Joshua M. Bigley

Chairman Mao smiled at me.  It was a Mona Lisa kind of smile.

 

The red poster loomed in the ceiling over the chair like a mirage below the horizon, raised above its true position. The barber finished tucking the cape into my collar and reached for his razor on a stack of newspapers and glossy magazine pages spilt over the counter.  He fanned his elbows and poised to shave my face.  The straight razor was covered in wet black hair cuttings from the fat man that came before me. 

 

“Ont-aw, no.”  I shook my head.  And pointed at the sink.

 

The barber nodded, “Aw, mmh.”  He agreed.  The fat strop under his chin swelling.

 

I looked around.  There was no blue barbicide disinfectant.  He breathed heavy, the way my grandmother with emphysema did.  He ran the blade under the water in the deep sink.  Cold water.  I could tell it wasn’t hot because there was no steam.  Was that spotted rust on the blade?  Was he seriously going to shave my face without even changing the blade, without rinsing or washing, without disinfecting it?  Was he seriously going to just shave my face with some sweaty man’s hair on the blade?

 

He lifted an aqua-blue thermos off the gritty blackened floor, plucked the cork, and poured steaming water over it.  I smiled a little.   Relieved.   But still I wished he had that blue disinfectant.  The Kool-Aid.

 

I watched him soap up the frazzled brush, the same brush he used on the other man, without rinsing or cleaning it.  He didn’t even rinse the soap.  I stared at the soap, an orange lucent block.  It looked like Tide hand-washing laundry soap.  My bones seized in the chair.  My breath cramped.  In the mirror, my face looked dead pan.  He lathered the side of my face around my sideburns, his breath heavy, hollow.   The brush smelled like Tide.  I gripped the chair.   Thoughts of hepatitis and HIV.   He didn’t even use a hot towel to soften my skin and hair. 

 

This was not the first time I had one of these old-fashioned shaves.  There was one time in Albuquerque years ago.   And once in Nanchang at a fancy salon.   They always use hot towels.   It helps you relax.   It’s clean.  I always use a hot towel at home, and steep my face in a sink of steaming water before I start shaving.   It makes it easier.   If you don’t wet the hair, especially with steamy water, the shave will be excruciating, the face will burn.   I wondered if it wasn’t too late to excuse myself and walk out the door.  I didn’t want to be rude.   I wanted to know what he would do.   I don’t get the chance to have my face shaved in this old-fashioned way often.  It was a cool little shop, rustic, dilapidated, very working-class.   I needed the shave.  I couldn’t tolerate the itch anymore. 

 

Cringing inwardly, my face deadened, I endured it, watching the first stroke of his blade.  A cheap little straight razor.  It dragged over my skin, tearing out my hair— and probably my flesh with it.   It burned.   I wanted to scream, grasping the arms of the chair.   I strained to look in the mirror.   Did he tear the flesh?  Was I bleeding?   Hepatitis.   HIV.   AIDS.   I could feel a tick in my face. 

 

He shifted his weight, breathing heavy.   And dragged the dull razor over my flesh.   Mango Tide filled my nostrils.  I strained.  My eyes watered.  Each stroke was agonizing.  I think a spoon would have been sharper. 

 

At least he started the shave where I did.  

 

Perhaps, he knew what he was doing, I thought. 

 

I was afraid he wouldn’t look to see how my hair grew.   My hair grows in wild swirls.  Shaving hurts. 

 

That’s why I only shave once a week.  I see no reason to shave more.   It seems like a pedantic fascist thing to do— to think you need a clean shave every day.  Hair is natural, easy.  Shaving is an arbitrary custom confined to time and place.  In the Navy, I resented being told to shave.  They made me shave twice a day.   Ironically, I had almost no hair, a few nascent stubs on my chin.   Smooth as a baby.   Now, my hair is coarse and white.  Salt and pepper.  My sideburns have gone completely white.   White hair is hard, sharp, and tough.

 

The barber wiped the blade on a stack of newspapers in the corner.  Wet blue ink.  Looked like the classifieds.   Coupons.   No leather strop.   It was the same page he wiped the blade on when he shaved the other guy.

