Tag Archives: haircuts

Non-fiction

Nothing.

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Nothing is more discouraging than having nothing to say, nothing to do except stare out a window at a coffee shop at listless people on a Tuesday morning. I took the week off from work, thank God, but I’m still thinking about it and what shitstorm I’ll come back to next Monday. But why worry now? Just enjoy the time off.

The coffee shop is crammed with customers. I waited twenty minutes for my coffee, and my cheese Danish was cold. It’s not really a coffee; it’s espresso with hazelnut syrup. I hate hazelnut usually, but they make it better here.

There’s nothing today except writing and walking. I’ll walk for five miles in the afternoon and listen to a podcast about football.

It’s that time of year again. I watched two games last night. One of them was a blowout from the first quarter, so I switched to the other game, which was, on the other hand, sort of competitive. The Washington Commanders upset the Cincinnati Bengals, who were a seven-point favorite in Cincinnati, mind you. The Bengals have a shitty defense, or at least no pass defense, so the rookie quarterback of the Commanders, Jayden Daniels, tossed it all over the yard on the Bengals and put up over thirty points by the end of the game. He’s playing like the rookie of the year so far, the Heisman Trophy winner who looks much better than the media darling Caleb Williams who was the first overall pick in the NFL draft this year.

Many experts had predicted that the Cincinnati Bengals would go to the Super Bowl because of their elite quarterback and wide receiver, but that doesn’t include their trashy defense. How will they beat anyone with that? Now they’re 0-3 with a narrow chance of making it to the playoffs. Statistics show that an NFL team has a 3-4% chance of getting there. It will take three more weeks before the Bengals make it back to five hundred even. That’s a long way away. My team, the Steelers, are 3-0 and could be 6-0 by the time the Bengals get to 3-3. I don’t like Cincinnati’s chances as of now, but you never know in this league.

There were many upsets over the weekend. I still can’t believe the Carolina Panthers, who were winless before Sunday with the Red Rifle at quarterback, who used to be a Cincinnati Bengal by the way, who got up from the couch and put on his uniform, beat the Las Vegas Raiders. He threw for over three hundred yards, 319 yards precisely, and three touchdowns. That’s damn impressive. The Raiders must not have watched any tape of the Red Rifle. He’s an old quarterback whom no one had expectations for. Not that I’m predicting that the Panthers will make the Super Bowl, let alone the playoffs, but it just proves that it has been an unpredictable season so far.

I would’ve never expected a 0-3 record for Joe Burrow and the Bengals. Maybe the so-called NFL experts should focus more on defenses and running games because those are the foundations of any football team from high school to the pros, instead of looking at teams based on how talented their quarterbacks are. But we live in the age of fantasy teams, where fantasy player points count over the actual X’s and O’s.

Anyway, the football week is over now. I’ll drag my feet through Tuesday and Wednesday before another football game on Thursday night between the Cowboys and Giants. Yawn. Both teams bore me. I’ll wait six more days before Sunday when the other games start and won’t know what I’ll do with myself until then besides getting a haircut before going back to work next week. The barbershop can’t be too crowded on a Tuesday. I’ll wait and see this afternoon after a five-mile walk in the heat.

My apartment manager invited me to a meet-n-mingle tomorrow night at the apartment complex. I don’t feel like going because I don’t socialize much, being rusty and all around people, and I get uncomfortable. It’s not that I don’t like them, but I just have no words, and I end up listening to someone ramble on about themselves, and I’m only partially listening, and when they ask me a question, I don’t have an answer because my mind was somewhere else in the first place. Staying inside will be better while meet-n-mingle is going on. Maybe I’ll visit for twenty minutes before moving on. She said the corporate people will show up too, as if I’d been anxiously waiting for them. What would I want with the corporate workers of this apartment complex? It wouldn’t matter if I’d never met them.

Non-fiction

Living on Instinct

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I moved outside to a warmer table that wasn’t underneath an air conditioner. It was quiet out there on the patio. I left the table, came back, and saw that my backpack was gone. I thought it wouldn’t be so bad if it was stolen. It had valuable things, but nothing like my laptop. I could’ve lived with the loss. But when I came back and saw that it was gone, I panicked. I looked around. It couldn’t possibly have been stolen.

Then the barista came outdoors, holding my backpack and smiling. I was relieved. My first guess was that the barista had taken it to prevent it from being stolen. But a man came up to me with long black hair and a toothless smile and said, “You left your backpack outside, man.” So he’d taken it inside because he thought I’d lost it. What a Good Samaritan. But at the same time I should’ve yelled at him for touching my stuff when I’d left it there on purpose to mark my territory, to show everyone the table was mine. My heart stopped racing. I could relax, but not too much because the day would carry too much weight.

That was Friday. I got a haircut finally. A barber smiled at me and asked if I was a walk-in. I said yes. He told me to wait a second. There was a man before me sitting on the waiting couch. The barber called me first and skipped over the other man.

The other man said, “Oh, I thought you were calling me since I was here first.”

The barber told him he would have to wait. The man sat on the couch again and moped. Poor man. I should’ve given up my spot, but I didn’t.

My barber was very soft spoken, so soft spoken that I thought I was losing my hearing. I listen to a lot of loud music through my headphones, so I figured it could’ve been hearing loss. I’ve been dealing with a lot of ringing in my ears, but it could be all in my mind, or the man was too soft-spoken to be heard all the way. Everything around him was louder, so his voice was lost in a sea of noise. I kept having to ask, “What?” I was worried.

He asked what I wanted, and I told him the usual: three on the sides and back and a little off the top. He asked if I wanted a three on both sides. I thought he was insane. I told him no and repeated a three on both sides and a three on the back, a little off the top. So he started shaving my head with the three, all the while talking.

His first question was if I was gay or straight. I didn’t think that mattered, and I didn’t think the question was appropriate. But I’m a nice, open man, so I told him I was straight. He was gay. And I live in a predominantly gay community, which he’d said, and I told him I knew. Then he began to mention all the different places to eat and drink at in this town. I could barely hear what he said. He said he was from Seattle, was born and bred in Indiana, and had moved to Palm Springs. He said Seattle was beautiful this time of year: the right temperature and everything was in bloom. I still haven’t gone to Seattle but plan to go sometime, as I’ve heard so many wonderful things. But I don’t plan on traveling anytime soon.

He snipped the top with scissors after shaving the rest of my head. Then he rubbed warm shaving cream along the sides of my face and pulled out a razor, the kind that barbers use to shave men’s beards. It scared me because as he was shaving me, he kept talking about restaurants to eat at and Indiana. I thought he should’ve focused on shaving me instead of talking. Luckily I didn’t walk away with any cuts, but he was a professional. He should’ve known how to shave me and talk at the same time. I tipped him twelve dollars and went on my way back home on foot. I won’t get another haircut for about the next two months.