.