 

Shifting in the cramped space, around the antique chair, he moved with obese wheezy breath.

 

I swallowed.   The razor looked like it came from a flea market. A night market.

 

He lathered up the brush in the dish of Tide. 

 

He brushed my face. 

 

He drew the blade slowly and carefully over my lip, my chin, my neck, breathing hard, tearing out the hair.  My face was being peeled like a potato.  I glowered hard at the mirror, maintaining my rigid dead pan stare.

 

Soapy, bloody hair, clumped on the dripping razor.  He wiped the blade on the newspaper.  It stuck to the blade, the ink-spilled clumpy razor.  With one hand he peeled the overused paper off the counter and let it glide onto the floor. 

 

He pushed it away with his foot, wiped the razor on the fresh sheet, and peeled the sheet of newspaper away.   He shuffled behind the chair and rinsed the blade in the sink, lathered up the brush with Tide, and soaped up my throat.  I leaned back in the chair to make it easier for him and waited for the blade to come down on my exposed larynx, listening to his wet breath.  His swollen meaty hands pressed down on my forehead and the blade scraped at my throat.  Straining, rigid, gripping the chair, I peered at Mao. 

 

He smiled down at me with that amused look like he knew something, something we both knew, that we shared in knowing, something mischievous. 

 

I waited for my flesh to peel away, the warm blood.  I remembered the chickens in Nanchang, the girl in the street, dragging a dull knife over the skin, plucking feathers.  The bumpy flesh.  

 

The TV in the barbershop played a sentimental hospital/police drama. A themed-heartbeat thumped loudly, slowly.   I couldn’t believe the timing, the irony.  It was trite.  

 

The barber breathed and shifted his weight, turning to the sink.  He reached over and lathered up his brush with Tide.  I worried about my skin.  I was sure I would breakout.  A chemical rash.  And the butchering couldn’t be good for my face.   Each stroke galvanized the muscles in my legs, in my feet, toes gripping the soles of my shoes.  I thought about Sweeny Todd and Guantanamo Bay.

 

I felt my fingernails piercing the palms of my hands.  He wiped the blade on the newspaper and eyed my throat.   He breathed.   A woman cried, melodramatic. 

 

All Chinese TV shows have a girl crying in every scene—every scene— sentimental, melodramatic, and overacting.   All plots center on it.   I winced.   Domestic abuse is high in China.   I see women act like this in the streets all the time.  Si Lu does too sometimes, when she is mad.  She freezes, pouting, whole body rigid, knuckled hands anchored at her side, paralytic, unmoving, like a robot, a bad robot.  Sulking pouty lips.   It makes me think TV has more influence on culture and thinking than we realize. 

 

In America, people dress as militarized comic book thugs and slaughter people in Batman theaters with Ak-47s.  Rich, spoiled, white teenagers walk into elementary schools and massacre toddlers with assault rifles.

 

Americans are stirred into blood thirsty hysteria.  Baying for war!  I think of all the militainment in movies.  I identified with Optimus Prime.  I identified with Voltron and He-man.  I identified with Dr. David Banner.

 

The barber lathered my chin.  The bristles on the brush were coarse, horse hair or badger... or nylon.  I was dreading this part.  The crack in my chin.  Could he do it without cutting me?  So far he'd done alright.  I only had a few tiny slices.  No more than I do when I shave at home. 

 

Blood pooled in my throaty pores. 

 

The problem was the unsanitary blade and brush that he used.   Hepatitis.  HIV.  AIDS.

 

I closed my eyes and tried to relax, straining against the tug of each stroke.   We had no hot water at home.  The new place was rife with problems.   So we weren’t showering.   We decided to get a shampoo and haircut.  That was the day before.  I needed a shave too.  We walked by the barbershop, looked inside—we peered into the sooty glass— but the shopkeeper at the fruit stand next door told us he had gone home for the day.

