I booked a late Thursday morning haircut appointment at Biba Academy, Swanston Street. I wasn’t nervous. I didn’t feel any dread or fear. For the first time, I felt nothing at all. If my hair looked like shit, then so be it. I thought that to myself while I was kneeling over the bathtub, slathering my hair with shampoo. I washed it off and applied conditioner to my ends while slowly detangling with my wide-tooth comb. I stared at the bubbles and strands of hair circling the drain. I was going to cut my hair short: a taper blowout. My fifty-minute showers were starting to get tiring to deal with; my hands always ached from the amount of styling and ribbon brushing I had to do. I ducked my head into the bucket to wash everything out.
I put a towel around my neck and stood up, raked leave-in conditioner and scrunched curl butter and hair gel into my ends. I dried my hair with a diffuser. My undercut at the sides of my mullet was too long. It peeked at the side of my face like ugly spikes. I got dressed in sweats and shoved a hat in my bag.
I got to Biba Academy at half-past ten. I found myself staring at the chalkboard sign at the front that said $15 barber cuts. I walked down the stairs and found myself in a basement. The whole place was alive and lit up. On one side, people in salon chairs were getting their hair dyed, while students stared at the hair foils as a teacher told them what to do next. It was mostly women. I found myself at ease in that side. Comfort. Sounds of water gushing and feet constantly moving were the backdrop to the constant chatter that floated around. I walked up to the counter and told them I had an appointment. The guy behind (presumably a teacher) asked what kind of haircut I wanted so he could give me the right haircut. I stumbled over my words and felt my face heat up as I explained my haircut. He looked at me like an Idiot.
“Follow me,” he said.
The other side of the place revealed a ‘barber shop’. It was cliche. Black and white tiles. Exposed brick walls. Three barber chairs. The counter was lined with trimmers, scissors and tools. The masculine energy in barbershops terrified me. I felt out of my depth. Could they sense that I was a raging homosexual?
“Jaiden you’re up,” he said.
Jaden was a student. Sides of his ginger hair shaved and faded, with the back and top cropped. His black nail polish shone under the lights. He wiped the imaginary dust off his black shorts and cropped Nike sweater. It’s a strange combination of a sort of eshay and hip-hop guy. He got off and nodded. There was an authoritative aura about the teacher that even I was sort of intimidated, maybe because he looked like an actual barber and I was scared of barbers. He scratched his buzzcut head while I explained in more detail to the student what I wanted. I felt like a child. The teacher looked up a picture and showed it to Jaiden. I nodded in compliance. Sure. That’s what I wanted.
Gay men in barbershops are chameleons shifting into the heterosexual masculine nature by deepening their voices, standing taller in a poor attempt to match the dominance in the air and laughing about sports and whatnot. I don’t have that gift. My voice was high, no matter what I did. I was always just a few metres away from the crucifix of masculinity. My very existence was an antithesis to the rough and jaded atmosphere around me. I didn’t know how to act.
Jaiden asked me if I was okay with photos and videos, “It’s a big transformation for long curly hair to the style you wanted, I want to film for my Instagram,” he said. I nodded.
I listened to their conversation like a fly on the wall. Jaiden called his teacher “Big Max”, while he called him “Little Jaiden” in return. Other students and teachers chimed in at times and asked about the haircut. Big Max talked about the importance of structure (“Do you picture and see inside your head how you’re going to approach the haircut?). When someone talked about his nails, Max said his girlfriend is a nail technician and she wanted to practise on him. The culture of barber shops was held to a high standard. Max tried to cultivate it here in this learning space.
“In hair salons, they talk shit behind your back and gossip. Barber shops are different,” Big Max said, “we say shit with our chests.”
