RANDOM STUFF: A BOOB IN THE FACE

I used to go to a barber. It was one of those places with the red & white spinning sign outside, and he also sold random stuff in there, like slippers and rhubarb. It was run by this little Turkish dude with a cut-throat razor which he would STROP STROP STROP behind my back and he would use it to cut the hair on the back of my neck short. It REALLY hurt. I didn't care until the end when he would spin me round in the chair and stand there with his hand out. "Teeep?" he would say. Bloody cheek.

I kept this up until I met Caro, back in '99. "You need to go to a stylist," she told me. I asked her why.

"The only difference is that they offer you coffees and make you read Elle magazine," I seem to remember saying. But Caro had a good comeback.

"You get a boob in the face," she said. "Those stylists lean right over you." She made it sound like a socially acceptable form of lapdance.

And she was right! I totally got boob in the face first time out. And sometimes you get a head massage from some young glamour chick who would otherwise never touch an old fellow.

Mind you, sometimes you get a dude. Disturbingly, you still get the head massage and that close, intimate, personal contact. I do not think I am haircut-gay, but I am certainly haircut-curious. Some of those young men are VERY talented.

Lately, I have been seeing Natasha. She's not too bad with the chat, and more importantly Caro likes her work. She probably charges ten times what that Turkish dude asked AND she always gets a teeep. I miss that rhubarb though.