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So, I thought it was high time I dusted this thing off and got back to writing. A lot of things have changed since I last posted on here. My wife Tracy has her Master's degree, and the future is as uncertain as ever. Since it's a holiday, and I've spent most of the last few nights and today beating this Joomla thing into some kind of submission, I thought I'd post one of my favorite old weblog entries from the prior version of Hazelip.com to get things going again. I will, of course, be posting again with new content. I have some things I'd like to write about: science, podcasts, sites of interest, observations, and mostly, stories from my past which rarely make me sound good. I hope you will return to read more in the future. Make with the clicky-clicky, and please to enjoy...
 Man, I need a haircut. I haven't had one in about three weeks, and it's starting to bug me. The hair just above my ears is growing down past the arms of my eyeglasses. I badly need a haircut.
So why don't I just go and get it cut, right?
I'd love to, but my barber is on vacation and she won't be back until Monday. Being dependent upon a single person for a simple service can be frustrating, but guys can get attached to a barber, just like a woman can get attached to a hair stylist at a salon. Barbers are just cheaper, but that's not all there is to it.
Salons are nice. Nice lighting, nice seating (sometimes), nice people, and some serious advantages. I used to get my hair cut at a salon, once upon a time. The magazines, however, generally stink. I don't need to read yet another copy of People from three years ago about yet another celebrity break-up. That copy of U.S. New & World Report from 2000? It's not news anymore.
But, the shampoos make up for the lousy reading selection in a salon. Man alive, do I love to have my hair washed! I tell you what; there's nothing that beats a pretty girl in a low-cut top leaning over to wash your hair as you lay back in a well-padded chair to have her massage your scalp and soap you up. Hot damn! I may have to ditch my barber.
Nah, I couldn't do that. At least not for anything other than another barber. A barber doesn't beat around the bush, y'know? A barber is a professional who cuts hair, trims and shaves beards, nose hair, ear hair, and will shave your neck. A barber knows how to taper or block your cut in the back, and after a couple of visits, a good barber knows what you're going to ask for before you open your mouth. You just don't get that, at least I never did, in a salon. In a salon, you get a pitch for Paul Mitchell or some other over priced shampoo and conditioners. A barber might sell a comb to you, but your shampoo is your business, buddy.
I was griping about my hair to Tracy today on the way back from Lowe's where we were looking at plants and lampshades and a very strange pit bull in the parking lot. He was some kind of a low rider pit. Short legs, good face, great temperament, which was convenient since I ran her down in the lot and caught her for her owner after she slipped out of her collar. Nice pup; I still have my fingers, face, and throat. Good doggie.
We were on the way back, and I griped about my hair, and I griped about my barber being on vacation, and she told me I needed to go see Tony the barber. As it turns out, Tony is quite the popular barber with the men of FSU. He operates out of this shopping center-turned-office-building that some state office lives in around here. Tracy told me that you can get the nudie mags, slipped surreptitiously inside a Sports Illustrated, from him if you ask for it. There used to be a Publix supermarket there, but they built a newer, nicer one and moved away. I was surprised to learn the barber shop is still there.
When I moved to Tallahassee, that was the barber shop I first tried. I used to get my hair cut by this strange guy in there. He used to talk about women, and his divorce, and the dumb broad he picked up at Pizza Hut the night before. He always called them "Pizza Sluts " and laughed at his own joke every friggin' time. I've run across him a few times in a bar here or there making the moves on some bag of low self-esteem as he gets progressively more drunk. He waves, I wave, we ignore each other. Good male relationship there.
I moved on from that barber shop when a new one opened just a couple of doors down from where I worked at the time. It was a regular barber shop, just as I like 'em. Classic barber chairs, combs submerged in that weird bluish green fluid that's supposed to kill the last guy's scalp funk before they run it over your head. But, no nudie mags. Plenty of hunting, fishing, celebrity break-ups, and news; but nope, no nudies.