The haircut was a joint effort. Jaiden asked for reassurance, constantly going back and forth for guidance. Big Max would take a trimmer to clean a line up or to take a brush to wipe the hair off my neck or to point his finger. He was gentle and reassuring. I found myself taking my eyes off the tiny mark on the mirror that I stared at for the two-hour appointment (the website notes that this is a learning space, hair appointments will take longer) and listened to when a hairdresser threw a fit on a client just a minute ago or how Big Max used to be a Biba student. Big Max looked over Jaiden’s shoulder to change the angle he held the trimmer. I realised that this was a place that fostered hands-on learning that wasn’t akin to someone being punished with a ruler being slammed on the hand.
Big Max would come and go, and I found myself breathing a little easier at times. There was an attempt at banter and conversation between me and Jaiden. He told me he had ADHD. He told me that the pipes rumbling in the ceiling were from KFC’s toilets. I saw a girl with tan skin and orange, silky hair sitting at the back and staring in wonder. She told us that she also wanted to be a barber and that she came from Bali. Jaiden asked if she calls herself Balinese or Indonesian. “There’s no difference,” she said.
In places like the barber shop, the client is important just as the barber. They must be comfortable and discuss a variety of different, non-offending topics (weather, sports and sometimes, politics). Jaiden told me he did haircuts for his family members; he did one for his brother. I can imagine him doing a lineup for his brother. His brother was sitting on a stool while Jaiden stood behind him. Clipper guards on the sink. Careful concentration in his eyes. I would never see this stranger again, but I found myself interested in his life and reality. Barber culture interests me because it clashes and grates against my entire personality and character1.
Towards the end, an older man named Paul walked in. He overshadowed Max’s power with his stance. He wore a long, graphic yellow shirt and shorts. Fingers and wrists sparkling with gold jewellery and watches. He greeted everyone, walked around and eventually came to me, staring at Jaiden’s handiwork. He smiled and laughed and pointed at a couple of things, nodding at the fade Jaiden’s did as he touched the back of my neck. He sprayed sea salt spray into my hair and massaged it. Little coils bounced, and I thought that I was looking at a stranger in the mirror. Maybe I’ll get used to my hair not sticking to my neck in the summer heat, or taking half an hour to style.
Jaiden took me to the side to film his Instagram video. I paid fifteen dollars, and Big Max told me that it suited me. I walked out hastily. I felt like I could breathe a little bit easier. The weight in my stomach was gone. I squeezed past a crowd and walked towards Building 10. I was late for my Content Writing class.
what’s been happening with my life: starting a new job and a new semester soon.
what i’ve been reading: reading quantum physics for poets because i wanted to challenge myself and it’s a bit difficult to get through im going ot be honest, had to search up videos that explains the various concept. but i encourage everyone to veer into science nonfiction.
how i’m going: everything feels so strangely clam
next post?: i’ve been going through my wips in the past (this one was written 1+ year/s ago) so next post will also be me clearing out my drafts. maybe i’ll publish a profile that i wrote or a personal essay.
so what now?: send this to your friend who does home haircuts (and any queer barbers in melbourne who does services? help a girlie out here!)
My parents used to schedule haircuts every three months to tame my ‘unruly, curly hair'. No one ever taught me how to take care of it; I took guidance from Black women on the internet (which, I’m forever thankful for). My mum permed her hair straight. My sister’s hair is straight. My dad shaves it. My brother grows it short. The expectation is always to be silky, straight and smooth.
The barber would stare at me in the mirror at every appointment. I would usually tell him to go just a little bit shorter than my length. I would watch most of my hair end up on the floor, and I tried not to be upset, but I felt silly that I was grieving the loss of my hair. It felt like an intrusion as the barber straightened my hair further, consolidating it to a ‘prim’ hairstyle through pomade and a hairbrush. It’s why I shifted to terrible haircuts at home. Scissors in hand. Cutting pieces that looked uneven. A trimmer in one hand as I created my undercut. An ancient, queer ceremony. An identity was uncovered that stared at me in the mirror. I eventually got sick of it and visited a hair salon, not a barber shop. The lady behind the chair shook her head.
“Why is your hair uneven? Did you cut your hair yourself?”
“My dad did,” I lied.