The Worst Cut is the Deepest

So I have finally found a barber I like, after a year and a half of overpaying at discount salons in an attempt to remain within my suburban haircuttery comfort zone established since birth. While the proud males of my family have found their niche in a man named Mario, I never quite had the fortitude or the requisite simple man's haircut required to enter an all-male barber shop. It's like entering a locker-room with a micropenis. After months of getting haircuts at a shady "unisex" salon that pretty most certainly made me look like a lesbian, I finally found Jacob, a very well-priced Russian man at a barber shop two minutes away from my place of employ. It has been perfection all six or seven times I've been there. I know what to expect, he is fast, curteous, and takes pride in his work. However, we have little to no rapport and it kills me inside. I'm actually starting to feel like I do something to upset him by showing up every 4 weeks. In my effort to have a normal human interaction, things go south so quickly the best option becomes indefinite periods of awkward silence. I am learning to roll with it, but Jacob is a special kind of person, and when I visit him I may be getting more than a hair-cut sometimes. No, not anything dirty like that.

November

CT: "Oh, How was your trip to Russia, was it a vacation, or just visiting family?"

/extremely proud to have remembered Jacob's trip to Russia.

Jacob: "I visited my father's grave."

CT: "Oh, wow, that must have been moving."

Jacob: "I had never seen it before."

/silence for the rest of haircut

January (Today)

Jacob: "Happy New Year."

CT: "Thanks, have you been having a good start to the year?"

Jacob: "No. I lost my mother last week."

Cy: "Oh god, I'm so sorry to hear that."

Jacob: .........

/silence for five minutes

/SPCA commercial about abandoned animals comes on with line; 'every day, there are animals suffering in our city'

Jacob: "There are people suffering in this city."

/silence for the rest of the haircut

I give up. I can not compete with this. I will go and I will say hello and I will sit in the fucking chair and I will mind my own business and let him do his perfect work. I love not talking, that's fine. I am clearly doing Jacob no favors with the small talk. My patronage has brought with it tremendous grief and still he cares about his work, his exquisite straight razor neck-shaving work. I'm sorry about your mom, Jacob. I wish you knew that I feel that way, but maybe only because it would comfort me. There are people suffering in this city, after all. And I am not one of them, and I should be grateful this year and every year that that is the case.