Emanicipation Day on Friday promises to be a special day. I am due to return to winning ways at the race track. It meant that I would have to visit the barber. You see, I still have parochial ideas that hairdressers are for women and those “softer” men. Normally though, I only visit the barber for weddings. Other people’s weddings always seem much more enjoyable if only because you know they will not be smiling so much in a few years’ time. It was Thursday and my barber was out of the country, somewhere in the Safari, probably clipping Lions and there were no assurances from his sexy daughter Jags that he would be back. A “former” friend told me about this guy in Santa Cruz. His name was Alec and his father had been a big-time race-horse owner and he knew just how to give a good shave to a “soon to be successful” owner. Alec’s chin should have been enough warning, but I was curious. On it he wore a vertical one-inch strip of dark beard running down from his lower lip like a rogue piece of velcro. Neat and perfectly straight-edged, it was a testament to his skill with the cut-throat. He had fashioned a mini-Mohican with it!
“We’re one of the last places in Trinidad that does this, what with all the modern inventions today and the high cost of mistakes,” he said as he pushed me into the seat, tipped me backwards and wrapped my face in a hot wet towel. “I hear you are about to win the feature on Friday. What’s the name of the horse…I need to win some money,”Alec asked. I thought to myself, “What’s going on here, this is suppose to be a secret. I am supposed to win a heap of money.” After five minutes of silence he asked again, and after ten (clearly realising that I was not talking), he angrily whipped away the hot towel and a brush was shoved in my face. Round and round, he went, slipping soap into each curve and crevice. “It’s an art, this….,” he said. “But there’s fewer and fewer people who do it! Most of them have died already…..,” he paused and I asked glumly, “Of old age eh?”. Up to now I do not know if he heard me. He continued, “Even if you train someone, there is no one for them to practise on. I’ve been doing it for twenty five years.” He downed his brush, and drew out his glittering blade. There are shaves, close shaves and there is surgery. It’s hard to tell a man (and a somewhat deaf one at that), particularly as you have refused to acknowledge his question on your horse, that you like your features the way they are, even if you are paying him.
Scrape, scrape, scrub went the blade. I was all aglow! I think it had something to do with the blood vessels being nearer the surface. Then he threw what felt like acid at my cheeks and covered me in talcum powder. Relief was the only feeling that came to mind. As I left the saloon, his cheering words, “You won’t have to shave for three months now” still ringing in my ears, I stroked my cheeks. All was baby’s bottom smoothness. What was the point of this, I wondered? I really shouldn’t have worried. I was about to encounter puberty all over again. The next morning I awoke to realise that my face was covered in a thick rash! By evening, my face had erupted into a mass of red spots! Nervously I stared at the mirror, and imagined permanent hibernation, until I had made a full recovery. What about no recovery or…partial recovery? Would I become the human guinea pig for quack barbers? What about all the plans I had? This, people said, was what a real shave is about! Nowadays, most men opt for the disposable and a handful of aerosol foam. A quarter of all men probably use electric razors. Ten percent have beards! We have lost touch with our chins and are in the process of allowing a noble craft to die. I was lucky to find someone who was able to do it all, I was told. However, now I didn’t feel so lucky, in fact I was seriously contemplating the wisdom of my actions all I had done is like any other cheeky race-horse owner not given away his winners, but society has enough martyrs.
My old friend Nigel, a racing connoisseur, suggested certain actions which border on imprisonment for the goodly barber and recommended certain paddock acquaintances of his. I dismissed these in my urgency to find a cure. I consulted the experts! At Bishwah’s in Mayaro, a confection of mahogany and engraved mirrors, they claim to have been stripping men’s chins since 1921! More importantly these people didn’t seem to be interested in horse-racing. “You had a real shave” said Errol Gerard, manageress of the shop. “You had a real old shave. Back before the disposable, a man would come in for a shave to last him two or three days. He gave you one of those and your skin wasn’t used to it.” Mr Gerard knows he’s one of the last proponents of a dying art. It is nowhere near as popular as it once was. Even Gerard doesn’t use one. “I am not too keen on the idea of it,” he said. But he knows how to train (people that is) unlike some race-horse trainers I know. “When I was learning we used to use a soaped-up balloon. Every now and then one would go ‘pop’!” “The trick,” he said, blade in hand, “is the placing of the fingers.” I looked at him and he was really serious, there was a glint in his eye, the sort you see in the eyes of a Spanish bullfighter as he goes into the ring! He tried to teach me, but I was an incompetent student. I loved the idea of it. I adored the shape of the blade; relished the chance to show it to a certain “friend.” But regardless of how hard I tried, I couldn’t get my digits in the right place. After all this, I am seriously thinking of growing a beard, aren’t you? As for holidays, there is still the television and my racing paper, the Newsday.
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