{"id":17264,"date":"2022-05-20T05:00:26","date_gmt":"2022-05-20T09:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/?p=17264"},"modified":"2022-08-03T13:09:43","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T17:09:43","slug":"the-barber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/fiction\/the-barber\/","title":{"rendered":"The Barber"},"content":{"rendered":"

The World\u2019s Best Barbershop has a sign in the window with a number below the words Call Flame<\/em>, and when you call Flame says he\u2019ll be there in ten or fifteen minutes and eight minutes later rolls up in a ten-year-old Cadillac, tinted windows a quarter-rolled down so you can see his dry cleaning hanging from the backseat grab handle, asks where you\u2019ve been getting your haircut and you tell him Southern Gentleman, how it\u2019s kind of expensive and mechanical there, he shakes his head and sits you down and asks how you like this city, it\u2019s okay you reply, he asks you to touch the hair on the back of your head where he\u2019s cut, and you say let\u2019s take it shorter for the summer, he removes the clip without turning off the clipper, which seems unusual but his hands move with such confidence and grace and he asks where you were born and raised, oh yeah?\u2014Brooklyn? shit<\/em> man, you know Flatbush? you know Bushwick? people there, he shakes his head, everyone so cutthroat all the time, yeah you agree, Flame adds, no one\u2019s happy in the big city even though everyone got all this money they never smile. But down here you got more, more\u2026what\u2019s the word?<\/p>\n

Freedom?<\/p>\n

Flame sucks his teeth and says you<\/em> know, that\u2019s exactly it\u2014freedom<\/em>. Freedom, Flame repeats, turning off the clippers. His eyes lock with yours. He\u2019s wearing a white ballcap forward, gray tank, blue sweats, socks and sandals, white stubble around his cheeks, chin, late forties, you think. Flame turns and pulls out a fresh razor and fits it into the shavette. Freedom, he repeats, that\u2019s it, people don\u2019t realize how valuable\u2026he lines your beard along your cheek, steadies his hand by placing a pinky at the corner of your mouth, traces your temples, swivels for the clippers again, goes on, hey you know Coney Island? course you know Coney Island, I used to work at this place Platinum Cutz on Coney Island\u2014that place was filthy, filthy\u2014in his Jamaican accent he says it: fil<\/em>-tee, filtee<\/em>, he repeats, pausing, looking at you: fil-tee<\/em>, hair all over the fucking place, all day they don\u2019t sweep up but it don\u2019t matter, they all lined up\u2026doesn\u2019t matter how a place looks, look at my place, shit everywhere, but the haircuts like in Coney Island…<\/p>\n

The best, you say.<\/p>\n

And he laughs, Coney Island man. Coney Island, he repeats, shaking his head. Coney Island, he keeps saying, and you\u2019re laughing silently in the chair wondering how many times he can say it and the answer is: more; he is clearly taking pleasure in remembering, Coney Island, kid<\/em>, he says, shaking his head, the kid<\/em> tacked on a kind of conclusion, and you remember how you used to know some guy in college who used to say that, yo kid<\/em>, and you\u2019d think that\u2019s such a New York thing, Big L, Wu-Tang, kid<\/em>, turns out the kid <\/em>wasn\u2019t a coda, Flame is still repeating Coney Island<\/em>, as if each time he says it he\u2019s reliving a different moment from his twenty-three years in New York, giving greater resonance and deeper meaning to that place, Coney Island<\/em>, the words blending in the repetition with him dropping the final \u2018d\u2019 so they assume a foreign and exotic sound, not because of his Jamaican accent but simply through the repetition of the name, so that it sounds like Coney Isle<\/em>, a magic incantatory Neverland whose name takes you back, back to a photo of yourself there as a three-year-old, snowball-hatted and open-mouthed in joy at Luna Park, Cyclone visible in the background, clear blue winter\u2019s day, the photo warped by sun, cracked, unprotected by a frame and suffering from time as it hangs on your father\u2019s refrigerator, the child you were as happy as you\u2019ve ever been\u2014Coney Island was cold<\/em> man, Flame goes on, Coney Island was real<\/em> cold, don\u2019t go out there in winter, psh, and I say, I know, my dad used to take me there on his days off when I was a kid and Flame laughs and says, you <\/em>know, and repeats this too, you know, he says. Every winter I used to get sick out on Coney Island\u2026and he trails off and asks you to tilt your head back so he can shape your neckline. You can\u2019t easily talk with your head all the way back or when Flame rights your head and finishes your cheekline, balancing the razor-holding hand with his pinky finger close to the corner of your mouth so you can smell his hands and they smell\u2026like hands<\/em>\u2014not dirty or clean but like they\u2019re used to doing things hands do: spreading, gripping, steering, holding, positioning, and you think how much more you prefer the intimacy of one of Flame\u2019s fingers so close to your mouth than the almost mechanical press and lift of the hot towel on your neck at Southern Gentleman, so that when it\u2019s done and you\u2019ve slicked some gel in your hair and Flame charges you ten percent less than the other guys, you thank each other and it\u2019s amazing, you think, how after all that you not only look but feel<\/em> so much better, and wonder what exactly about that haircut made you prefer it to Southern Gentleman, what exactly, what exactly, what exactly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The World\u2019s Best Barbershop has a sign in the window with a number below the words Call Flame, and when you call Flame says he\u2019ll be there in ten or fifteen minutes and eight minutes later rolls up in a ten-year-old Cadillac, tinted windows a quarter-rolled down so you can see his dry cleaning hanging […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":17294,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-daniel-adler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17265,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17264\/revisions\/17265"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}