During my second year in graduate school I was as close to a workaholic as I would ever come.  I was getting in at 9 in the morning, working until 10 at night, and doing the whole thing again every day for 6 and 7 days a week.  It was the period in my life that I will forever refer to beginning with “when I was your age…”

One day I just crapped out.  It was Friday afternoon, and I was blasted.  I was trying to write a paper, but the words just weren’t making sense anymore.  I was stubborn, but this was banging my head against a brick wall.  I packed up my crap and headed out the door.

I found myself in my car at the unconscionably early hour of 4 o’clock, completely unaccustomed to having free time this time of day.  What the hell does anyone do on a Friday afternoon?

This cowboy decided to get a haircut.  It was that or watching unpredictable Mexican soap operas at home.  Haircut won, and I knew just the place.  Being a graduate student, I hovered just above the poverty line, lacking both money and inclination for fancy salon visits.  I headed over to my favorite trim factory, the aptly named “5$ Haircut.”  But it was closed for remodeling.  My hair was long and I was screwed.

Let’s cut the shit: I’m a cheap man with simple tastes in hair.  What it boiled down to was, in the entire of Gainesville, I only knew this one place.  I wracked my sleep-addled brain, trying to think of another venue where I could pay a strange-smelling foreign woman to run clippers of questionable cleanliness through my streaming locks of lustrous hair.  Dimly, I recalled seeing such a place might exist down the street.  Fighting increasingly heavy eyelids, I steered the car downtown.

My faint recollections proved correct.  A few blocks down I spotted a promising sign.  “N-Kutz Barber Shop” sounded about right.  Another sign directed me to park in the rear parking lot.  I let myself in through a nondescript rear door.  I gave the place a bleary once-over.  It was about what I expected. There were three chairs in the shop, all of them full at the moment, so I plopped down on a bench to wait.  I had brought a journal article with me to read, so I stuck my nose into that and tried to tune everything else out.  

After about five minutes I was coaxed from the intricacies of bacterial filament polymerization by a nagging suspicion that something wasn’t quite right.  I just couldn’t quite put my finger on what.  I smelled the air.  Seemed OK.  I listened for the sounds of predators or twangy country music.  Nay to either.

A little voice in the back of my head spoke up.  It was the voice you hear when you’ve overslept for a test.  The voice that tells you when someone’s watching you put your money away at the ATM.  It was the voice that speaks up when the shit is about to hit the fan.

Noah, it said, get your head out of that piece-of-shit paper and look around.

You don’t argue with the voice.  I looked straight up from my article like a prairie gazelle that’s just heard a rustle in the high grass.  Hanging on the wall directly in front of me was a sign listing services and their prices.  The first item on the list read:

Afro Kutz- $10

I didn’t have an afro.  Perhaps they were listing alphabetically though.  The second item was:

Jerry Curl- $35

I had never Jerry Curled my hair before.  I hadn’t even been in a barber shop that did that.  In fact, the only place I could think of that would-

Oh no.

I turned my head away from the sign, towards the barber chairs.  A total of 10 people were in various phases of giving or receiving haircuts.  None of them were white.

Oh shit.

I had inadvertently walked into and was now sitting in the lobby of a black barbershop.  This could be bad.

I was torn.  My presence here might be construed as mockery, a provocation of sorts.  I am very careful not to get into situations where- should conflict break along racial lines- I will be hopelessly outnumbered.  Though we rarely speak of it, all white people know this rule.  On the other hand, wasn’t I allowed to batter down these silly boundaries we live with?  Wouldn’t this be the most noble of social experiments?

The little voice answered for me.  What the fuck do you think Noah?  Get your ass out of here, toot sweet!

You don’t argue with the voice.  I turned to bolt, not caring what anyone thought of my hasty retreat.  I reached the narrow vestibule led to the parking lot.  I could see the light of day.  Before I could push the door open, a curtained enclave I hadn’t spotted suddenly parted and an enormous black man emerged.  Before I could duck, he grabbed my arm and wordlessly whisked me back into the shop.  I was babbling something about only having a credit card, but he paid no heed to these words as he forced me into a now-open chair.  My struggles grew feebler as he forced an apron over my head.  I was trapped.  No less than 10 black faces stared at me.  I fought a crazy urge to say “can’t we all just get along?” in my Rodney King voice.

Before my mouth could get me into even more trouble, my apparent barber interposed himself.  He towered above me, eyeing my head speculatively, perhaps preparing to render judgment on the situation in which we found ourselves.  Underneath the apron, I had my cell phone out and had pressed the “9” and the “1.”  I doubted rescuers would arrive in time, but at least my final words would be recorded so the world could know my story.  Finally the barber spoke.

“Yo Dawg, you want a fade1?”

I’ve never discussed what happened in the next 14 minutes, and I never will.  Suffice to say, I emerged, largely unscathed and with the best fade ever sported by a caucasian.

Fig. 1: Police artist sketch of a fade.

1Fade (noun): A haircut characterized by a gradual lengthening of the hair as one approaches the crown of the skull.  Popular among African Americans and individuals of mixed ethnicity.  See photo