Hair-D'oh: A Personal History

Apart from my first hairdresser, Larry, I've always had bad luck with hair dressers and through an inter-relating and dynamic combination of their negligence and my reluctance to trust them with my head, I have more often than not have had mediocre-looking to bad hair.

As a child I got my hair cut by Larry. He was old-school. He had no pump on the chair so when I came in he put a wooden board across the arm-rests of the adult's chair and I sat on that so that my head reached he height of the mirror. I don't remember anything regarding the quality of his hair-dressing, but then I wasn't a particularly vain child, and I was so cute besides that if anything, bad hair was just going to make me look cuter. What I do remember is that he was able to make honking noises come from my nose and also make screaming/laughing noises come from hair. The latter sounds quite scary but he always assured me that my hair was laughing when it gets cut and not screaming and that they really liked being cut because it tickles. One of a handful of the my fondest memories of my childhood is of myself pinching my own nose and wondering why it only honked when he did it. (And on a related note, I also remember trying to take my teeth out instead of leaving them in my mouth so that I could brush them: "Like Daddy does").

Later on I then I got my hair cut in a hairdressers where the staff were all glamorous (i.e. big hair, fake tan, sticky-red lipstick), short-skirted busty women who called everyone by pet-names. I would not be surprised to find out that it was in fact a brothel and now that I think of it, it may not be a bad idea to ask around. I remember two particularly troubling incidents from this place. One was having the tip of my ear clipped off and the other was having to have my hair re-washed mid-cut as it had been bled on when the hairdresser gashed her own hand with a scissors. My mother was with me on both of these occasions, and being Irish, we paid for the haircut both times, made no fuss and did not sue.

For many years I got a standard military-style cut which was done mostly with an intimidatingly loud and rather dull electric razor for a nominal fee by the Artane Boys Band where I spent at least 10 hours of every week; an experience from which I get deja-vu everytime I see films or documentaries about children during World War II.

After that, I went to a hair dressers called 'heads-you-win'. I was about 18 at this stage and had grown my hair quite long; on the one hand because I didn't like the hairdressers and on the other because I had never been allowed grow it, and my lengthy locks would remind me of my new independence. I thought that there was something appropriate in the suggestion of risk-taking in the name 'heads-you-win' as a lot of people felt a bit funny about going in there as the previous owner had arranged to have the houses of his elderly clients burgled while they were getting their hair done or when they told him they'd be at their bingo, and some vigilantes who were thought locally to be from the IRA went in to the hairdressers and shot him dead. They did a nice cut, though at times it was a little feminine - difficult to avoid when you have long hair and somewhat adrogenous features as I particularly did back then. This place was the least offensive of all the hairdressers I used to frequent.

I thought I had found the answer to all my hair-related woes in Templebar when I was in college, and it treated my well though it was a tad more expensive than what I was used to (not that I'm surprised given the dives I used to go to) until one day in February 2004 when I was gashed across the back of the neck with a razor. That bloody hurt. There's a photo of the gash somewhere but as I don't have a scanner, sadly it will not appear on this website. Actually, second thoughts, nobody wants to see that, do they? They were apologetic enough and gave me free haircut and vouchers for 4 more free cuts, which I was pretty content to accept but understandably reluctant to return to their premises at all with. That day marked the beginning of my renewed hair-growing, and as you can see from the pics around my website, it did get fairly long.

This next paragraph is going to be all about my vanity and how I'm annoyed that I don't have the girly hair I was just getting so fond of anymore (just to warn you):

As there is a wedding a-coming up, I decided that I would go upmarket for my haircut and decided to go to Toni+Guy (with their world-wide reputation) and resigned myself to the fact that this was going to be three times the price of the most expensive haircut I've ever had in my life. As it turned out it was just too-much 'cut' and really not enough 'hair' which was not as per agreement. While I still had a long-ish fringe, essentially all the rest was gone. I didn't really have any opportunity to notice that too much hair was being cut off as the... God this paragraph is getting boring. In short, I decided to talk to the manager about what happened to my head and somewhat unexpectedly she gave me my money back without any hesitation. I expect that it was that so few people actually complain in Ireland. Particularly men. Particularly men about hair.

My main complaint was that my hair was no longer long, and yet was too long to be short per se and so what I had was unacceptably shlong hair. I did manage to keep myself together during this complaining process and not either cry or laugh or rant or grimace; and I still can't decide which would most appropriate. Complaining about hair is really weird. Inviting competing opinions on how you look is not something that sits with me very well on a philosophical level. But it was kind of funny when I agreed with the manager that I was still a handsome man and that the cut did look fine, but it was simply not what I had asked for, and I didn't like it. I also pointed out that my opinion on the matter was now irrelevant as I was no longer an individual anyway but a wedding-prop that must be up to a certain aesthetic standard. It didn't become a particularly adversarial conversation at any point.

In the end I decided to ask them to go ahead and just cut it short - which they did. They were nice enough about the whole thing I have to say, and the manager did say she would 'take care of me' if I came in again for a trim when I was growing my hair out again, but essentially what has happened is that after putting up with having really messy hair for a year so that it would eventually be long and lovely, The longness and loveliness was snatched away just as it was about to come good.

Furthermore, no-one at Toni+Guy made my nose honk like a horn nor did they make my hair laugh. I think I'll go back to letting the Quasi-Mojo cut my hair: he's the only person I've known since Larry to make body-parts squeak and honk like they should.