The Man with the Softest Hands

I have tried them all. The salons, the specialty stores, the chains, the exclusives. I've tried stylists, hair entrepreneurs, burgeoning sculptors...I've paid a lot and I've paid a little.

In the end, the same result: the same haircut that I've had since I've been able to part the left side in the same way that I was taught.

For one long year of my life I received a haircut every week beginning in the hazy hot humidity of August until a wonderful day in March when the long freshman year of Virginia Military Institute officially ended.

I know a barber, and I know a good one, and those two terms are usually mutually exclusive.

Growing up in the 70s in Southern California, your hair was your wavy badge. Mine was exceptionally long, and when I look at pictures from back then I am amazed at what my parents allowed. In the 6th grade it was so long it hit my shoulder and then deflected slightly upward.

I was quite proud of my hair, letting it grow long as a senior in high school, feathered, blown dry and fastidious.

I can remember an inner-dialogue I had with myself in the Ft Benning Barber Shop in Georgia at the advent of Jump School. I had literally been growing my hair for about 3 months since the Ratline ended (VMI reference above) and it was to the point where I could actually comb it.

And in order to start the Airborne School I had to have my head shaved. Not cut; not shorn. Shaved. Stubbled.

Literally, I debated. Silver wings or sweet locks. It didn't take a lot to push me back into reality...I had had my head shaved before, so what the hell.

So yeah, I know barbers.

And I think I found my nirvana, my Grail of the Grizzled men wielding scissors.

Somewhere deep in Northern Virginia, in the tiny Washington DC suburb of Haymarket, VA, there is a barber shop run by a man named Larry.

Larry is a little on the redneck side, probably about 50, white wavy hair, raspy voice crafted by hours of Marlboros, and a drawl that borders on a conspiratorial whisper. He employs mostly Koreans and Asians to help him out, but his prime chair is near the front, and he is normally three-deep in people waiting for him to cut their hair.

Or give them a shave.

You see, Larry is old school. None of this crap like the Grooming Room or some other Male-only salon dripping with faux-leather and charging you $50 bucks to shave you.

Larry's cuts are $13.00. Shears, snipping scissors, maybe an electrical razor for the sides. He whispers hello, spreads the black shear sheet across you and asks what you'd like. He may or may not remember me, but we barely converse. His hands smell slightly of tobacco. His fingers smell of Clubman talc. His hands pale and plump, slightly inflated as if with air. Soft as kittens. Creased and weathered, but smooth and almost dainty.

To me there is an art to shaving, a process we all have gone through and we all likely avoid. If I get lucky enough to go three or four days without shaving, I head on down to Larry and as he likes to say, "get to see the baby's butt."

He lopes on back to the rear of his store for the heated towels, always inquiring if I'm ready, and while I believe I am it is almost always hotter than expected. He spreads it across my face in front of me, twists it slightly and lays it across my neck and then layers it in circles until only my nose is showing. Hot, humid warmth pulsates on my skin, commanding the whiskers to full attention.

After a few minutes, he spreads warm cream on my face, with those bulbous padded hands. Only to return with another hot towel to combine with the cream to create a viscosity against my face, warm, soothing.

While I lay with the heat emanating on me, I hear him preparing. (I've seen him shave others so I know this is what happens while I'm underneath the towels).

Usually taking out the sling blade scalpels, antique single bladed bits of steel. He rubs them on his leather strap, honing to a fine blade.

When he removes the hot towel, he spreads more cream and then hunches close to my face, his eyes focused and his hands touching my skin, pulling the skin taut as the razor glides easily over it. He pauses, scraping the blade across barber paper to clean it.

He takes his time, a shave taking 15 minutes minimally. Hot towels not included.

His studies the angles of my face, the growth lines of my whiskers. With the grain, against the grain. Careful around the nose, the corners of my mouth.

After a few passes, he starts to comment on the smoothness. The Baby's Butt.

I usually sit back, close my eyes, and try not to wonder too much about the man who holds a razor against my throat.

Rather, I luxuriate in the talent and the skill. The slowness and the steadiness. The scent of tobacco and of barber shops, of creams and green potions.

And I always leave with a slight chuckle, knowing that I have a lot of vices in my life, but I cannot help but get genuinely energized when I get to spend twenty minutes in the chair with the man with the softest hands.

Beggars and Choosers

Travel enough to any city and the ever-presence of folks who live on just the flimsiest sheen of existence become part of the never-changing landscape.

A trip through such public domains as New York City's Pennsylvania Station, a hub that connects Amtrak trains, Long Island Rail Road, New Jersey PATH and MTA, is a nexus of travelers, commuters and visitors. Yet sprinkled amongst the colors of those in transit are the small gray sights of those who are not there to travel at all.

I have seen the people approaching visitors as they stream through the large open spaces in the train station. Usually just a whisper, or a gesture. No hands being extended, just an approach.

"Can you spare something?"

