Budget Sadism on Wall St

So my hair was getting fuzzy and I went to my favorite barber shop down here in financial land, a Bukharan Jewish place (like so many in the city) across from the client site. I had gotten a couple of fine cuts there and spoken some Russian too.

But not today. This guy hardly said a word after I told him to cut it short, he just broke out the clippers and went to work. Short was the request, short it was gonna be. But that wasn't the problem. He cut the sides and back, and then went to work on the detailing. Back and forth along my neck and my ears with the clippers. Put on a clipper extension, do it again. Scrape scrape scrape on my neck. At one point in time, with no warning, he stuck the edge of the clipper in my ear. He didn't ask "Do you want to keep these sideburns?" He just got rid of them. This took like 10 minutes.

The guy was like a fetishist. And this whole time the top of my head was uncut. So I asked if he was gonna do that and he blithely started cutting, no "how would you like it?" no nothing. I'm not going back there. Never before has the delicate dependency one has on the haircutter been clearer.