Hair. What a ridiculous topic of conversation. I remember the famous story of the young man who was jailed during the Labor Day Rodeo in Dillon (this story now rural myth so don’t hold me to my dates—this isn’t fucking journalism) I think in 1971 or ‘72. The “authorities” gave him a haircut against his will (ya think?) supposedly (according to the myth) with sheep shears. All because some “outsider” (anyone with long hair at that time was and outsider/agitator/fuckin’ pinko hippie) had the temerity to take offense at being tormented for being different and got into an altercation with a local citizen offended by the “trouble maker’s” appearance.
So 50 years later we’re going after “drag queens?” Maybe one of the oldest performing art forms known to pan-wo-man-dimodium!? Gender roles, appearances, how people want to be, do, or presume . . . who the fuck cares? I thought that war, the “dress code” battle fought back in my day was won, and put to bed, dead even in the ol’ Murikin backwaters. The fascist streak runs deep in the human psyche, I guess. Fear. Coming to grips with the concept that we are the walking dead merely awaiting our turn at death’s door it appears is difficult for many of us to comprehend. I’m not sure why cuz there’s no getting around it. And what seems so important about “anything” here anyway, when we understand that our time in this fucking blip of consciousness is practically over (almost before we get started)? So in my continuing blip of existence (knock on wood) I often find myself considering the moments I recall.
The Haircut For the first twelve years of my existence, my father was my barber. The fifties and sixties was the age of the crew cut. The Old Man prided himself on his clipper work, delivering a nick-less, even trim. The barber chair, my faded yellow, baby highchair, was the perfect height for clipping my big brother. And as I grew the stack of Sears and Monkey Wards catalogs I sat on disappeared till it became difficult to squeeze my hips between the metal highchair's splayed arms— the baby's tray tossed years ago. The cotton, diamond-pattern tablecloth he used for a drape to catch our hair was pinned tightly around our necks by a diaper safety-pin. Usually, the barber shop was in the kitchen, but late spring through summer we did it on the lawn outside. I can still hear the hum of the electric clipper, smell the oil he used to lubricate the interchangeable heads he'd sharpen by hand, and I remember the feel of that clipper head against my skin, cold to begin, hot at the end. For much of the haircut, Dad used a pink-plastic adjustable comb-attachment to provide the length he aimed to achieve on each pass up the back of the neck and the temples. The top and that border around the crown were where his artistry came in. And, yes, he did master the flat-top as we sat stone still. Humor is how our family showed love, but there was no joking about the quality of the cut. The Old Man took his barbering seriously. I thought that's why when I turned fourteen, the news that I wanted to check out a “real barber” hit him hard. The last couple years I sat in that highchair he'd perfected his “Hitler haircut,” those perfectly shingled sidewalls he'd sported for thirty years, razor thin over the ears then feathered into the cropped palm-tree-top long enough to be parted if not combed. He acted peeved, but He let me go. And now I know after raising two sons why it broke his heart to store his kit, clippers and barber accessories, up on the top shelf in the pantry, never to be used regularly ever again. Because spending that hour or so with us just inches away from our bodies and skin, was the only time he could still spend That close to us the more we grew up and away from him. It was his only chance to make us beautiful. Mark Gibbons
Respectability! Get a job! Grow up! What’s the world coming to when you can’t tell the men from the women? What you persist will resist. And I find it amazing that after all the silly bullshit I’ve seen in my short time here, that we are still unable to accept people for who they are or who they want to be today (or tomorrow) and that we continue espousing “freedom and justice for all” while beaming our beacon of hypocrisy. As Franklin D pointed out when we faced our darkest hours in the Great Depression: there is only fear to be feared. Quite poetic. Whatever you make of that statement, it forces us to consider the power fear has over our actions. What is at the root of it is “the unknown” and “the unknown certainty of the unknown.” It makes me want to do my prayer thing, spin a poem. Play. Whether it be Thorogood, gardening, or poetry, I hope you smile and do what you can to love the day today. peace
Mother May Days May Day and Mother's Day I scrambled across Thompson's rocky tract below the tracks He never cut or grazed to collect a bouquet of buttercups for Mom's praise. So proud of myself, I felt like a grown-up presenting them. She'd place my gifted Fistful of flowers in a small depression-glass shooter used for polite sips of spirits Or shots of whiskey, just the right size. That shiny-bright yellow-cluster crowning The tiny see-through green “V” was a celebration of beauty for her and me. It was The least and best I could do before flying back outside to loose my kite to wind and sky. Mark Gibbons