Shit has gotten real real quick. A lot of life changes all at once. Got fired. Friends all moved away. Lost my cat, Pharaoh. I\u2019ve still been leaving a saucer of milk out in case he decides he\u2019s hungry and wants to come back. Mom and Dad died. Downwinders both of them. They were kids then. Didn\u2019t even know it until it was too late. Cancer. Chemo. Hair falling. Exposed to radioactive particles from the nuclear testing in Nevada. Fallout. I also don\u2019t talk to my only brother anymore. Don\u2019t even know where he lives or if he\u2019s even alive. Another kind of falling out. I want something new, something fresh. I look at myself in the bathroom mirror. Part my bangs like a curtain of brown beads. I point at the person on the other side of the mirror, the one with the floppy, flowing hair, and say \u201cSomething needs to break.\u201d<\/p>\n
I wet my hair under the shower shirtless and return to the vanity sopping, water dripping off the ends of my hair like leaky pipes. Grab a comb. Slick it all back in neat dark brown rows. I let my imagination fill in the blanks of how I might look after a quick bout with an electric razor and decide that it is good.<\/p>\n
I go to bed dreaming I\u2019m riding a giant electric razor like a mechanical bull in a field of alfalfa at dusk. The earth around me is a stubbled circle. Reminds me of crop circles. The sky is flipping from orange to purple, and everything is putting on shadows for the night. I\u2019ve got one hand on a length of rope, the other is high above my head. Clouds smear across the night sky like drunken Bob Ross brush strokes. I\u2019m happy holding on. I can do this forever. Just as everything goes black, a beam of light descends upon me. Is it an angel? Is it the razor police, and are my razor-riding days numbered? It\u2019s a tractor beam from a UFO. It pulls me and my razor bull up into the air. Lights are spinning and blinking like how they do in the movies. Before we know it, we\u2019re in the belly of the beast. The aliens are just like me only their heads glow out like eclipsed suns, and they all have buzz cuts, even the women and even the old women. No curlers, no perms. Just one inch of pure white hair dotting their heads like a thin layer of fresh snow.<\/p>\n
They put me on a stretcher and my razor bull on another, and off we go in different directions. It\u2019s like E.T., and I yell that they are hurting him and they need to stop. But I\u2019m silenced by an elderly woman with too much excess glowing skin around her neck. She puts a wrinkled finger to my lips and tells me to be quiet and be calm.<\/p>\n
Under florescent lights, I\u2019m cut open and examined. The doctors mumble to themselves in a language I can\u2019t quite make out.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is it doc?\u201d I say. \u201cIs it cancer? Please don\u2019t let it be cancer. Anything but cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n
He opens his mouth to speak, but I don\u2019t hear a damn word. His mouth moves, and all I hear is the wet smacking of dry lips sticking to each other between each phoneme. I wake up sweating and run to the bathroom to give myself the once maybe twice over for lumps in strange places. I find a mole on my neck that\u2019s been there for years. It\u2019s brown and has been brown for as long as I can remember. No lumps, but a lump in my throat forms as I go back to bed imagining myself under florescent lights being told that I have some sort of unknown growth that no one can identify. Something unknowingly passed on from one generation to the next.<\/p>\n
I open my bedroom window and look out across the dark desert. The red cliffs rise into the night sky platformed like Dad\u2019s crew-cut, and all I can think about is when he and Mom shaved each other\u2019s heads the night Dad was diagnosed.<\/p>\n
Back in bed, I toss and turn in my twin-size mattress and remember reading somewhere that eventually every organism evolves into crabs. It\u2019s called cancerization. At some point we were all sea creatures. Then one day one of us decided to surface and take a breath of air. The next logical step was to split the atom and test the result in the desert. Genius move. Genius move made by a bunch of fucking geniuses. Or is it genii? Mom read me stories from 1001 Nights growing up. About Alibaba and Aladdin and his magic lamp. I turn on my bedside lamp, a lightbulb inside a glass, amber orb the shape of a beehive, and rub the glass. I know no genie will pop out, but if it ever did happen, I\u2019d maybe wish for Pharaoh to come back or for Mom and Dad to die a different way like in a car crash or in their sleep. Something more natural.<\/p>\n
Damn.<\/p>\n
I turn out the light, and after a while, I\u2019m finally able to reclaim some sleep.<\/p>\n
Next day, I walk into a barbershop. The barber\u2019s a skinny dude with a short ponytail and a soul patch. I look straight at the guy and say, \u201cI want it off.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLike all off?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHell yeah,\u201d I say. I have a picture of Aaron Paul saved to my phone. A screenshot of a list of the best-looking celebrity buzz cuts. Above his name is the number fourteen and the name \u201cThe Burr\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou sure?\u201d the barber says.<\/p>\n
