Search any street corner, inner city, or rural destination and you will find a barbershop that not only meets styling needs of the populous but also one that caters to the varying dialogue appetites and leanings of its clientele.
What has always fascinated me about the inner workings of the barbershop is that it is truly one of the very few places where there is what Miami Herald columnist Greg Cote calls, "random evidence of cluttered minds." Quite frankly, men have accrued endless tons of invaluable insights and priceless perspectives stored up but have only been able to express them in limited fashion and venues. Truth be told, we have a bunch of things to say but for years have been precluded from saying them.
My personal barber, Atlanta's own, 'Master Dee' is probably best described as an interesting mixture between rap mogul, Snoop Dogg because of his slender physique and the sultry R&B crooner, Barry White because his commanding baritone vocals. A married man with no crumb snatchers as he puts it, Dee always seems to be at ease with the state of the world and never allows himself to be overwhelmed by the "craziness" we often refer to as life and living. Dee has always been as deliberate in his pre-haircut ritual of carefully placing his clippers and work tools in a nice and neat row as he is in cautiously offering his outlook on life, politics, conspiracy theories, soap operas, the weather, sports, who killed JFK, relationships and any other subject matter that catches his fancy.Just recently while reclining in "the chair" waiting for a cut, I asked Dee a probing question. I was curious as to what was the barbershop's secret in compelling men to spill their proverbial guts when it came to the array conversation pieces that have echoed throughout shops all over the country. He thought for a moment with a distant gaze on his face as if he were channeling the responses from the thousands of barbers who had come before him. After his silent and seemingly lengthy personal deliberation, he calmly stroked his ample and disorganized goatee, placed his right foot on the rear rotational bar of the chair and exclaimed "a brotha' always needs another brotha."
Almost instantly, I along with the other patrons scattered throughout this nondescript shop nodded in affirmation and knew exactly what Dee was alluding to. Reduced to its least common denominator, men desperately require other men to vent too and become validated by. What is so interesting about this dynamic is that it has less to do with conversation and quite a bit more to do with the relational and tangible bonding exercise that occurs in barbershops in every corner of the nation.
The validation a man gets from another man through dialogue, storytelling, humor and even the exchange of personal instances of pain and despair not only let him know that he is not alone in his constant pursuit of the prize of manhood but it also connects to him to a fraternity of "brotha's" as Dee so affectionately expressed who can help him "stay up" when the tangible circumstances of time and dictate and often insist that he should instead lay down and die.It would be careless to imply that the history of flawed male to male and male to female interactions at their core can simply be healed by getting a fade and an accompanying shave. It should however be noted that a good "tape" may be the best means to adequately measure the distance between a man's words and his heart.
Tags: Taper Barbershop
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