Tickle Me Barber

I've obviously covered the barber's chair in previous entries. But I just had an experience moments ago I thought worthy to regale.


I sat in the barber's chair, again-- eager to agree with whatever he proposed. "Do you want it like this?" Yes (I don't have a strong preference). 


"Would you like it to go up around your ear, here?" Yes (I really don't have a strong preference). 


It's the same old song and dance. I know my lackadaisical attitude toward my coiffe makes me a more challenging customer than one who knows what he wants-- but I can't help it. I feel as though the barber is in the best position to tell me what will make me look my best, and I'm not going to insist on a specific style that he or she might not otherwise recommend. 


Dealer's choice. You're the professional. Work your magic. I'm here for the show.


Well, this was going on-- and bless him, he was a mum barber who was light on the chit-chat. Things were going well; until the buzzer came out.


He folded my right ear down and really teased one particular spot behind my ear with the humming, vibration of his electric buzzer for what felt like a long time. Too long a time. It went on and on.


Goosebumps. My freshly shorn hair standing on edge. Fuck. It's ticklish.


It's tickling me.


I resisted the urge to start laughing-- and, after an intense moment of concentration, it felt as though it was all falling under control (yet the buzzer was STILL humming and vibrating on that single spot behind my ear!)


Get it together. It'll all be over. Think about baseball. Until:


In the darkness behind my closed eyes, focused on not laughing, my imagination filled the void with a ludicrous image:


In vivid detail, I imagined my barber, dropping the buzzer, and digging his fingers into my ribs, to tickle me.



Sudden, fierce, shocking surprise.


Being tickled in the barber's chair. 


I saw myself, in this renegade, wild imagining, kicking and thrashing my legs and laughing until my eyes watered, with my barber, tickling me incessantly, a mad grin on his face. 


The image was so powerful and inane that the rush of giggles I had surpessed welled up inside me anew.


The control I had wrestled from my laughter was loosened-- and, combined with the still persistent humming of his buzzer-- made me boil over.


I began to laugh out loud in the barber's chair.


No. No, no, no. Is this happening? 


"You okay?" He asked.


"Fine," I was quick to assert. Then, a little embarrassed, I admitted: "It's just ticklish."


Some chuckles around the room. There were others involved, now.


"Oh," he said, not seeming to know what to do. He returned the buzzer to that spot but the image of this man tickling me in my chair was so invasive that it refused to be shaken away.


I started to laugh even before the buzzer returned to my ear.


He paused. "Boy you're really ticklish,"


And just the way he said it, with such frankness, just sent me over the edge.


It was the most embarrassed I've been in a long time. I couldn't hold it in. I just started laughing!


The idea that a barber would purposefully tickle a customer, with the apron on, mid-cut-- such an intimate gesture of familiarity, in such an unlikely place, struck me so completely that the cut was now ruined. 


I had to get out of there.


"I still have the other side," he said, just as shocked as I was that this was happening.


"It's okay," I said, trying to suppress my giggling and make him feel at ease, failing at both. "It's great. I like it this way!" 


An obvious, bald-faced lie-- but laughter was already spilling out the sides of my words and falling to the floor amid bundles of hair that lay in clumps on the ground around his chair. 


"If you're sure," he said, embarrassed himself-- embarrassed for me! 


I got up, we walked to the register. I could feel the eyes of the other barbers, and their customers, staring at me in confusion.


I paid. I tipped. 


"Need a receipt?"


"That's not necessary," I blurted, then turned and walked out.


Even before the door closed behind me I know they could hear me laughing and laughing and laughing, loud and ecstatic, walking through the parking lot back to my car.


I know they watched me through their shop windows. Right? They had to be. I got in my car and shook my head. What had just happened?


The laughter was gone. I started my car and drove, just to get away, but parked one lot over, out of their sight (unless they got out to watch and see which way I went so they could tell the insane asylum people which direction to search.)


I got out my phone and found another barber shop nearby. I still need another 1/2 a haircut.


But not until I get the image of that barber, tickling me, out of my system. 


So, to help try and get over what just happened, I thought I'd write it here. 


Nothing like that's ever happened to me before. 


I hope it doesn't happen again.

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