By: Lafe Metz Over the years, countless earthquakes have jarred and misaligned the terra cotta pipes of Guatemala´s sewer system. Consequently, paper products may not be tossed into the pot, because they catch on the rough edges and choke the system. So beside every throne lurks a vile plastic basket into which we shoot all wads of paper like basketballs. On a hot day, you shoot three pointers to maximize your distance from the bucket. One blistering morning, wrapped in a towel and breathing through my mouth, I took a pull of warm water from a tattered Salva Vida bottle to rinse the toothpaste from my mouth. Gazing blankly in the mirror as I stooped to spit in the pigmy-sized sink, I noticed that with my neglected, balding head, uneven blond beard and beady blue eyes, I bore an overstrong resemblance to my friend Don Taylor's hedgehog. I was never allowed to look like a hedgehog back at the 300-lawyer Philadelphia firm where I worked until last fall - although that didn't always stop me. Hedgehogs are usually not given key cards, but special circumstances will always arise. Back in college, for example, Taylor and I used to daydream about the ostrich that would bring our clients magazines as they waited in our law firm's comfortable lobby. And if you give the ostrich a card key, how do you draw the line at the hedgehog? Anyhow, at one point my old Firm's highly technical casual dress policy - all ten typewritten pages of it - included a full-length picture of me inside a red circle with a line drawn through it. I prided myself on not fitting in there. Sitting in my office one Indian summer day last fall, I thought to myself, "yeah, that`s about enough of this." So I dropped off my cat Pilot at my friend Pants´s place. Sold my truck. Put my stuff in my Uncle Stuck's warehouse. I traded in my briefcase for a duffel bag, stuck out my thumb and headed south. When I came to my senses, such as they are, I found myself surrounded by the violet flowers, stray dogs and active volcanoes of Guatemala. I liked what I saw and decided to stick around for a few, so I signed up at a school to learn a little Spanish. Mornings on the road to school, I pass old women sweeping the dirt street with stick brooms, greet Don Pacho the drunk who limps with his cane on tortured bare feet, watch the bored soldier who guards the electric station swing his rifle as he makes his rounds, cut a wide berth around Pepito, the cantankerous one-eyed dog, stop at Doña Marta's fruit cart to buy a bag of warm, sliced papaya seasoned with cardamom and red chili, and peer in the door of La Barberia Colonial at the ancient, empty barber chair, where I stopped that afternoon. The barber chair reminds me of the one on the second floor of the Pittsburgh Athletic Association where I got the worst hair cut of my life. I was sporting this sweet mullet at the time, which I combed often with the "unbreakable" black comb I kept in the back left pocket of my faded button-fly jeans. The barber was an ex-Marine who didn't think much of my long hair. When he got done with me, I looked like Moe from The Three Stooges, only stupider. My eighth grade girlfriend Chastity dumped me, and rightfully so. First girl I ever French-kissed. We were sitting on one of the carpeted, circular benches at Ardmore Roller Rink one Friday night that fall. Our skates off, shoes not yet back on, we kissed heatedly as the rink manager herded people past us toward the exit at 9 o'clock. Our lips parted, our eyes opened, and we exchanged triumphant, infatuated grins. But now, some 20 years after The Great Mulletastrophe of ´85, I have so little hair that it's close to impossible to give me a bad haircut. As far as I'm concerned, the only respectable option for a bald guy is the close-cropped Ed Harris look. Though my Uncle Stuck, a proud fellow member of the gracefully bald fraternity, once successfully rocked some curls in back. But it takes a considerable amount of mojo to pull that off and I'm not sure you can do it with a straight face before you're 45 or so. Of course, there's also the bald guy ponytail look, which I sometimes threaten to go with to torment my pals. And once you go bald guy ponytail, you're virtually obligated to bust out the 70s gay motorcycle cop moustache as well. Which just happens to be one of my specialties. Anyway, I usually rely on the Ed Harris cut. And though Don Felipe's barber chair looked so similar to the marine's that it made my knees buckle at the recollection of a long suppressed nightmare, I figured, what could possibly go wrong? Just run the clippers over the old dome a few times and voila! So I put aside my misgivings and hopped up the dusty concrete steps to the door of La Barberia Colonial. "¡Buenas tardes, Don Felipe! ¿Como esta?" "Bien bien, ¿y usted?" "Muy bien, gracias a Dios. How much for a shave and a haircut?" "50 quetzales." "But Don Felipe, you want to gouge out my eyes." I had just learned the expression that morning and was eager to get some mileage out of her. Any price he had suggested would have gouged out my eyes. You might think it common sense to negotiate gently with a man who will soon be holding a knife to your throat. But I was caught up in the moment. "Well, I could do it for 40." "Perhaps I could afford 30." "I will do it for 35, though my wife will be angry." "35 es bueno. Gracias, señor." "Pase adelante." Dusting off the worn leather chair with a flourish, he bowed elegantly and gestured for me to sit down. He cracked the gown like a matador and spread it over my chest. When he leaned forward to tuck the gown into the soft cloth he had wrapped around my neck, I noticed for the first time that his right eye shone milky white with a film of glaucoma and his left eye seemed to stray a bit to the side, though I may have imagined it. "He must cut hair with his good eye," I reassured myself, unsure which eye that |
might be. But with his next pass, I noticed that the narrow end of his tie outpaced the broad end by a good three inches. Though I confess that the knot was nicely made and the tie fastened to his shirt by a smart silver clip adorned with a green glass bead. Either my barber was blind or his angry wife had abused his tie as a punishment.
