When you are a professional musician, you sometimes dream about the day that your son will come up to you and say, “Papa, what I really want is a horn.” You hope that he might want a saxophone. You pray that he doesn’t have the personality that would ask for a trumpet. Avi asked for his first horn at a cheap hair salon when we took the boys for haircuts.
One of the great pleasures of parenthood is being able to force your children to go through the same horrible experiences that you went through when you were a child. So, we took the boys to a cheap salon, and I got ready to say, “A little boy’s haircut, please.” The children had different ideas. Both had announced during the negotiation period that they wanted to grow their hair. Zach, who has big, curly locks wanted to start working on a Jewfro. Avi just wanted his hair to hang straight down. He was sporting a modified bowl cut, and his bangs were dangling down to the bottom of his top eyelids. Jennifer, when hearing the boy’s announcement, put on her best Jewish accent and said, “What am I going to tell them? Their father has long hair?” Thus began the negotiations with eight year-old Avi.
“Avi, how do you want your bangs cut?”
“I don’t want them cut. I want them to hang down into my eyes,” he said while pressing the bangs flat against his forehead and peering out between strands.
“No, Avi. You’re not going to have hair in your eyes.”
“I want it in my eyes.”
“No. You have two choices. You can get your bangs cut even with your eyebrows, or you can part it like mine,” I said while demonstrating what I intended by parting his bangs.
“I don’t want my bangs cut.”
“Avi, I don’t care if you grow your hair or not, but your not going to have bangs in your eyes.”
“I want it straight down.”
“No. Either cut up to your eyebrows or parted.”
“Why can’t I have it in my eyes?”
“Because you won’t be able to see. Son, what’s the long term plan with your hair? How do you really want it cut?” I asked with mounting frustration. I prepared to say “no” to the long bangs again. Avi was quiet for a moment, and his voice took on the tender, vulnerable sonority of honesty.
“Well, papa, what I really want is a horn.”
Momentarily confused by his unexpected and perplexing statement, I assumed I hadn’t heard correctly. I said, “A what?”
“What I really want is a horn.”
The thought “Please let it be a saxophone” flashed through my mind as I reiterated, “You want a what?”
“A horn,” said he. “I want all of my hair cut really short,” he explained, and grabbing about three inches of the bangs in the center of his forehead, he twisted them into a liberty spike and continued, “except for right here. I want a big horn that I can spike up in the middle of my forehead so that I can run around and ram people with it.” With that he began a thrusting motion with his head as he pushed his manufactured spike into me.
I had thought that I was aiming low when I was willing to settle for a trumpet. I paused as my incredulity passed into exasperation. The words came flatly, “Avi, you’re not getting a horn.”
“But I want a horn to ram people.”
“Avi…no…you’re not getting a horn. You go ask that lady over there. She doesn’t even know how to do a horn haircut. Watch.”
I marched Avi over to the woman who was to cut his hair. “Tell her what you want. Go ahead.”
Suddenly, a timidity that would not normally become a horned creature seized him as he quietly said, “I want a horn” to the kindly hair stylist.
“A what?” she said.
“I want a horn.”
“You want a what?”
“He wants a horn in the middle of his head. Avi, I told you she wouldn’t know how to do it. Give him a little boy haircut, please.”
As I turned to walk back to the waiting area, I noticed that our little interaction had attracted the attention of the woman behind the reception desk. She caught my eye and said, “We need you.”
“What?”
“We need you. We are doing a show in a few weeks. We are flying a Paul Mitchell executive down from Philadelphia to do a trade show, and we need male models with long hair that are willing to do something drastic to their hair. We need you to be a hair model.”
“You want me to be a what?”
“To be a hair model. You would get to come to the hotel and get your hair cut for free by a famous stylist on a stage in front of a hundred hair stylists.”
I thought of several times in my life when I have been mistaken for a homeless person. I thought of the time Brian and I offered a homeless man in New Orleans the opportunity to pick through all of our clothes and take whatever he wanted. The man rejected our normal clothes outright and picked a blue T-shirt that Brian had brought for sleeping. Recently, a church secretary insisted I take a bag of groceries because she was convinced I was homeless.
“Look…um…you’ve got the wrong guy. I haven’t combed my hair in almost seven years. If it gets washed twice a week, it’s lucky.”
“Come on. Don’t you want to be on the stage with all of those woman looking at you?”
I could have explained in great detail why I could care less if all of those women were looking at me, but very uncharacteristically, I chose brevity. “Look. You’ve got the wrong guy.”
As I turned to walk back to the waiting area, I noticed that our little interaction had attracted the attention of the woman that I had been married to for ten years. She caught the woman’s eye and said, “When is the show?”
“It’s in a few weeks. I’ll write the date down. He would need to come to our other branch for auditions.”
