Previously published on Jeff's blog www.TOStateOfMind.com and author and activist Kevin Powell's www.BKNation.org website.
“Yo Dex, can you cut my hair tomorrow night?”
“Ummm…yeah, come to my suite at, like, midnight,” he replied.
“Cool. Later.” I hung up the phone and lay back on my rock-hard dorm bed and stared at the ceiling tiles. It was Saturday night, but too late to get into anything, not that I ever really got into anything back then. Should I eat the chicken-flavoured noodles or the beef? The portable phone rang to life in my hand.
“Jeff!” Dexter yelled into my ear before I could say hello. “Is that you? What do you mean cut your hair? I’m not cutting your hair guy!”
I could feel my eyes moistening slightly as my homeboy continued rambling on in his high-pitched voice. “Just don’t tell anyone,” I interrupted.
The next day moved sloooow. Watching basketball intramurals in the gym was always exciting. Dinner in the cafeteria was particularly uninspiring, and my roommate Dwayne, ever the conspiracy theorist, set the over-under on how many days earlier our meal had been first prepared at six. I bet a few cartons of cigarettes on over.
My feet felt heavy as I walked over to Dexter’s suite. Edwards Hall, the upperclassmen men’s dormitory consisting of four three-story buildings arranged in a square with exposed walkways and stairwells, seemed oddly quiet.
Dexter, the de-facto barber for the Canadians on campus, who I’d known since I was five, was already waiting when I walked into his empty suite. I gave him a pound and he asked, “Are you sure you want to do this guy?”
“Yeah man, just get it over with.” I sat down on the barber chair, a high, swiveling lab chair that someone must have jacked from a science classroom at Cooper Complex many moons before.
“Are you sure?”
“Holy! Just do it, man!”
Dexter shook his head and clicked on his clippers. As the first few clumps of hair fell in front of me he searched my eyes for second thoughts. I kept my face straight.
* * *
When I was a kid my dad used to cut my hair. It was not a happy experience. He’d set up a chair at the side of the house and go to work, pushing my head back and forth, smacking me when I didn’t turn the way he wanted. There was no hand-mirror for me to look into to follow his progress and I had no say in what he was doing. Hair would fall here and there and after what seemed like forever, he’d be done.
My two older brothers would joke that my hair had looked better before the haircut. This was the early ‘90s, but there were no high-top fades or Gumbi cuts for me; no cool parts or lines shaved in either. My dad had all these weird rules about not cutting the sides too low or lining up the front. You’re supposed to have hair on your head boy, he’d say. There were no words to describe the kind of haircuts I got, but you better believe my brothers came up with names for them. “The Bird’s Nest.” “The Square.” “The Muff.” It was bad.
Even when my oldest brother got promoted from giving fresh cuts to his high school basketball teammates in the locker room to cutting in a real barbershop, I still had to endure those “home school” haircuts.
Then, the summer before my grade nine year, my dad went home to Jamaica for three weeks. That first Sunday that he was gone my mom gave me a bus ticket and told me to go see my brother at the barbershop. He hooked me up. And again the next Sunday. And the Sunday after that.
When my pops came home he inspected my head.
“Who cut your hair?”
“I sent him to Uwe, Carl,” my mom replied for me. “Doesn’t he look nice?” My dad said nothing.
I never looked back.
Having an older brother for a barber was wicked. I didn’t have a lot of cool clothes or a big sneaker collection, but I always had a fresh haircut. Even when I let my hair grow into an afro in my last couple years in high school, my brother kept it lookin’ crispy. Perfectly round with an immaculate fade at the bottom; the hair product ads in the Essence and Source magazines called it a Brooklyn Blowout. I was the man.
By the time I went away to college in Alabama I was spoiled. The thought of some unfamiliar barber getting too happy with my hairline was too much for me. When my parents drove out of sight at the end of my first weekend on campus, headed back to Toronto after driving me down for my first semester of college, I rode with my cousin to her apartment, where her roommate gave me my first braid-up.
* * *
When Dex had my one-level just about even, his roommate Chris walked in. “Whoa!” He took one look at me and ran right back out the door yelling, “Whooaaa!” I groaned, knowing exactly what was coming.
He returned with my roommate and two or three more friends. They all wore expressions of disbelief.
“Wow,” my boy Geoff whispered. “You cut it?” They all walked circles around me, closely examining my hair follicles.
Chris disappeared into his room to answer the phone, and I could hear him through the slightly open door. “Jeff cut his hair... Yeah, big Jeff… Nah, it doesn’t look bad.”
More guys walked in to gawk, as if there was a Jumbotron on top of the building beaming my larger-than-life haircut to the whole dorm. They asked why I did it.
“It was time,” I said.
* * *
That weekend I had gone to my first journalism convention, a regional gathering of Black journalists in Birmingham, with three of my classmates. I had met a lot of other students and plenty of experienced reporters and editors. On the Saturday night, one editor that I liked a lot asked me to participate in the “Dress for Success” section of the evening’s workshop for young journalists. Confused, but smelling nothing suspicious, I happily agreed to help.
Backstage, she told me that the audience would debate whether I looked presentable as a journalist interviewing for a job. I was wearing a black dress shirt, black dress shoes and grey dress pants held up by my roommate’s black Guess? belt with a shiny silver “G” for a buckle; and, of course, my freshly corn-rowed hair. She asked me to take off my necktie and pushed me onstage to the wolves.
“He needs a tie,” someone said.
“And a jacket,” someone else added.
A short debate broke out over whether a shirt and tie was a good enough first impression. “Buy a suit,” the editor said, to both the audience and me.
“His belt buckle is too gaudy,” some hater said.
“His shoes too,” another one said. “Look at the buckle!”
Then silence.
And more silence.
Then finally, “What about his hair?” The auditorium exploded.
“Child, you can’t get a job with them plats!”
“Are you trying to work for XXL Magazine or something? MTV? BET?”
“He’ll scare white folks!”
“Hook up a fade right there young brother. Problem solved.”
My friends joked about it the whole ride home. They had such a great time laughing that they didn’t hear the wheels turning in my head. My decision was made.
* * *
When Dexter finished touching up my line-up, everyone hung around like sports fans who had just witnessed a classic game and didn’t want to leave yet. I brushed myself off a bit and studied myself in the bathroom mirror as my friends watched. All of my earlier fears were gone. I liked what I saw. I felt like a new person. I felt grown.
“Do you want it?” Dex held up the grocery bag he’d stuffed all of my hair into. I shook my head no. I didn’t want it. That weekend, at the age of twenty, I saw adulthood in front of me and I decided to take a step toward it. Just like my daring escape from my dad’s clippers, I wasn’t looking back.
