Shaved!

"Por favor, Señor, can you make me look like the guys on the walls?"

Ever Wonder What A $35 Dollar Ice Cream Cone Looks Like?

Yeah, me either. But I got to find out when I was naive enough to order gelato in a touristy shop with no prices posted. What a scam! At least it was yummy.



If you're wondering what the hell is up with my haircut, it seems clear my Washington Heights Dominican barber did not understand my instructions. But when the first thing he removed from my face was the hair that attaches the right side of my mustache to my beard, objection seemed pointless. So I just decided to be zen about it and let him finish the job. If figured I wasn't getting the haircut and shave I had in mind. So why not see what he had in mind? Apparently what he had in mind was "Guido".

Finally a job for which Adam Sandler is qualified ...

... blow drying my hair.

The Mad Haircutter

Suppose you get a bad haircut.



No shame in that ... happens to everyone.



So you ask your friend with the hair clippers to fix it for you.



Unfortunately you fail to consider that your friend is a lunatic who considers even banal events to be opportunities for performance art.



You also fail to fully appreciate the implications of this event occurring in the presence of friends with cell-phone cameras.



Nor does it occur to you that your lunatic friend might get off on the idea.



What would happen then?



Well ... you'll get your haircut fixed, to be sure.



But be prepared for an unexpected turn of events.



And, of course, it goes without saying that the whole thing is bound to end up on the Internet.

Barbershop Beauties

I was getting my usual buzz cut and shave at my usual Dominican barbershop here in The Heights and this book caught my eye. As I flipped through the pages I had a clash of emotions.



Is it just me, or are these mens' haircut books really, really gay? For starters the title just screams gay porn, "Men in Action VII". Booyah! And don't forget the thrilling sequel, "Men in Action VIII - Latin Fever!"

Almost nowhere else in pop imagery do you find men depicted solely as objects of beauty. Sure, exercise magazines offer pretty men with the thin pretext of athletics. But the pretext is there and it's key.

Men can't just be beautiful in America. They can only be accidentally or incidentally attractive as a function of something else ... sports, war, leadership, etc.

Romance novel covers offer pretty men, but the text is all about strength and heroism. Men presented as attractive without pretext ... gay. Anyone who looks at them, also gay.

But barbershop books break this pattern ... pretty men, presented as and because they are pretty, doing nothing.

Barbershop books were probably the first images of pretty men being pretty that were ever available to me as a boy. I've always found these books erotic. And since I have 30+ years of history with these books, I'm hard wired pretty deep when it comes to them. I never really cared about the haircuts, just the pretty men. There's something clandestine, exciting and yet skeezy about having erotic thoughts at a non-erotic venue like a barbershop. So flipping through the pages I felt just a bit self conscious. "I may as well stand on this chair and proclaim to the whole shop, 'I'm a fag and I wanna fuck all these guys!'" I thought to myself.

I "read" the book as long as I dared and put it back down. Odd that of all the sorts of outrageous things I'm prone to doing in public, this fairly innocent act would be the one to make me uncomfortable.

So I closed my eyes and went back to being shaved by another man (not gay at all) and pondering these deep matters of great importance. By the time my haircut was done I had mentally composed this blog post and wanted a photo of the book to go with it.

Again, quite out of character for me, it took some psyching myself up to do it. "If lusting over the book didn't scream 'I'm gay' surely composing a photo with the book will," I thought. Rather than asking permission I decided to just grab the book, place it in context, snap a photo and make a quick get away.

But instead of the shop owner skreeching, "My God! There's been a fag in our midst lo these many minutes! Get the torches and pitchforks!" to my surprise exactly the opposite occurred.

My impromptu photo session created a sudden flurry of interest. The Dominican barbers all came over to look at the image on my iPhone. My own, previously almost entirely expressionless barber smiled. "Look, barbershop art," I said.

He asked if I worked at a magazine. He actually seemed to beam with pride.

I think he felt that I'd captured the essence of his professional life with this image. It seemed to bring him some pleasure that I'd shown him the art in his daily life. I emailed him a copy of the image.

We all have art in our daily lives, of course. Sometimes we just need a little help seeing it.

As I walked away it occurred to me that barbershop books are one of the few instances in public where it's accepted that men may look at pretty men without the automatic assumption of it being gay as a pejorative. Oh sure, it's plenty homoerotic. But it's homoerotic with deniability, like pro wrestling and bodybuilding exhibitions.

We need more of that.

Or maybe just less of a societal need for deniability.

Or how about more books full of pretty men?

Yeah. That sounds about right.

Buzz!

From dork to bad ass in 5 minutes.

The Horror!

There is now a SuperCuts on St. Marks place. A mother fucking SuperCuts for fuck's sake!

Fuck!

That's it. The East Village is soooooo dead.