“I’m really not interested.” I said.
“He’ll be there,” Jenn said.
Jennifer and I worked out another “compromise,” and three weeks later I found myself in a salon with my hair in foils. The only consolation prize for being selected at the audition was that one of my sisters came along. She was also selected to be a model. She was taking absolute delight in the fact that the one person on the whole earth that was the least concerned about personal hygiene and appearance was having blond highlights put into his hair by a Paul Mitchell stylist. As the stylist prepped our hair for the show, we began to talk.
“Kurt, this is going to be so good for you. You’re going to have to be concerned about your personal appearance. You’re even going to have to take a shower. I know that’s a big sacrifice for you.”
“Kristen, I bathe when I’m dirty. I can’t believe I’m even here.”
“I know. Aren’t you excited!? You get to be part of the fashion world.”
“I was part of the fashion world one time in Dallas.”
“You did a fashion show?”
“Not exactly. I received a call for a gig at the original Nieman Marcus store in downtown Dallas. I was supposed to play the piano for an Oscar de la Renta show. I arrived, and there was a space cleared out on one of the floors with a piano off to the side. As I walked up, employees began to approach me. One scurried up, took my hand, and said, ‘I’m Noel, and I’m in furs.’ A second immediately followed with, ‘I’m Rene, and I’m in men’s clothing.’
‘I’m just the piano player,’ I responded.
‘Oh. Go over there.’ They pointed to the piano. They were obviously disappointed that I wasn’t someone more important. When the actual Oscar de la Renta representative showed up, he announced himself as they approached. ‘I’m John, and I’m from New York.’ I started playing ‘Autumn in New York’ and thinking ‘He can’t actually think that people will be impressed with him simply because he lives in New York.’ I was, of course, completely wrong. Nieman Marcus employees (or Nieman Marcae as I like to call them) began rushing forward to greet him. ‘Oh, are you really from New York? Is it so great there? I went a couple of years ago.’ I finished ‘Autumn in New York’ quickly and switched to ‘’So What’ by Miles Davis. He regaled them with the tales of the New York life. Before long, a rather striking blonde walked by, and I started to play Ellington’s ‘’Sophisticated Lady.’ She walked in such a way that everyone on the floor had his or her attention drawn toward her. She vanished for a moment, and reemerged in a new outfit. This time, she not only drew everyone’s attention but also began to primp and preen in front of people. I thought to myself, ‘You’re pretty, but you’re not all that.’ I started to play ‘Doxy’ by Sonny Rollins. Before long, a stunningly beautiful African American woman was doing the same thing. Kristen, I had to put in a phone call to our dear sister Kelly later. ‘Kelly, I played an Oscar de le Renta show, and I swear there were models showing off clothes to old ladies with credit cards.’
‘Kurt, that’s how expensive clothes are sold,’ Kelly responded. ‘They get models to show you how your fat ass will never look in the outfit, and then you pull out your credit card.’
I went on break and headed over to talk to the girl behind the wine and cheese table. I usually enjoy talking to the “help’ on gigs because they are the people that are closest to my socio-economic class. I started eating grapes and talking about the job. ‘What’s all this about?’ I asked.
‘Oscar de le Renta is coming here in a month for a fundraiser. This gives people the opportunity to buy one of his outfits and wear it to the event.’
‘Oh. Well, can’t they just buy one of his outfits any day of the week.’
‘You don’t understand. He may only make fifty dresses like this one behind me. You would be one of the only people in the world that would own it.’
‘Hmm. Can you show up to the event wearing something other than his clothes?’
‘Probably, but these sorts of people don’t want to do that. Let me ask you something. How much do you think this dress behind me costs?’
‘I don’t know. It’s a nice dress. Maybe three or four hundred dollars.’
She started chuckling to herself as she found the tag and flipped it to reveal a price of $12,000.00
‘Twelve thousand dollars!’ I shrieked. ‘Twelve thousand dollars for one dress?! I could put a down payment on a house for that amount!’
‘Not for one of the houses that these people live in you couldn’t.’
‘I could buy a car! A nice car! If I ever paid twelve thousand dollars for an article of clothing, I would expect it to get off the hanger, walk out of the closet, wake me up in the morning, make my coffee, and get onto my body!’
She continued chuckling and said, ‘Those pants that the de le Renta rep is wearing go for eight hundred.’
‘Eight hundred for a pair of pants! They’re nice pants, but not eight hundred dollars nice.’
I walked back over to the piano and started a tradition that I have followed to this day. Every gig I play in a situation where there is a large amount of wealth exposed, I make sure to play an extended version of ‘God Bless the Child.’ When the notes sound out, I think of that first verse ‘Them that’s got shall get, them that’s not shall lose,’ and I mean every pitch and rhythm.”