 

This time I came alone and there was an obese man in the barber’s chair.  The man had a coarse black beard, patchy. A sweaty tee shirt. Grey-green workman’s pants like those that janitors wear, grimy and oil-stained— held up with a tatty rope.  Ankles exposed.   No socks.  Black hole-tattered slippers, the kind that Chinese peasants wear.  Orange, dirty, patchy skin.  Chinese call it black.  His belly spilled out beneath his tee shirt and filled the space between his knees.   It was like a giant gourd.   Sweat gleamed in a nest of black hair swirling into a belly button hole. An over-amplified TV played a Chinese racket.  The TV was stacked on top of old newspapers in the corner.  The noise trembled in the small space.  They didn’t appear to pay any attention to it. The barber and his patron looked at me.   I gestured to him and a few empty seats under the window.   “Are you open,” I muttered in English.   It was pointless to speak.    I did everything with hand signals. 

 

“Ahhh,” he nodded, telling me he was open.  I nodded and sat down.   He heaved a sigh and I twisted the cap off my Coke.   I bought it next door.  

 

I have a terrible habit of drinking soda.  And Coke is the worst company.   Every time I pop a can I think of women burning in Cucuta and Cartagena, slaves locked in bottling plants, pressured to renounce contracts.  The factory workers dying.   I think of death squads hired to kill union organizers in Columbia. I think of water drained in India.  I think of villagers in Plachimada and Mehdiganj, dried up ponds and empty wells.  Polluted water in Mexico and Ghana.  I think of mango groves in Benares India.  Coke dumped its waste in fields.  Over 20 acres were destroyed.  Stagnant water created a mosquito epidemic. I think of mercury poisoning in Shenzhen.   I think of children in El Salvador using machetes and knives to harvest sugar cane.   I think about diabetes.   Why do I drink this crap?   I took a swig, enjoying the fizz on my tongue.  The shuǐpào, or pào, pào.

 

The barber was slow, quiet, and fat.   Short stocky legs.   A flat-top.   Shiny black untamed eyebrows.   His fleshy chin looked like the birthing of a carnivorous animal.  He never said a word.   The floor was covered with black hair.   I watched him scrape the local man’s face .  It sounded like a grindstone.  I wondered if he was a migrant-worker.  One that was making all that racket at the site behind our flat.

 

They were like two planetary bodies tethered to the chair, wheezing. 

 

I glanced out the window: at the watermelons and bananas, at the apples and strawberries, under the red umbrella at the shop next door.   The barber shop and the bodega shared the same concrete steps.  My beard itched.   I scratched under my chin like a dog.   And debated leaving, fleeing.   

 

A commercial on the TV tried to sell me frozen steamed-bread.  Hǎo chi bāozi! — flashing numbers— Bai bai bai! Bai bai bai!  888.  Infinity.  These people are superstitious.  They revere 888 and 666.  These numbers have positive connotations of longevity, eternal life, and good fortune.   And they sell bāozi. 

 

The barber scraped the vagabond’s face.  Sunlight slanted through the blue stained glass and illuminated blue tiles.  The walls flaked, the remains of hospital green paint on chewed up concrete.  Black mould colonized the molding.  The space was cluttered.  In the back, a dingy blanket obscured the low doorway into a backroom.  Next to me, uneven concrete steps with a blackened patina sheen, shuffled around the corner, behind an apothecary cabinet that was propped up on a stack of shredded cardboard, the remains of red mooncake boxes.

 

The straight razor scraped his flesh. 

 

My flesh. 

 

The man hoisted his weight out of the chair, and the barber put a gentle hand on his back, on the back of his bristling head.  He was shaved high and tight, a buzz cut, almost bald.  Rolls of fat at the back of his head.  A huge fuzzy knob on the crown.  Long eyes dissapearing in fat.  He braced the rim of the sink with his stubby arms and bent over.  The barber placed a threadbare towel over his neck, dirty white, and rinsed his face and his head.  The tap squealed when he turned it on.  It released a clear gentle pipe of water.  The barber gently splashed his face, neck and head.  His hands were fleshy and swollen like the Stay Puft marshmallow man.   He combed his fingers through the man’s hair, tenderly, and scrubbed.   He rinsed.  He gently splashed water in the man's face, hand at the back of his neck, and rubbed the man’s face in his fat hand, caressing it, stroking it.   I didn’t want that to happen to me. 

