The buzz at Roma

Tuesday was haircut day.

I go once a month these days, a frequency dictated by my hairs' length, or lack thereof. 

This time a year ago, my mop was pretty long, as the picture to your right demonstrates. I was on a leave from work, with no particular sartorial requirements upon me, so I decided to grow it longish. At some point last fall, I recognized a couple of things. First, long hair doesn't need to be cut all that often, but it needs to be cut well. Second, my hairline was moving away from it's roots enough to be noticeable. 

So in early December I had it cut off. 

I decided to forego the usual "stylist" for the more prosaic barber. I chose a one-chair place on Queen St in the Beach called Roma. I'd walked past it a few times and it looked credible. Customers in the chair or waiting. A stack of magazines. A barber pole out front. 

My first trip was the most time-consuming. Me and my barber negotiated our way through what I meant by "short". In the end, it was a two part process, the initial scything followed by a touch-up. 

When it was done I still looked like myself, but he evidence of my thinning hair was laid bare. I don't know if I'll keep it quite this short, but I do know it won't be that long again for fear of presenting a comb-over-in-training. 

Tuesday was my fourth return visit, evidence of my satisfaction as a customer. By now my barber recognizes me and the cut I want. Over the months I haven't managed to get the guy's name, but I have learned he's been cutting hair in this place for 30 years. While the shop is named Roma, he is from Napoli. He's a tiny guy with a head like a lightbulb and jet-black hair that gets its colour from somewhere other than the follicle. This week he had about a half-inch of gray root showing. The top is thinning so he combs it over. On my first visit we got talking about hair a bit, and he complained that kids these days, they all want to be "stylists". They don't know how to cut hair really, they don't know how to shave someone, they don't know how to use clippers. He is a dying breed.

There are regulars. One day a young guy, a kid in baggy pants and a hoodie came in. He hung out for a bit then left. He was third in line. 

"That kid came in last week and got me to shave his head, and he wants me to do it again," Mr. Roma said, "I don't know why, he must be joining the army or something."

My memories of barber shops are mildly traumatic. I hated getting my hair cut as a kid, it was like going to the dentist. I had one barber, an really old guy who'd had throat cancer and breathed through a hole in his neck. He had no voice box, so he had a gizmo that looked like a microphone that he held up to his throat and then burped out his words. He sounded like a robot and scared the hell out of me. One time he did such a terrible hack job on my head that my mother ordered my father to find someone else to clean up the mess and get it done before dinner. Two haircuts in one day. 

We finally settled on Bob Greenwood, who ran the Playboy barber shop. He cut my hair until I was 20, and again for awhile in my 30s. 

Bob's shop, and most of the others that I can remember, were tidy. The bottles of Barbicide with combs and scissors soaking, the blue-light sterilizer, the U-fronted hair-washing sink, the spritzer bottle full of water, the capes on pegs, a broom in the corner, a radio. Then there was the sporty wall art: posters of hockey players, baseball players, football players, sometimes a girl in a bikini or a pin-up calendar.

Roma is a bit different. 

There is the Barbicide, three bottles I counted. The soaking combs, the broom and capes. Stacks of magazines running the gamut from Maxim for the lads to Sky and Telescope for the star-watchers. 

But look a bit closer and the shambolic side of things becomes clearer. No sporty posters, just a collection of faded and dog-eared starving artist prints of Italian scenes: the Alps, Rome, the countryside. There's an old newspaper clipping of a boy getting first first unhappy cut. There is a calendar, a current calendar, from an Italian real estate agent. A price list tacked to the mirror. A radio is there too, in the corner, playing the classical music station. 

My barber has a system. It begins with the chair wipedown. When the customer before me is all done, the Mr Roma spritzes down the chair, tears a chunk of paper towel off the roll and wipes it down. He seats you, then goes to a crooked drawer in an old low-hung beige birch-veneer sideboard and tears another chunk of paper towel off another roll. He tears that one in half and then tucks it around your neck. Then he puts on the cape and secures it with a metal clip. 

He uses clippers to fix me. They live, blades down, in the top drawer of the sideboard. He reaches in and pulls out the big ones first, brushes them down, then commences the main cut. When he's done that, he repeats the exercise with a smaller set, and does the fine editing. The scissors do come out eventually, but first a dip in the Barbicide then a trim of my nose hairs and eyebrows.  

As I am sitting there watching him work, I begin to notice all the stuff. The aforementioned posters. The gel bottles, shampoo, rubbing alcohol, skin lotion, a can of shaving cream, a coffee maker with no pot but something sitting on the burner. The stuff is piled on both sides of the mirror in no apparent order. 

When the clipping and scissoring is done, he goes over to the coffee maker and flips it on. He then reaches into one of the drawers of the sideboard and grabs a few squares of toilet paper, and then dips it into the container that sits on the burner. He takes a shot of shaving cream and mixes it with his forefinger into the wet paper. He then rubs the warm lather on my neck and sideburns and then takes a straight razor out of the Barbicide and cleans up the loose ends along my hairline and sideburns. 

When he's done he cleans the hair and lather off the razor, dunks it back in the Barbicide and gets another few squares of toilet paper and squirts some rubbing alcohol into it and rubs it into the areas he shaved.

You think this would be the end. It isn't. He reaches over to his left and grabs a contraption with his right hand and flicks it on. It's a hand-massager. He leans into my shoulders one at a time and runs it along my upper back. I'm tall, so he has to grab a stool and gets up on his knee so he can lean into me a bit. This goes on for a couple of minutes, then he shuts it down and cleans me up. No fancy brush, just your standard-issue kitchen whisk. 

He grabs a mirror, shows me the back of my head, I nod, and he spins me in the chair so I can dismount and while I am reaching for my wallet, he's spritzing the chair for the next client. 

The cut costs $12, but I give him $15 and don't want the change.  

The next guy in line is a big ruddy-faced fellow in overalls. 

"Made your life easier," he says when he walks is, "I cut off the pony tail last night. My mom passed away and we decided to put it in a dream-catcher."

"What's a dream catcher?" Mr. Roma replied. The guy tried to explain but couldn't make him understand. 

"Well, at least I have less to cut, I can fix it," he says as he finishes wiping down the chair.

I bid my farewell and rub my hands through my stubble as I walk out the door.