chair | designer

As I glanced in his direction, I became itchy with curiosity. Who was it on the phone? (Not that I'd know him.) What did the caller want? (Not that I'd care.) Did the caller want to talk to one of the barbers and the bored guy was chatting away until handing the phone over, or had he called specifically to talk to the bored guy? If he called to talk to the bored guy, how did he know the bored guy was going to be there? Was the bored guy always there? What was going on?

After about 10 minutes, the bored guy hung up.

Just like that. Hung up. No "Hey, it's for you." No "All right, I'll tell 'em." Just hung up.

Then he immediately went back to slouching in the chair and staring at air.

Nobody said a thing. Nobody asked who it was. Nobody wondered what the caller wanted. Nobody uttered a word.

The snipping of scissors filled the silence.

I felt like I might jump out of my skin. I had heard about the laid-back Jamaicans, but this was some otherworldly level of laid-backness.

I had never been to this barbershop before. I had never been to this country before. Which means I didn't know a soul on the entire island. But I wanted to scream, "Who was it?"

By now, my cut was nearly finished. My barber took a straight razor and began shaving around the contours of my beard. It had been years since a barber used one of these long blades on my face, if ever. In the States, the razors nowadays tend to be daintier. More designer. I seem to recall them being this large when I was a boy and the barber would shave the hair off the back of my neck to bring the cut to a neat square. Maybe they weren't ever this large, though. Maybe I was just small.

As the barber wielded the long razor, I recalled my childhood. Some of the most meaningful times with my friends were spent just hanging out, not talking, not doing anything, just killing time together. There was something dependable and reassuring about knowing, simply, that they were there.