For me, nudie mags and barber shops will forever be linked. They're like peanut butter and jelly, to tell you the truth. It all goes back to a barber named Fred DiPietro in Parkville, Maryland .
When we moved to Baltimore, we lived in a suburban area named Parkville. Across the street from us, the other houses had Moreland Cemetery just beyond their backyards. It could get really creeping looking early in the morning with fog rolling over the tombstones...
Every few weeks, my brother Matthew and I would go down to the barber shop with our father and we'd get our ears lowered, as pop used to call it. The barber was a large guy named Fred DiPietro, a loud and amiable old school Italian. There were two barber chairs in DiPietro's , but I only remember Fred working there, and always at the same chair. Some days, his uncle, Mimi DiPietro the city councilman would be in there swearing up a blue streak and puffing away on a real stinker of a cigar.
DiPietro's was in a basement with a little sign and the barber's pole out front. You'd go down the short flight of stairs and into the barber shop. Oil paintings on velvet of women, and one of a matador. Dark paint, dark woods, smoke in the air, swearing, buzzing clippers and the smell of hair tonics and shaving cream. It was like descending into a very strange cave where personal grooming rituals were performed.
A few steps down a tiny corridor, and you'd find cheap furniture with a television, tuned to an Orioles game if possible, all surrounding a coffee table.
A magic coffee table.
Piled high on that coffee table was stack after stack of Playboy magazines. A sea of flesh waiting to be caressed by the appreciating gazes of men waiting to get their hair cut. While sitting there waiting on our turns under the clippers and scissors, Fred would be chatting up a storm, telling strange and funny stories. I remember only one thing from only one story he told. A guy hit a horse in the head with a two-by-four because it wouldn't behave. Now, how that helped to make the horse behave, I'll never know. But, those were the kinds of stories you'd hear at DiPietro's. Oh, and Uncle Mimi swearing like a madman. Whew, was that man vulgar. He could blister your ears without breaking a sweat.
That's pretty much the way it went for a few years. We'd go with pop, listen to loud stories, get our haircuts, and stare at the magazines we were sure we'd never see. We'd go home and think of all the bare flesh between those pages that would never know the love and sweet appreciation only our eyes could give.
Actually, we were just plain horny as hell and frustrated as all get-out that we couldn't look at those damned magazines.
Then, we were old enough to walk down the street past Moreland all by ourselves to get our haircuts. We'd get some cash, take a walk down the stretch of dirt and rocks in front of Moreland. It was an awkward walk, as I remember it. The dirt path, not a sidewalk by any stretch of the imagination, was maybe two feet wide. The short wall of the cemetery was topped with something like six or eight feet of wrought iron that stuck out from the brick and then made a bend upward to top it off with decorative spikes.
When you walked this path, you had to be wary of drivers. Not only would cars rub the cubs sometimes, but you'd get the high school kids who'd drive by and hit the horn and scare the living shit out of you. Or, they'd yell, and do much the same. Or, they might toss something at you. I think I got hit in the head with a happy meal one time. No toy, though.
We'd go in, sit down, stare at the magazines, and make nearly incomprehensible replies to Fred's stories. A few monosyllabic grunts here. A couple of "uh-huhs" there. Maybe a nod and a laugh. Laughing at Fred's stories, if you were paying attention and not lusting after periodicals, was usually easier than sleeping in church.
I'm not sure how it happened, but one day, we started looking through the magazines. I'd start at one end, and my brother Matthew would start at the other. I don't remember if Fred told us something like "I won't tell, if you don't tell, and if your mother brings you in here, you'd better read just those fucking Highlights things." Or, if it was an act of silent communication. A wink or a nod; a gesture that let us know that what we read in DiPietro's didn't have anything to do with the rest of the world.
Hell, for all I know, it was just a way to keep two teenage boys quiet and complacent. If that's what it was, then Fred was a damned genius.
So, maybe I'll go and see Tony and ask for one of those nudie mags. Might be one hell of a haircut, and there might even be a good story to be heard while getting my ears lowered.
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