Jerome the Barber Speaks...Part III

“Sex is interesting, but it's not totally important. I mean it's not even as important (physically) as excretion. A man can go seventy years without a piece of ass, but he can die in a week without a bowel movement.”
-Charles Bukowski

Swimming is a cruel mistress in many different ways. She wracks your body, gets you out of a warm, soft bed for early morning practice; maybe more importantly, swimming will destroy your hair. Stiff brittle hair, coupled with the conservative environment I work in--I am an accountant after all--sends me to the barber shop every two weeks. I used to do this just to keep my hair manageable, but now I find myself going to the barber shop just to hear what's going to come out of Jerome the Barber's mouth.

Let's take inventory about what I have learned about this man over two haircuts:

• He's been married three times
• His favorite wife was wife #2--she paid her way through barber college as a nude dancer, and she was very sweet.
• He was a courier as a younger man, a bartender, a short order cook, and an insurance salesman.

As Friday approaches--the usual day I get my haircut--I'm asking myself, "What am I going to learn about Jerome and Life when I get in the chair this time.

This haircut started off slowly. I told him I wanted a #2 on the side, and clean-up the top. Jerome has his marching orders and gets to work. Nothing of note comes up for the first 10 minutes. Jerome is in the hair cutting zone, and I am spacing out, enjoying the sensation of thinking about nothing and looking at myself in the mirror. I guess Jerome had all the heavy lifting of his craft taken care of, the trance breaks and we start to talk.

His voice is pure sandpaper with a surprising, velvety finish. When he opens his mouth, the sound that comes out is alchemy--a voicebox beautifully scarred from years upon years of drinking fine whiskey, and smoking generic cigarrettes. I'd love to pay the man to do a books on tape series. He'd probably do it too if the fee was appropriate, and he could pick the reading material--most likely some soft core porno pulp story.

We talk about the normal pleasantries for a few minutes, nothing of substance comes up, so I take matters in my own hands. "Are you dating anyone new, Jerome?" He pausues, takes mental inventory, and say, "Yeah, yeah, I am."

Jerome's latest lady friend is 46, and a fan of the hot-tub. She came over to his house the other day in a tube top and shorts, went directly to the tub, stripped and hopped right in. His housemate was eating breakfast, and the event sent his scrambled eggs up his nasal passage and out his nose. She immeadiatly apologized.

As I am sitting there, sitting at the feet of the master so to speak, and am wondering, "How does this 63 year old barber meet so many women who just want to take their clothes off for him?" What the Hell, I'll just ask him.

"Jerome, where do you meet all these women?"

"Oh, at the gym. Most people think women go to the gym, but the don't. They go there for a different reason all together."

"So that's it. You just meet them at the gym?"

"That's how I meet them, but you don't keep a woman by being her workout partner. Women love a man who can cook. And I don't mean you just put a steak on the grill. That's not cooking. If you can cook, they will always come over. I've had a lot of married women want to come over for dinner, but I have to tell them, 'It doesn't work that way, sweetie. I can't have you over to my house for dinner if you have one of those rings around your finger.'"

He cleans up my neck with a straight edge razor as he is finishing his story, and sharing with me the source of all his powers. He spins the chair around, and thank God, there aren't any mother and small children behind me. Two weeks from now I will head back to the barber shop for another dose of questionable stories from Jerome.