#ohnick – A Little Off The Top, Sir?

#ohnick

A Little Off The Top, Sir?

My name is Nick Mellish, and I am going bald.

     Oh, I know, I know, it’s a huge surprise: you’ve seen me with my hair and thought, “Wow, now there’s a man who has short hair” but, no, it’s receding! You’d never guess.

     ... yes, I’m being sarcastic.  My hair is receding at a speed far quicker than my overdraft, which is depressing, but still it needs pruning.

     Now, I’ve talked about my odd relationship with my hairdresser before, a blog post which prompted several comments, from accusations that I was in some sort of weird, abusive relationship with him, to sympathetic nods from people who find themselves in similar relationships of guilt with shopkeepers, hairdressers and others people.

     More than anything else though, I had dozens of people ask me why I don’t just cut my own hair: it’s always shorn, so why not just apply the razor to my own head and save myself some cash?

     The honest answer, beyond the fact that I would feel weirdly like I am betraying my crazy hairdresser, is that I am a bit scared to engage in something like that: flesh! Metal! It’s a recipe for disaster with my nerves: I still do that weird thing where you lift the controller when trying to make your characters jump when playing computer games, so god only knows how I’d cope trying to avoid a mole or two.

     I normally get my hair cut every couple of months, but for various reasons I missed the self-imposed deadline in October, and my slightly obsessive compulsive mind started thinking a bit like this:

• NICK: “Mmmm, my hair is looking far too long. I’d better get it cut.”
• MIND: “But... but if you wait another month, you’ll be back to your usual schedule.”
• NICK: “Yeh, but I look ridiculous!”
• MIND: “But... but the schedule...”
• NICK: “... fine.”

Yes, I had gone and got myself A System.

     Weeks passed, people commented on how long the hair was getting (at the back, naturally) and wondered why I hadn’t got it cut yet.  I looked for a decent excuse, but, really, it was because I had A System and I daren’t break it.

     December came though, and I was looking increasingly horrendous, so I decided to go and bite the bullet: it was time to get it cut.  I walked home from work with a spring in my step and sauntered up to the usual hairdresser, beard and long hair intact... to find that it was closed due to staff illness.

     Thwarted! I was thwarted! I would never get my hair cut now!

     ... and then it occurred to me that I wasn’t thwarted, not really.  No, I was free! I didn’t have to go and get my beard shaven off or my head grasped by a man who seemed to think he was shaving a coconut. I was free at last to go to whoever I wanted to get my hair cut!

     And, of course, the only other two places open were too busy to take me.  That should have been the end of this story, really: defeated, I go home and accept that I’ll be returning to the same old hairdresser once his illness has passed and get shaven.  The trouble is, I was feeling bold now.  I was free from him at long last, so I could do something outrageous now! I could go somewhere else or never get my hair cut ever at all, or go another day but, even then, go to someone else... or, I could listen to my mind:

• MIND: You still have A System. You still need to get it cut.
• NICK: But nowhere’s open?
• MIND: So what?

So what? Right! So what, eh? Let’s do it myself! Yes! Everyone is always tutting at me for going to someone to shave all my hair off, so why not go at it by myself?

     I trot home, positively excited now, and scuttle into the bathroom with my clippers and some scissors...

     ... and this is where it all went terribly, terribly wrong.  Because the scissors? They were nail scissors.  I start to slowly clip at my hair, lopping off the long ends and whole tufts here, there and everywhere.  I have so much hair! The sink is full of it! I keep on cutting though, until it’s hard to really get anymore.  Why, I ask myself, did I decide that nail scissors were a good idea? It’s taken bloody ages to even get this far and now I look a bit like a scarecrow, with tatty clumps of thin hair sticking out like straw in places I can’t quite reach.

     This is the first time during this whole escapade when a tiny, tiny part of me thinks, You know what, Nick? Maybe this wasn’t the best idea after all.

     But I’m committed now, as the sink well knows, and so I switch on the clippers...

     ... oh, sorry, clippers is misleading.  No, you see, I’m not that smart: I don’t mean clippers as in hair clippers; I mean clippers as in the tiny, tiny thing you use to shave your beard.

     And so begins the real panic as the clippers do nothing.  NOTHING! THEY DO NOTHING AT ALL! I scoot them over my head, AND NOTHING! Nothing goes at all, only the occasional hair, certainly nothing substantial.

     “Oh,” I say aloud to myself and myself alone. “Oh... bollocks.”

     I start to hyperventilate as the first mole is brushed over and still no sodding hair comes off.  I look into the sink, as long hair teasing me, then into the mirror at hair that refuses to budge and a small clipper struggling but trying its very best.

     I hear one of my housemates climb the stairs and for a moment, I am tempted to call out to them and ask for them to rescue me: but, no! This is my mess! I can sort this one out myself and chalk it up as a lesson learnt and–

     “Dawn! Dawn! Dawn!” I find myself crying before I am aware that I’m even talking. “Dawn, next time I say that I have a brilliant idea, tell me that I am wrong, okay?”

     There is a pause: “Nick, what have you done?”
     “I’m just saying, tell me that I am wrong.”

     “Nick, what the heck have you done?”

     I fling open the bathroom door.  I am topless, with a rug’s worth of hair scattered across a carpet’s worth of head, and a rather pathetic looking pair of nail scissors in my hand.

     “Dawn, I tried to cut my own hair and it all went terribly, terribly wrong!”

     “Nick! Sweetie! Why the hell would you do that?!”

     “I DON’T KNOW!!!”

     We proceed to both flap hands at one another and squeal in high-pitched, panicked voices until she decides that she’s seen far too much of topless Nick to cope with.  She runs off to buy pizza of comfort and call Chris, our other housemate, in: Chris shaves his own head, you see, with clippers: with actual clippers that actually clip and everything.

     Chris wanders up, takes one look at me, shakes his head, and then goes off to fetch his clippers.  He at least has the good grace to laugh when he’s out of eye-shot.  I end up sitting on a whicker chair as he shaves my head and catches the clumps in a plastic carrier bag.  I’ll be honest, I’ve had more dignified moments.

     So, now I’ve got no hair and no dignity.  The question is, what the hell was I thinking? The answer is, that implies that thought entered into the equation at all, at any point.  I think it’s fair to say that I’m a complete idiot, but that was never up for debate really, was it?

     There’s a lesson to be learnt here, but I’m not really sure what it is: that if a job’s worth doing, maybe you should screw tradition and not actually do it yourself?

     Maybe.  Or maybe I should just wear a wig.