 

I glanced out the window.   At the fruit.   It was now or never.   The man buried his face in the towel.   He looked in the mirror, inspecting his shredded mug.   They exchanged a few soft words.   And the man paid him with a few crumpled purple and blue renmin in his pocket.  Not the Mao money.  The kind with minority faces, women in head dresses.   Wu Jiao.   

 

It was my turn.

 

The barber wiped the small blade on the newspaper and held my face.  He scraped the coarse hair under my nose.  My face burned.  It pulsed.  He looked at his work and grunted.  I looked in the mirror.  He wanted my approval.   I just wanted to leave as fast I could.   Run home and bath my face in alcohol.

 

I nodded and muttered, “Looks good, Hǎo, Okay.” 

 

He gestured to the sink.  I glanced at the ceramic basin.   The bar of Tide in the dish sprinkled with spindles of hair. 

 

“Uh, bùyào,” I touched my head, “hair,” I said.  “Wǒ bùxiǎng yào.”  I don’t want it, I said politely in Putonghua, China person speak.  I swirled a hand around my head.  There was no need to talk in complete sentences.   It was unnatural. 

 

“Oh, okay,” he said.

 

He pivoted the chair toward the sink.  And I got up.  His hand touched my back and he turned on the tap.

 

It didn’t squeal this time.   I gave in, not wanting to be rude, bent over, and his warm fat hand touched my neck. 

 

He gently splashed my face and rubbed his hand all over it.   His hand was so soft, and oily.   Blubbery.    It smelled fleshy.   But it was unbelievably soft, which made me sick.  Tubby Soft-Squeeze never washed his hands after the last guy.  I couldn’t stop thinking about it as his blubbery satin hand smothered my face with lukewarm water.   More skin than water.   I thought about what he did with his hands.   Peeing.   Itching his armpits.  Picking his nose.  Scratching his butt, his belly.  Masturbation.  Wiping his ass.   Eating greasy noodles, touching greasy plastic that they put fast food in.   Mr. Stay Puft turned the water off and his gentle marshmallow hand lifted off my head.  I thanked him.  Asked, “Duōshǎo qián,”(how much money) nodded twice on my way out, thanked him twice, “Xièxiè, Xièxiè,” and fled. 

 

When I got home, I boiled water, and scrubbed my face with a steaming washcloth, and rinsed, shivering with heebie-jeebies.   I washed vigorously with Mentholated hydrating face wash.  I rinsed with hot water and scrubbed with a hot wash cloth.  I washed again with herbal aloe cleansing foam, and rinsed.  I filled the sink with steaming water and soaked my wash cloth.  I inspected my face.  He missed the prickly little hairs under my nostrils and near my lip.   He didn’t get a very close shave on my throat.   A rash of blood pooled under my chin.   There was a cheap Schick behind the spotted faucet.   A black shoehorn handle.    I inspected the blade.   It was used maybe once, a few white and black hairs between the double razors.   I scraped off the thorns in my mustache that he missed and chucked the razor into the water. Then plastered the scalding washcloth on my face.  A plush blue washcloth Si Lu got me for Christmas.  I sighed, breathing steam.  I could smell the mentholatum.  The embrocating bath soothed my face.  Waves of relief washing over me.   I could still feel his blubbery silk hands on my face, the ridges in his palm, on my mouth, up my nose.  I wiped it away and sighed.   Rinsed with ice cold water.   I peered into the mirror.   It was spotted with toothpaste and paw prints. 

 

I looked clean, fresh, my skin smooth.   Crow’s feet clawing at my tired eyes.   Dark shadows.   I patted my face with a towel.  And splashed Old Spice aftershave on my face, the classic scent.  (I bought it last time I was in Syracuse: it reminded me of the sea, clippers, and my father).   An invigorating tonic lifted my face, a light cooling sensation.  Spicy.   Herbal.   Notes of citrus, flowers, and vanilla.   I looked at the bottle.    Parfum classique.    Après-rasage.    Est. 1938.                                   

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