I’m in a Neglectful 25-year Relationship, and it’s With my Barber

Picture a small, narrow room; poorly lit and just a little bit too warm, the faint smell of mould hangs in the air like a phantom. On the right, are two black barber’s chairs, and on the left, are a pair of cream-coloured sofas. The sofas are filled with people, and the room’s sole barber – my barber – is cutting the hair of a customer, making the cramped space within the barber shop feel even smaller.

The middle-aged man in the barber’s chair has just made the mistake of asking my barber for an explanation as to why he had opened the shop almost two hours later than the displayed opening time outside, and in response my barber has stopped cutting his hair and is now screaming at him in a thick Jamaican accent. I’m seated on the sofa closest to my barber, and my only reaction is to feel annoyed with the man in the barber’s chair, because he has just added 15 minutes to my waiting time.

Now you might be wondering why I would be annoyed with the man in the chair instead of my barber – after all, all he did was ask a fair question. Well, it’s because this man, like myself, has been getting his hair cut by my barber for years, so frankly, he should have known better.

My barber is an angry, short-tempered man who could not care less about customer service. Never mind what the sign outside says, there has never been a time where his shop has been open come 9:00 a.m. He routinely stops mid-haircut to take a phone call or to casually chat with someone walking by, and he never greets anyone that walks through his shop door. I learned years ago to never try and get a haircut around lunchtime because he is liable to leave the shop – sometimes with a customer still sitting in his chair – without saying a word, to go and get something to eat.

Since having first sat in his chair as an 11-year-old boy, I have seen multiple people call him out on his poor behaviour, and it has always resulted in the same thing: a high-volume cursing match, followed by a customer leaving never to return. My barber runs his business as if he had a secret trust fund that would activate upon its failure. His one saving grace – other than the fact that his shop is exactly 6 minutes from my house – is that he gives an excellent haircut for the same price that he has been charging since I was 11.

Over the years, there were several times when I had grown tired of my barber’s antics and so sought the services of someone else. For the most part, these extramarital haircuts were fine, but only ever just fine. They were each missing that special level of customisation that I could never put into words but my real barber gave me consistently without direction; after decades of cutting my hair, he knew exactly what my hairline needed. So, no matter how many times I left in those earlier years, I always eventually came back to his door.

Now, after 20 plus years, I don’t even really notice the things he does anymore. It’s only after some other less experienced customer has made a comment, does it occur to me that it’s not normal for your barber to pause mid-haircut to debate for 10 minutes about whether or not 9/11 was a hoax. But even then, I just shrug my shoulders before going back to watching videos on my phone. It just doesn’t bother me anymore. I accepted who my barber was a long time ago, and now I expect everyone who enters his shop to do the same, so that we can all get our haircuts and leave as speedily as possible. Hmm… I wonder if this counts as a trauma bond.