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I am not a hairdresser, nor do I play one on TV. I do not know how to cut hair. I freely admit this, and I ask only that I be relieved of the burden of my husband's expectations.
When my son was young, he refused to go to a barber, so I cut his hair. Maybe we didn't push hard enough. Maybe his father was too lenient and I went along because of the expense. For whatever reason, our son did not have a professional haircut until he began high school.
Born in 1965, he experienced the freedoms of the hirsute generation. No one wanted short, trimmed hair, especially not ten-year-old boys. So I whacked off the ends when they went below his shoulders, and I trimmed his bangs when they got in the way of seeing. He wasn't happy about my cutting his hair, but he refused to allow anyone else to do it. A Samson complex, perhaps.
At 14 he finally submitted to the professional shears of a barber. And that was the end of that. Thank goodness.
When my DinoVino WineScribe arrived in Denver for our wedding in June of 1978, he had just visited his Toronto barber, a woman who worked out of a space at Ryerson Polytechnic, as it was then. I don't know what he told her, but she interpreted it to mean "take it all off", so I married a man whose hair was disconcertingly short and stubbly. We had several discussions about that haircut. I believe I told him that it might be a mistake to go back to Susie Snip-snip.
So he said, "You can cut my hair." I protested like mad. I don't know HOW, I said. He brought up my son as an example, and I showed him that son's boyhood snapshots and said, "I rest my case."
But he was adamant. So for 38 years now I have cut his hair. Let me assure you that the very fact of cutting hair six times a year does not improve your haircutting skills. You just do the same bad haircut over and over.
One time I persuaded him (as an anniversary gift to me, I think) to go to Oona, my unisex hair dresser. She did a good job. But he has never gone back to her (which is to say, he refuses to go back).
I've tried everything. I say, Why don't you go to the old-fashioned barber your friend goes to? He's a proper barber with old-fashioned prices. But no. DinoVino won't budge. How can you herd a grown man to a barber if he doesn't want to go?
He has expressed it in terms of money, pointing out that the cost of my every-six-weeks visit to Oona is balanced by the fact that I cut his hair for free. The fact that Oona knows how to cut hair and I don't seems to escape him.
Until a few years ago, I was also responsible for the beard. He has had a beard since he was 16. On his sixtieth birthday he shaved it, just to see what he looked like, but he let it grow back immediately. Trimming the overgrown beard was an even greater responsibility than the hair alone. But I began to praise the do-it-yourself razor things that you can set to trim a beard at a certain length. He bought one and liked it, so now at least he trims the beard himself.
But the hair! The hair! I do my best but my best is not good enough to satisfy my rather critical eye for male grooming.
Will someone please take these scissors out of my hand?
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