The New Yankee Clipper

Searching beyond the fringe for the perfect haircut.


By Herbert Hadad

I was going to meet an old girlfriend. It had been twenty years, and I was scared to death. On the day of the party at which she was to appear, I took my wife to my favorite restaurant in Provincetown and ordered my favorite dish, linguica on a Portuguese roll. It was supposed to be comfort food. It didn’t work.

“Evelyn,” I said, “I’m sick to my stomach.”

“It’s the old flame,” said my wonderful wife. “When you see her, just be your cool, lovable self.”

We made our way to Truro and the beach house above the dunes as the sun began to set. In the garden, people gathered around the raw bar set up in an ice-filled dory, but there was no sign of Inge. Dreamy, haunting saxophone music filled the air. I climbed the stairs to a porch, poured wines for Evelyn and me, and peered around, greeting the few people I knew. “Go inside,” said our host. “Someone wants to say hello.”

Seated regally on a sofa, legs crossed, cigarette held dramatically away from her face, was the girlfriend who had abruptly returned to Europe during our brief, intense affair in Boston and New York. She was no longer beautiful. She took my hand, smiled that mysterious smile, and waited for me to say she looked fantastic. I did.

“You,” she said, “are as appealing as ever, your smart forehead and brown eyes. But get rid of—how you say it?—that comb-across.”

And so she became the second female to remind me that, like most adult men, I had become hair-challenged. My daughter’s young friend Lizzie had been the first. I was driving the girls home from soccer practice when I felt a cold finger from the back seat circling my scalp and a sweet voice said, “Mr. Hadad, you have a bald spot here.” I handled the moment quite intelligently, as I recall. I told the little girl, “Oh, really? After I drop you off, tell your father nobody’s fooled by his hair transplants.”

I’d come a long way since my monthly childhood treks to Manny Sapienza’s barbershop on Norfolk Street, near Codman Square in Dorchester, Massachusetts. You waited silently—never addressing the barber, listening carefully to what he and the customers said for tantalizing tidbits of what men actually thought and felt, never daring to even look in the direction of the dirty magazines of the day—until it was time for him to tame the bush that passed for your head of hair.

Now, Inge and Lizzie had given me not only a bad-hair day but a bad-hair life. It was time for me to begin my quest for the perfect haircut. Being a mature person, I wanted a haircut that conceded my curly locks were history but nonetheless suggested I was urbane, rakish, and just a tiny bit dangerous. I didn’t tell anyone, but deep down I knew I’d settle for cute.

I also brushed up on my repertoire of jokes to neutralize any wiseacre hair-loss comments. “I slipped into the barber’s chair, asked for a crew cut, and took a nap. When I woke up, most of the crew had bailed out.” Or, “Did you notice that I have wavy hair? It’s waving goodbye.” A friend volunteered another: “Someone said my hair was getting thin. So I said, ‘Who wants fat hair?’”

Although I spend a lot of time in Manhattan, which is filled with barbershops and salons, I thought a trusted barber in the suburbs would be more discreet. In other words, keep my quest more or less secret.

The suburban place I knew best had three barbers, but you still had to wait, plus you were made to feel guilty if you asked for a particular barber. As a result, walking in was akin to visiting Mohegan Sun. You knew how much money you were planning to drop, but it was a roll of the dice what you’d look like when you walked out.

Another shop gave passable if uninspired haircuts. The barber, though, had the habit of stopping midcut and darting into a back room to use the phone. Eavesdropping revealed he was more interested in his gaming ambitions than his clients, and I didn’t want to be in the chair when he had a bad day at the races.

At a third shop, a woman whose small talk reminded me of my mother cut my hair. My mother was a smart and loving person, but I once rushed into a marriage with the wrong person partly because of her advice. “Get married before you lose your hair,” she had warned. “If your hair falls out, no woman is going to want you.”

(My first wife, by the way, was once entrusted to neaten my hair the night before I flew to Washington, D.C., for an important job interview. When I consulted the mirror, I discovered the back of my head looked like the electrocardiogram of a very excitable patient. At the interview, I made sure everyone remained in front of me at all times and managed to win the job. After I got home, I started talking about divorce.)

So I shifted my search to the city, which promised its own kind of anonymity. Italian barbers may abound in operas, but in downtown Manhattan, I learned, the barbers are Russian. One morning in the City Hall area, near my office, I was handed a flier that promised a wonderful haircut for the introductory price of $6. A young Russian entrepreneur cut my hair and trimmed my mustache. He also offered me nail treatments, shoe repair, and light refreshments. I left before he suggested simple dentistry.

I worked my way south, visiting many little barbershops. Some, halfway down subway stairs, looked like they were last remodeled during World War II. I found one where I rather liked the result: short, no-nonsense—the haircut of a man to be reckoned with. I pasted the barber’s card into my Rolodex. On my return visit, I was told he had quit to open a shop in Queens. When I gave his fellow barber a chance, he kept insisting that any haircut lasting longer than seven minutes was not cost-effective. I leaped out of his chair and off his supply-and-demand chart.

On lower Fulton Street, near the South Street Seaport, a few steps from a Punjabi eatery, I found a father-and-son team of Russian barbers. There was no patter, and the magazine collection consisted of used-car listings and soap-opera summaries. But the haircut was adequate and cost $8 with a $2 tip.

Still, the grim father’s only attempt at conversation was unflattering. “You look twenty years younger, at least,” he’d say as he whipped off the frayed blue cape. And I became increasingly unhappy that I’d been assigned responsibility for memorizing my haircut instructions: number 1 clipper setting for the back and sides; number 1.5 for the top of the head; number 2 for the front, where the less abundant hair needed to be longer. “You remember next time,” ordered the father.

One day, walking down the street, I came upon three jovial men who had set up a folding table draped with a black tablecloth, covered with serious-looking electric clippers in bubble packs. Each included four attachments, a comb, a clipper brush, a tube of oil, and an instruction booklet. The price tag read $49.99. Sale price: $5. A smartly dressed man next to me pondered the investment. “Excuse me,” I said. “If you buy one and use it tonight, can I meet you on this corner tomorrow to see what you look like?” He glared at me, then burst into laughter. We both bought.

At home, I revealed my acquisition to my wife, whose expression went from kindness, to suspicion, to alarm. “Uh, why don’t you wait for a long weekend or our next vacation before you try it?” she suggested. Her implication was clear: I might render myself unfit to appear in public.

A few nights later, the temptation became too great. I read the booklet, uttered a brief prayer, chose good old number 1, plugged in at the washbasin mirror, and went to work, never stopping to change settings. I emerged with a daring look, a kind of modified shaved head. Evelyn sighed in relief. But the true field test was to come, on that great democratic equalizer—the subway.

The next morning, women didn’t exactly swoon, but they did stop offering me their seat. And I looked like most of the other dudes heading downtown. I loved it. Let the barbers ply their trade. I found the perfect haircut in my own downstairs bathroom.

Herbert Hadad, a Northeastern graduate, is an award-winning writer who lives outside New York City. He doesn’t mind splitting infinitives, but he never splits hairs.