It had been several decades since he first felt that rush. The rush of having someone’s entire persona in your hands. The rush of being gifted the ability to completely make or break someone’s day. Since then it has become a daily occurrence. Forty years of being the deciding factor in whether or not someone makes that sale, whether someone is found guilty or not guilty, whether she says yes to him as he drops to one knee. It’s an incredible power to have, and as the vibrations ran through his hands, he could hardly believe this was the last time he would be here.
How many had there been, he wondered? Certainly hundreds. Almost definitely thousands. No one in his situation would truly be able to say for certain, but then again the numbers didn’t matter. All that mattered was that this final cut counted for something. In what was a surreal moment for him, the same face greeted him in the mirror as the one that had greeted him on that first occasion all those years ago. His face had aged, though not in a way that was anything other than graceful - the smooth texture of his skin and striking grey beard meant that he looked incredibly good for his age - however, the face that stared back at him hadn’t aged at all. It was a face untouched by the striking hammer of time.
How could it be? He wondered, confused as to how one could be untainted by the ageing process. At the risk of sounding mad, he asked the young man on the squeaking leather chair in front of him to explain this bizarre sensation. It had been forty years since he had last seen the face, the old man explained, but he was almost certain that it was the exact face from his past. The expression on the young man’s face only managed to match rather than rectify the confusion of the old man.
Reliable as it ever was, the smell of barbicide swam through the room and managed to battle its way through the old man’s nasal hair enough to wake him up from his confused daze. He snapped out of it and promptly asked the question he had asked all of those hundreds of times before.
“What would you like doing today?”
As the young man explained the cut that he desired, the old man could barely take it in transfixed by the memories of the past. He wasn’t always such a sentimental person, three ex-wives and a family he doesn’t have anything to do with will tell you that. Truth be told, outside of cutting hair he didn’t really have much going on for himself. Not that he wasn’t a good person, he was certainly well respected by everyone in the town. He had been invited to countless weddings, birthday parties, anniversaries. He had been credited for the joy brought about by new work, new families, new beginnings, for just about every man in town - perceived as something of a lucky charm for people seeking bigger things.
Maybe that was the issue, he thought. Perhaps the process of being the lucky charm but never the lucky one was a curse that had been placed upon him. Always the bridesmaid and never the bride. He chuckled to himself at the thought of himself wearing a bridesmaid's dress, and there certainly would have been plenty of others chuckling if that were ever to come to a reality.
The young man asked if everything was okay, but the old man simply said that it was unimportant and insisted on proceeding with the haircut. As he gently lent the young man’s head over the sink and began to lather shampoo gently through his locks under the steady flow of the hot tap, he apologised for the lack of small talk saying that he wasn’t feeling quite himself today.
As he was returned to an upright position to have his head towel dried, so too did the young man’s concern towards the old man return. He asked what was bothering him, but the old man insisted that it didn’t matter and seized the opportunity to get a ‘reminder’ on what exactly he was doing to the young man’s hair. Fortunately, the response was a classic, a cut that had never quite dropped out of the public consciousness over his forty years of cutting hair - and regardless of whether or not he was concentrating, he would be able to do a half-decent job, a luxury also afforded to him by being one of the only remaining barbers in town.
Knowing that the conversation was going to be on the quiet side, the old man approached the ancient radio and turned the volume dial up. He had exclusively listened to the same station in the shop since he had opened, regardless of the changes in music taste of the day. He feared that switching channels would impact his ability to cut hair. His ability to invoke joy into the lives of others through something as simple as a slight refresh to their image. He wasn’t always a fan of the music of the day, but he always preferred that to being a disappointment to people.
He smiled to himself at this thought, and as he looked up he realised he had coasted through the entire experience of cutting the boy’s hair. He lifted a mirror for the boy to check the back, and without a shred of uncertainty, he nodded with a smile. Another happy customer, the old man thought to himself. The boy paid in cash and gave the old man a tip, and the old man reciprocated by wishing him good luck in his endeavours.
The old man locked the door behind him and closed the shutters. As he gently caressed the floor with a broom one last time until the hair was collected into a neat pile, he pondered:
“What on earth do I do now?”
Georgia Hope is a photographer based in North London. Check out her Instagram @photo.georgia.