Jimmy at work in his shop
“You like Greek?” whispered Jimmy in my ear. Instead of nodding my head with Jimmy’s clippers hovering close to my ear, I breathed a steady yes.
“Milo’s - down the street — they have new management.” I haven’t been there for years, I told Jimmy. I remember they had good lamb.
“The best,” said Jimmy.
I haven’t been to a barbershop, a real barber shop for years either. Probably thirty years or more. Sometime in the seventies or eighties, I began going to stylists and salons. Started with razor cuts and shampoos. I liked the little extra bit of attention, but mostly it was because barbers never did what you told them. If you said, don’t touch the sides and leave it long in the back, they’d just get out the electric clippers and zip it all off anyway. And afterwards, they’d get out the comb and scissors and pretend to shape the little that was left.
Just leave the sides, I told Jimmy.
“Okay, just a little trim around the ears and the back short,” he said. I sat back in the comfortable chair and thought about how long it had been since I’d been to a barber, then when I’d first gone to one — with my Dad. I couldn’t have been very old, probably five or six ’cause I remembered the upholstered board the barber had placed over the arms of his chair for me to sit on. It was a three-chair shop on 11th street south-west in Calgary, just a couple of blocks from the Birkett Manor on 17th Ave where we lived. We probably walked there, Dad and I, but I don’t remember that part, just him sitting in one of the chairs reading a magazine while the old guy buzzed and snipped around my head.
Jimmy reached up and removed my glasses and placed them on the shelf. How much for a trim?
“Fifteen dollars.” I asked if he took credit cards.
“No, just cash.” I fished in my pockets. All I found was a five-dollar bill. I don’t have enough cash I told Jimmy.
“It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it.”
Jimmy continued to snip and clip and I realized that for Jimmy it wasn’t about the money, or the hair, it was about being here — day after day, year after year, and chatting with the regulars and the occasional stranger like me who wandered in for a trim, or a shave or a buzz-cut. The number of young guys in Jimmy’s shop surprised me. All five or six chairs were filled with guys under thirty, most probably under twenty. While I was there, a half-dozen more came in and sat waiting.
Jimmy took his time, even though shaping the tiny amount of hair I have left on my scalp is more of an act of faith than anything else. Jimmy stopped once to take a phone call and waved to someone passing by on the street. Unlike the stylists I had gone to over the years, he kept the chair angled away from the mirror and toward the storefront window facing the street. Jimmy’s chair is the first one at the front of the shop. He had the best view and I sensed he spent as much time looking out the window as I did, while he worked his clippers over my head and in my ears and behind.
“You want your eyebrows done? They’re too long.” Sure, I said and closed my eyes as his scissors clipped, and clipped, and clipped some more over my brows. I heard a different, higher pitched sound and felt Jimmy reach over and expertly trim my moustache with a couple of deft swipes, then work deeper into my ears. I’d been in the chair now almost half and hour. He must be done soon, I thought, but then another quiet whir began as Jimmy’s hand pressed hard into my shoulder. He had a hand massaging unit on his hand and worked the vibrating magic fingers across my shoulders, across my back and around my neck, smoothing out the tension like an iron smooths out wrinkles. When Jimmy finished, he whisked my face with a soft bristled brush. He splashed a few drops of perfumed liquid in his hands and rubbed it into my hair, the used his fingers to smooth everything into place. He swung the chair to face the mirror, handed me my glasses and raised a hand mirror for me to inspect the back. Looks good Jimmy, thanks. I handed him the five dollar bill. It’s all I have I said.
“That doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it.
The next day it snowed a foot in Victoria, but on the way to work, I went to a cash machine, then stopped in to pay Jimmy what I owed him. He looked up from the head he was working on, smiled and took the money. “Thanks,” said Jimmy.
that examines many of the fundamental techniques and considerations that writers must come to terms with if they are to successfully engage readers. Proximity is a term she uses to explain how a reader feels positioned to the writing. Has the author drawn me into the scene almost as a participant, or have they made me feel like a detached outside observer? Do I have a gut reaction to this character, or do I feel distant from them? As Warland points out, these experiences of proximity are not random responses, but rather something a writer has consciously created during the act of writing.