I plop myself down on the seat. The barber Velcros and buttons the shield over me and pats my shoulders like he would a pair of ripe watermelons.<\/p>\n
\u201cSure as sure,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you say so, boss,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019ll start with the top. Once I start there\u2019s no looking back.\u201d He locks eyes with me in earnest through the mirror. \u201cWe doing this?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBuzz me up, man.\u201d<\/p>\n
The clippers climb through my scalp and spit tufts of dark brown hanks to the floor. I\u2019m surrounded by a sea of silky spirals spinning around my feet. I\u2019m surprised at how much I\u2019m digging this new me. The guy in the mirror looks more like me than I do.<\/p>\n
The barber pauses and brushes a bead of sweat from his forehead.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou good, man? Like the look so far?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re a magic man,\u201d I tell him. \u201cYou\u2019ve got a magic razor, magic hands, or something like that because this is a whole new and improved me. Shit. Rub my head.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRub my head, man. Make a wish.\u201d<\/p>\n
He runs his palm through my stubbled scalp and mutters something to himself. He sighs and smiles, \u201cBoss, this is the best news I\u2019ve heard all day.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m glad to deliver it,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
He looks like he\u2019s about to cry, so I grab his hand and hold it over my shoulder and I cry too. We look at each other for a solid five seconds without a word. Only a stream of shared tears. I feel a real connection.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat you\u2019ve done here, man,\u201d I say, \u201cit\u2019s life changing stuff. I know we\u2019ve only just met, but I just want to say that I love you. I love you and everyone who has made you you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad said I was wasting my time being a barber. Wanted me to be a doctor or some shit. A lawyer even.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWould\u2019ve been a massive waste of talent if you\u2019d\u2019ve gone down that road. Plus, no offense, but fuck your dad.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo offense taken. He\u2019s dead anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLove the guy because he helped make you, but fuck your dead dad.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHell yeah, boss. Fuck the dead bastard.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad\u2019s dead too,\u201d I say. \u201cSo\u2019s my mom.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShit, man, I\u2019m sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s okay,\u201d I say. \u201cCancer.\u201d<\/p>\n
The barber clicks his tongue. \u201cSame, man. Bummer, boss. Major bummer. Fuckin\u2019 Downwinders.\u201d<\/p>\n
He brushes what\u2019s left of my mane onto the floor and meets me at the front counter.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow much?\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s on the house, boss. You made my day. Been living through a long ass depressive episode. And when I say long, I mean months, man. Been in a rut, you know? Like no matter what I try and do my wheels keep spinning in the goddamn mud. Can\u2019t live like this forever.\u201d<\/p>\n
He puts his hands on the counter. Hangs his head. No one else is in the shop except for a heavy-set middle-aged man scrolling through his phone. He\u2019s sitting on a metal folding chair and wearing a t-shirt with a flying saucer on it. Across the top it says I WANT TO BELIEVE. He\u2019s got a deviated septum or something because he\u2019s snoring while awake.<\/p>\n
\u201cI get it man,\u201d I say to the barber. \u201cHey, I\u2019ve got an idea.\u201d<\/p>\n
I grab his hand and walk him toward the chair I\u2019d been sitting in and tell him to sit.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow about I buzz your head?\u201d<\/p>\n
He looks skeptical and fidgets with his fingers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know, boss,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a big change. Don\u2019t know if I can take it. Besides, what will other people think?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat other people?\u201d<\/p>\n
I look around the shop at all the people who aren\u2019t here. I look over at flying saucer guy and say, \u201cHey, what do you think?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHuh?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShould our friend here get his head buzzed?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDunno,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t give a fuck.\u201d<\/p>\n
His phone\u2019s screen lights his face up pink and white. Electronic pop music blares from his phone. A high-pitched woman\u2019s voice dances over the music in overjoyed Japanese.<\/p>\n
