| JUNE 2 - 8 // COPYRIGHT 1997 THE ST PETERSBURG TIMES |
F I V E - C O R N E R S
By Charles Digges
IN a city as backward as St. Petersburg, it would make sense that the myth of Samson losing his strength to the shears of a barber would be stood on its head.
Inspired by this logic, I went out the other day and shaved my head.
Now, much has been said in this paper and others about the loaded concept of going bandit-bald, and how any young man who goes in for the less-than-hirsute look will irrevocably sway the opinion of babushki against him. Neighbors likewise, formerly on friendly terms at the trash heap, will give you wide berth for fear of getting knee-capped. It is a haircut, in other words, that puts you in a constituency that doesn't necessarily have to vote to get what it wants, and the associations for some are odious.
But I'm here to tell you that it's all worth it.
The background to this decision was a New Year's resolution to several friends that, when the first warm spring day arrived, I would relieve my head of the rat's nest that has been growing on it - untouched by a barber - since I graduated from college five years ago.
It was safe enough to say at the time, in light of St. Petersburg's May snow storms, and I depended on time to erode memory.
But during a cloud break earlier this week, I was escorted, more or less at clipper point, by my moral creditors to the barber shop and the shave job I had promised them so many months before.
A very sexy - and short-haired - hairdresser I'll call Delilah, gave me one last chance to back out before beginning.
"You've been growing this for five years," she said.
"Are you sure you are ready to let it go?"
"Yes," I said, and may have meant it.
"Good," she said, chopping off the first handful and letting it fall to the floor. "Long hair on a man these days is such a bore."
The mirror in which I watched my hair dissolve reflected the street through a picture window to my back. The hairdresser's was located between a bank and a mobile phone outlet, and the further Delilah got, the more I resembled the shave-headed clientele going next door.
I made a joke to Delilah about scaring my boss, who would no longer recognize me, with an extortion attempt. An Adidas track suit with gold chains and the look would be complete. Delilah and I could split the cash, I observed. She suddenly got deadly serious.
"This is a potent haircut," she warned. "You can't abuse it unless you are prepared to back it up - some people won't think you're being funny."
The babushka in front of me in line when I went to a drug store later that day to buy aspirin and shampoo for dandruff (now more apparent when it wasn't buried under 10 pounds of hair) certainly didn't think it was funny when the clerk overlooked her to serve me first.
"The young man is in a hurry, can't you see," the clerk offered nervously when the babushka complained. I paid with a large bill and waited while the clerk scrambled for change - without asking for anything smaller.
The babushka hurled an insult about bandits stealing her pension at me as I left, but the clerk exploded into a whisper, trying to shut her up.
"Just serve them so they can leave quicker - it's safest, don't you see."
Later that evening, I threw on a button-down shirt that I left open to reveal chest hair and went to give the new "fro" a spin in its true element - the Tribunal Bar - and was immediately approached by two stunning on-the-meter babes in rubber jump suits. I thought surely, on this cropped back-drop, I would be exposed for the impostor I was.
"Nice weather we're having," said one, running her hand across the bristly tundra of my skull.
"Real nice," said the other, and giggled.
I tried to subtly send them the message that I was just a poser by ordering a glass of milk, but this they simply interpreted as health consciousness, and suggested an hour's "exercise" back at my place that would have cost $350.
Though it was tempting, I declined. My wallet did not have the gangster's samson-esque strength my haircut implied. From now on, though, that should be relatively easy to keep under my hat.