I fought the urge to leap from the chair and run for the door, barber's gown flapping behind me. But I remembered that a few days earlier my Guatemalan family said they had heard from Doña Nelly, the corner tostada vender, that I have a fondness for plantains dipped in mole sauce and grilled with brown sugar. Antigua is a small town, and to dash out of the barber's chair would inevitably have come back to haunt me. I decided to take my chances. From the moment the clippers touched my head, I knew it was a terrible mistake. Don Felipe is not only blind but also afflicted with Parkinson's disease. His hands warbled like Katherine Hepburn singing Happy Birthday. He was carving my head like a pumpkin - I could feel it. But I underestimated him. Like a man paralyzed in a car accident teaching himself to walk, Don Felipe had learned to compensate for his condition. After much study, he had calculated the warble in his cutting hand to have a wavelength of about half an inch. So he would mow the same strip twice, the second time offsetting his starting point by a quarter inch, so that in two passes he could approximate a straight line. Just then, a Mayan woman balancing a basket of warm tortillas on her head stopped in the doorway. "Tortillas, torillas," she sang with a smile. "Perdoneme un momentito, señor," said Don Felipe, untying his apron and parting the curtain of hanging beads as he shuffled through the doorway from the barbershop into his living room. I smiled at the vendor, who turned away and buried her head in her sleeve to hide her laughter. Feeling self-conscious, I looked in the mirror and had to laugh myself; Don Felipe had finished exactly half my head, leaving a neat line down the middle, like a Selsun Blue commercial, that separated the mad professor right side from the navy seal left. I caught the vendor's eye and gave her a complicit smirk to say, "it's ok, I look ridiculous." Eyes dancing, she smiled back and refolded the clothes around the stack of tortillas as a small cloud of steam escaped from her bundle, bringing a flush to her cheeks. Don Felipe bought eight tortillas for two quetzales, about a quarter. He took them back inside the house. I could just make out the conversation as he asked his wife what was for lunch: pepian, a rich chicken stew in a roasted pumpkin seed broth. My mouth watered at the mention of my favorite dish. Don Felipe carefully retied his apron, whistling along with the staticky ranchero music playing from the 9-volt transistor radio on the windowsill. He washed and dried his hands like a surgeon, picked up and put down a comb, then a spray bottle, finally settling on the electric clippers, which he turned on and then off and set them down again. With strong but unsteady hands, he massaged my cheeks and chin, my forehead and neck, the back of my head. Keeping one hand on my shoulder, he reached again for the trimmer, engaging the motor with a satisfying click. The choreographed oscillation of the clippers droned like a vacuum cleaner in another part of the house and I fell into a light doze until Don Felipe spun the chair for a better angle of attack and I saw the antique straight razor grinning at me from the counter. I can't let him put that razor to my throat, I thought. He'll cut me to ribbons. "Don Felipe, for the shave, you can just use the clippers. It's not worth the trouble to use the razor." "Si, señor, esta bien." I breathed easily for a moment, until he dove at my face with the clippers like a chicken hawk. To dispose of my moustache, he pinched my broad nose between his withered talons, wrenching it upwards like a blacksmith shoeing a horse. When he started on my beard, the tired blade grew scalding hot and he pushed it deep into the hollow of my neck, just beside my throat. He was cutting off my air supply, so I wouldn't put up a fight. As I started to lose consciousness and picture Don Felipe stropping the razor, I began to smell smoke. Something was on fire; it was either my beard or his tie. But I was relieved to find that it was only the weakening motor of the overheated clippers. The blade cover was hotter than a welding torch, which was advantageous, because it cauterized the arteries he had laid bare while strip-mining my beard. And at once, he was finished. With great artistry, he whipped the gown into the air and snapped the hair into the corner. As I stood and turned, his face radiated with a warm smile. He brushed me head to toe with a horsehair brush, straining on his tiptoes to reach my shoulders. "¡Muy fresca!" He sang with delight. I slipped him a fiver for a tip, for the sky is always a deeper blue on a day you cheat death. Walking home, the churlish mutt Pepito snickered at me as I passed. At first, I thought the one-eyed bastard was laughing at my haircut. But when I arrived home to a lunch of boiled calf's liver, I saw for the first time that Don Felipe was an angel of mercy, sent to call me to my great reward and save me from this hellish lunch. Later, masticating a bite of the rubbery, blood-iron liver like a cow chewing cud from its fourth stomach, I realized my mistake in ducking my gentle reaper's blade. Pepito was right to laugh, I thought to myself. There's just no helping some people. |