Obviously it's money. But sometimes it's just a remark. A response. And usually, because of what I feel is my sometimes glaring blindspot for compassion, I give neither. No response. No money. No glare, no stare.

Merely looking ahead, to the turnstiles and steps that take me away from this subterranean space and back out into the daylight.

The hardening shell around me. I see my fellow travelers in the same vein, hurried, never stopping, never participating. In some way my excuse is that they have shown me how to deal with these small intrusions...the same way one might deal with a slight spitting rain. Indifference. Just get me to my destination. I've traveled long enough.

And frankly the people soliciting know this as well. There isn't a follow up question. There isn't a raising of the voice just in case you didn't hear. They're fishing, with only their appearance or our compassion to attract us to each other, and in the sea of crushing commuters there is a pretty good chance they'll not leave empty-handed. So they expect the brush-by, and merely wait for the next person.

I say that as back-drop into the usual situations where I find myself approached. But I recently had a different experience, and frankly while my actions didn't differ, my reactions did.

As I was coming up the part of Penn Station that opens up to 7th Avenue, a lady actually put herself in my path. She was normally dressed, that is, she didn't appear to be grossly impoverished, and she was carrying a couple of bags. Just as I was walking towards her, I saw a man fishing a dollar out of his wallet to give to an entirely different elderly lady. A lady who looked like she had left poverty years ago and was in full blown disaster mode. Disheveled, dirty, barely intelligible. I saw the well-dressed man hold out the dollar like a sacrament, and she accepted it as such.

So this was my last view before this other lady popped up in front of me.

"Sir", she started, which caused me a bit of a pause, because she clearly wanted my attention. I looked at her briefly.

"could you help me and..."

She had lost me, and she knew it, her voice trailing off, broken off against me. She had seen enough people passing by that my slight pause and then readjustment of my sightline well past her indicated that I was in fact, not going to stop.

But I did. About 50 feet past her. I didn't stop next to her, but continued walking until almost to the escalator. And then I turned around.

I didn't take any steps back. I didn't do anything else. My luggage, stupidly spread out in three separate bages, tugged heavily at me.

I looked to see if I could see her among the onslaught of commuters, and of course I couldn't.

And I felt like I had stolen something. Felt like I had taken a piece of her. Something she had offered up, a complete stranger, and I had batted it out of her hands.

I didn't do anything else, these emotions pinpricking in my head and a slight spill of disgust pooling. I saw nobody else stopping.

I emerged from the stairs and into the loveliness of a dusk in the city. The sidewalk was set up with a table, with an empty water jug collecting coins for the homeless.

I joined the rest of the people, walking by. Not stopping. Glaring at the faces of strangers who I didn't know, didn't care to know. Hoping they wouldn't sense my shame...or the copper-taste of disappoint that suddenly filled my mouth in how I had behaved.

Girls of the South

"Her southerness laid deep within her, as crystalline as slight sugars in a jar of sun-tea, waiting for the stir of a hand to swirl the contents, the sugar colliding and crashing, clinging to the edges and when you inhaled you drew in the sweetness very briefly…until the storm settled and the sugars floated gently again to the bottom."

There is something about southerners. Southern ladies, in particular. And as I send my daughter back to Atlanta this week, I wonder what it is about the exquisite nature of the women, both young and old, who occupy the South.

My wife's accent comes out noticeably with wine, a wonderful sound of consonants and a lilt at the end, with roots tracing back to her time in Southern Virginia and college. Our friends are mostly from Virginia, but even when we visit Atlanta, you can trace the language as the brogue grows deeper and deeper the further south you travel.

Heartiest of women. More than the Scarlett who stands fiercely in resolve to never starve again. Rather, they "fix" things.

They fix the rough spots in men, they fix the holes in people's lives. They fix the meanness of the cities and they fix the hurts of others.

They're not Sarah Palin. They'd never shoot a moose. But maybe they'd take care of a chicken or a well-fattened hog. In order to provide.

The fashion of the south still resonates today, in a mall-infested Abercrombie/Hollister wearing world, where lace and linen can still find flair. Where a hat and gloves are still in vogue. Little eyelet dresses with simple colors can still catch many a fine man's eye.

The manners of the south remain steadfast and unfortunately almost coy. The "ma'ams" and the "sirs", still unfortunately most prevalent in diners and restaurants, but still sometimes found in the small shops where people still work by hand. (Tip: Take a walk down King Street in Charleston, SC).

The weather in the South is perhaps what brings about these Southern women, like hot-house plants that thrive on humidity and bloom in night heat. They fan, they drink teas and lemonades, but they don't complain. They don't mind a sweat from work and they don't mind if their hands get dirty. A lady covered in potting soil, sweating through her shirt, standing amongst the colors of fresh planted flowers is among my most favorite sights.

They bake, they cook. They weed, they churn. And when they open their mouths, it is pure honey.

My daughter hasn't quite adopted a southern accent. But she's gaining on the easy-going nature and civilities that surround her in the oaks and azaleas in Georgia. I could never ask for a better nurturing ground to plant her in.