“Great, Kurt,” Kristen replied. “Another long story about yourself. We really have to do something about your ego problem. I’m worried that sometime soon you won’t be able to go to some of the places you want to go. Your head almost didn’t fit through the door for this audition.”
“I know, Kristen. I’m the hero of my own story.”
“But, you have me. Everyone else is always like, ‘Kurt’s so wonderful,’ but God has placed me in your life to tear you down and make sure your ego is manageable.”
“Thanks so much, but I already have Jenn for that.”
“Seriously, Kurt. Do you think that there is anything wrong with liking fashion? I know you could care less about your personal appearance, but do you think it’s overly materialistic for me to care about nice clothes and shoes?”
“I was talking to Marty Barrett about that once. Pastor Barrett reminded me that Esther saved the Jews by virtue of the fact that she was a hot babe. Even cheerleaders have their place in the Kingdom.”
Nick, the Paul Mitchell rep, finished our prep work and sent us home with directions to the hotel for the next day.
We arrived at the hotel and pushed our way through one hundred hair burners to the prep room. We saw Nick. His outfit startled both of us. He was wearing something that almost resembled an Episcopal cassock. It was very like the outfit that Kenau Reeves wore in The Matrix. The cassock was coupled with a haircut that was walking a dangerous line between seventies rock star and Kentucky waterfall. The result was that he appeared as a priest of modern hair culture. Kristen and I had been selected to have our hairs cut and our fashion sins absolved by the priest on stage as part of the demonstration. Nick was putting the final touches on the models who had already been transformed and simply had to walk the catwalk. After a brief rehearsal, the show began and we entered into the world of hairstylists. As the show began, I was amazed that they were concerned with issues of self-expression and artistic integrity. They were describing the problems of balancing the desires of artistic expression and making enough money. I had never previously considered hair styling to be among the arts, but I began to reconsider. There were certainly enough weird haircuts and clothes. The mix between gay people and straight people was about the same as in the other arts. They even had the requisite pretension at some of the tables. In fact, it was the exact same crowd that I had seen at gallery openings. The only difference was that the canvass of their creations consisted of the dead protein that sprouts from our skullcaps.
They had assembled here to study and improve their craft as taught by a genuine master. At a Paul Mitchell trade show, you can learn the latest techniques for bouffanting, spiking, mulleting, wedging, buzzing, bobbing, flat topping, feathering, afroing, dreadlocking, Mohawking, weaving, extensioning, bowling, Caesaring, crew-cutting, fading, pompadouring, ducktailing, page-boying, helmet heading, or corn rowing someone’s hair (Incidentally, little boy haircuts are forbidden at the events). My specific case this day was going to be a demonstration of (if you will excuse the double entendre) shagging. He was going to shag me in front of the entire audience. Like a weird chapter from the Kama Sutra, he was going to shag me while simultaneously pushing Paul Mitchell’s line of pomades, gels, spritzers, creams, emulsions, foams, tonics, lotions, waxes, texturizers, glosses, pastes, whips, and possibly the new Paul Mitchell hair-in-a-can with aloe and citrus extract.
I walked up to the stage and sat in the barber’s chair. Since I normally only get a hair cut every two years, I look forward to the conversation with the hairstylist. I usually like to start with an icebreaker question like, “When did you come out?” Jennifer always rolls her eyes at me, but my gay friends are usually more than willing to talk about it. I’m interested in hearing about it. This time was quite different. He was miked up so that the audience could hear him. He was also straight, so my normal icebreaker wouldn’t work. He whipped out a patented Paul Mitchell razor blade and began chopping off about two feet of hair. He would spin me to one side and say to the audience, “Do you see how I am establishing the line along the occipital lobe? I’ll show you guys on the other side what I mean.” The chair would whip around one hundred and eighty degrees, the razor blade would chop, and he would continue, “We did these highlights yesterday with Paul Mitchell Teasy Lights. Now I want to be careful as I approach the temporal lobe to keep the line I’ve established even. Excellent. Now, I can apply some Paul Mitchell Tea Tree Oil and…finished. He still looks like a musician doesn’t he?”
“Yeah, like a seventies rock star,” I heard Kristen mutter.
After the cut, he made me walk down the catwalk, turn, and shake my hair out for the stylists. Following the trip down the runway, I was then asked to walk around to all thirty tables and allow the stylists to touch my hair and look at the finished product. As they were inspecting my new “do,” Kristen was on the stage getting a hair-cut called “The Barbie.” Between “The Barbie” and my new 70s style coif, Paul Mitchell had provided enough ammunition for a continued sibling sparring session. As we left the building, I turned to Kristen and said, “I’m going to have my children stick with the piano. I knew that nothing good would come from Avi asking for a horn.”
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