\u201cC\u2019mon, man,\u201d I say. \u201cYou changed my life. Least I can do is help put you on the same trajectory.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Japanese woman says moshi moshi. Flying saucer guy\u2019s breathing fills nearly every inch of the shop. The barber looks at me. I nod and mouth \u201cbuzz cut\u201d. He lowers his head and tents his fingers across his chest. Closes his eyes and taps his fingertips together like a muted marimba.<\/p>\n
\u201cC\u2019mon, my guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
I rub his shoulders lightly, encouragingly.<\/p>\n
He slowly lifts his head. He looks toward flying saucer guy, lit up now in purple and green, and back at me through the mirror.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the hell,\u201d he says. \u201cBuzz me.\u201d<\/p>\n
And I do. He coaches me through the process. I start by cutting his ponytail with a pair or thick scissors. I grab the clippers and put a three guard on, per the barber\u2019s request, and buzz his bangs first then the sides, slowly moving toward the back. His hair drops in sheets around him, and with each swipe his smile broadens, his eyes widen, and his countenance begins to glow. Something fundamental is changing in the barber. I can feel it emanating from his being.<\/p>\n
And I know it\u2019s not just me. In the corner of my eye, I notice that even flying saucer guy, his phone still pushing a kaleidoscope of pulsing colors across his face, has felt a change. The Japanese woman says konichiwa on a loop as his phone falls into his lap. His attention is on us, the barber\u2019s metamorphosis. The air feels different, and so does the vibration of the clippers in my hand. The barber closes his eyes and lets the clippers clip and clip and clip. I\u2019m focused. More focused than I\u2019ve ever been in my entire life.<\/p>\n
The clippers are my scepter, and I\u2019m fucking metamorphizing the shit out the barber. I imagine I\u2019m some sort of king, and I\u2019m knighting the barber in front of all my bic\u2019d subjects. I touch the clippers to his right shoulder then to his left, and in a massive puff of hair clippings he is transformed. He becomes Sir Barber. Barber 2.0. New and improved.<\/p>\n
Metal scratches against tile and breaks the spell for a second. Flying saucer guy is scooting his chair closer to get a better look. The Japanese woman says sayonara, and the music blips into silence.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t stop,\u201d he says to me.<\/p>\n
I look down at him and at his shirt. I WANT TO BELIEVE. And I do. I believe. I believe harder than I\u2019ve ever believed in anything. I keep clipping.<\/p>\n
When the final lock of the barber\u2019s former hair hits the tile, he opens his eyes and spots the guy in the mirror. And all he says at first is \u201cwow wow wow wow.\u201d He rubs his hand through his scalp like he\u2019s a farmer admiring the stalks left after a bountiful harvest. An enormous smile splits across his face. He looks at me and nods. I nod back and brush the excess hair off the shield and his neck.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you think, man?\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe looks amazing,\u201d flying saucer guy says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat he said,\u201d the barber says. He turns his head from side to side and continues to mouth \u201cwow\u201d like a fish breathing water for the first time in a long, long time.<\/p>\n
He removes the shield and stands a bit taller than before. He turns and grabs me by the shoulders, his grin growing brighter and brighter. He takes a deep breath in, so deep I can see his ribs through this shirt. His head tilts back as his chest expands, but he maintains eye contact with me. He\u2019s leaning back so far his torso almost goes parallel with the ceiling.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou okay, man?\u201d I say.<\/p>\n
Flying saucer guy is standing now to my left. The room gets hot. The barber looks like he has sucked in almost all the air in the room, and still he maintains a smile barely obscured by his distended cheeks and keeps his eyes locked right on me. The skin on his face, throat, and near his collarbone reddens. His grip on my shoulders intensifies, and just as I\u2019m about to brush his hands from my shoulders, the barber lets out the heaviest and heartiest yell I\u2019ve ever heard.<\/p>\n
\u201cHyaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!\u201d<\/p>\n
It comes from somewhere ancient. Something that has been buried under fathoms of hair for years and years. It\u2019s both a shout of rejoicing and a wail of pain like a rotten tooth has finally been yanked and expelled into some netherworld. His breath smells like old, forgotten pizza in my face. I catch a light spray of saliva as I try to cover my ears. The barber starts jumping up and down with his arms still on my shoulders. I join in on the jumping, the shouting, trying to match his intensity. We jump in circles. Flying saucer guy finds his way into our orbit and locks his hands onto both our shoulders. We spin and spin. Our faces blur in the rotations upon rotations. We\u2019re a maelstrom of our own making. We spin around the shop knocking over chairs and tearing down posters of Korean male models in our frenzied whirlwind. Our spinning slides into dervished dancing. Our hands rest gently yet steadily on each other\u2019s shoulders. Our shoes scuff up the checkered tile and squeak in syncopation with our song. Our shouts melodify into a synchronized chant: Buzz-buzz-buzz buzz-buzz-buzz.<\/p>\n
In the chaos, flying saucer guy\u2019s head is somehow shorn. His sandy locks drift in the ether about us like loose hay. We become reflections in a revolving trifold mirror that repeats back to each of us what we want to see in ourselves. I close my eyes and let myself go. Our incantations persist though my vision is now only a swirling of brown and red and orange behind my eyelids. I focus my attention on who I am and who I want to become, and our chant beats in time with my heart and become mildly muted. I see snapshots amidst the swirls: the eternal storm on Jupiter like a cat\u2019s eye revolving forever; root beer bubbling from the tap of an old timey soda fountain, the dark amber liquid set into motion by a never-ending torrent of sassafras root bark, aniseed, ginger, wintergreen, and vanilla that goes on and on and on curling toward some ultimate absolution; a glob of rich, raw honey traveling slowly around the center coil of a birch wood honey wand. I see a white-cloaked wizard with a veiled, wide-brimmed hat in an open field with bees buzzing about him. It\u2019s late afternoon, and the sun drips further west as the sky drizzles from gold to dusk. A sphynx cat is stretched across his shoulders similarly veiled with a cute, cat-sized hat brimmed. He licks honey from his left paw and purrs in contentment as an army of bees swirls about him. The wizard brandishes a giant honey wand dripping with the stuff. I kneel down before him. He lifts his veil, and it\u2019s me. He-Me smiles and dabs each of my shoulders with a dripping dollop that leaves semi-stiff peaks of whorling honey that almost reach and tease to tickle the bottom of my earlobes. Each hair on my buzzed head bristles with delight.<\/p>\n
The buzzing of the bees is a wild wall of sound. It is fierce yet unangry. Full of freedom and repose. The He-Me beekeeper reaches down a white-gloved hand and offers me salvation: salvation from confusion and salvation from who I am. I accept his invitation and allow myself to be lifted to new heights. Hand in hand, we float in the air among the bees and buzz about without a care in the world. As we drift around the combs, he calls each bee by name. He knows them. He knows me too. He tells me, without words, that all will be okay. I want to believe. I really do.<\/p>\n
\u201cBelieve me,\u201d he says out loud.<\/p>\n
We rise above our little colony of honeybees and see that all is well. I am suspended above the ground now clad in a white suit, hatted and veiled. The cat on His-My shoulder splits into two, and the duplicate leaps from His-My shoulder to mine. It purrs in my ear and licks the honey from my shoulder. The He-Me beekeeper points in the direction of the horizon and the setting sun. From behind my veil, the sun and its rays are bearable to behold. He-Me tows me forward toward a land, a whole new world, flowing with milk and honey. A million milk saucers are lapped up by a million cats who purr in unison. It is a land of opportunity. A land where parents and children live forever in honeyed bliss and where atoms can\u2019t be split and cancers of all kinds have been eradicated. Cells divide and subdivide at a normal rate always. It\u2019s a place where friends are forever no matter where they move to. Where brothers are brothers and forgiveness and reconciliation are attainable. Where everyone keeps bees and jobs are plentiful and money doesn\u2019t matter. Everyone is happy with their buzzed heads and colonies upon colonies of bees. Men, women, children, all. A brightness beams about each buzzed head that radiates like so many sun flares and solar winds. This is the place. This could be me, and I believe it.<\/p>\n
As our chanting continues in the battered barbershop, I hold onto this future. Capture it all in vivid detail. I hold onto this future harder than I\u2019ve ever held onto anything in my whole life, and I hope and pray that once I open my eyes that it sticks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I go to bed dreaming I\u2019m riding a giant electric razor like a mechanical bull in a field of alfalfa at dusk. Clouds smear across the night sky like drunken Bob Ross brush strokes. Just as everything goes black, a beam of light descends upon me. Is it an angel? Is it the razor police, and are my razor-riding days numbered?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":21707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-jace-einfeldt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21172","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=21172"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21709,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21172\/revisions\/21709"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}