Haircut & Cigarette

I had a bunch of stupid little things to do that day. It was the kind of day that doesn’t belong to you and for some reason it was creeping under my skin. I decided, abruptly on my way out the front door, that I wasn’t going to do it, any of it. Instead, I chose to get a haircut. My friend once told me that a hair cut and a new pair of shoes will make a new man. I’ve got those expensive boots that last a lifetime so I don’t need new shoes, but at least I can get half-way there and feel a bit of dapper breeze on my neck. I remember thinking, I’m confiscating the day; I’m taking it back from the mundane. The barbershop is one of those sacred sort of endeavors. I usually cut my own hair, but every once in a while l like to get a clean slate from the professional, Geom. It’s relaxing to sit under the drape and listen to all the chattering and buzzing of the blades. Also, at some point you always get a good laugh at a barbershop.

The details of this place are just amazing. Those little tiles on the floor remind me of Paris. The decorative plates that flip out to rest your feet on makes you feel like you’re in a different time period, a classy realm. Geom always gives me the mid-fade with a gradient that I only wish I could paint. We had a few laughs and I even had a bourbon that I usually pass on. I paid the good man and as I was pulling the door open past the hanging bell I looked down and noticed for the first time this gorgeous floor vent. It had this intricate Frank Loyd Write pattern made of wrought iron; god I love this place. It’s well worth it every once in a while to just have someone else clean you up and send you back out into the world. It’s like polishing an old dirty coin and watching it come back to life; now send it back out into this filthy world of pockets and palms.

I crossed the street to cut through the park so that I could find my bench. There’s nothing like the first cigarette after a fresh cut. You can see the contour of the air as the smoke takes on the shape of the breeze like a French curve thats cutting over your newly polished ears. A hair cut and a cigarette. It’s a ritual I will dearly miss once I cut this dirty habit. I flicked the cherry out of the end of the cigarette and threw the butt towards the trash can. I fell short and the butt bounced back behind the bench. When I leaned down to retrieve it I noticed a little black notebook laying delicately on the grass. Popping the elastic off and thumbing through it, I was impressed by the amount of sketches and math. This brain is cranking and all these pages look like the run off of thoughts that tried to get away. This gal really makes use of the page. I’m guessing its a lady. It was a quick cursive, the kind that you wouldn’t see many banana hands scrawling out. Being an artist, I’ve gone through probably a hundred notebooks of my own so I know a good one when I see one.

I remembered that it was going to rain that day. I couldn’t just leave it there in case the person didn’t get back to it in time. Back at home I had gained another exciting part of the day. I’ve now been handed a puzzle to solve. I threw my driving gloves on and dove into the notebook looking for any clue of who the owner was. There was no introduction page nor a “if lost” note. It was all business straight from the binding. Twenty years ago I lost a golden notebook full of god knows what at this point. Every once in a while it haunts me. How could I be so careless? Did I leave it on the roof of the car, or at some random cafe? Did someone descend from the ceiling with a wire and night vision goggles to steal all my genius ideas? I know how it feels to lose something so personal even when it would mean nothing to anyone else. Towards the back of the book I noticed a phone number. “Call Christian, awning measurements.” Bingo! We’ve got a lead. The note was near where the pages went blank so I’m guessing if she had called him it might have been that past week.

I called him up and it turned out that he was a fabricator here in town that had just started working with this lady named Margo. She’s an architect -that makes sense. I gave him my number and asked him to pass it along with a message about her little black notebook. I got a text shortly after that in all caps. “OH MY GOD, I CANT BELIEVE YOU FOUND ME!” She had meetings the rest of the day, but I told her I was a painter and that I work from home in the art studios off Wilkins. She’d swing through at lunch to pick up her lost treasure trove of ideas and notes.

There was a knock at the door and, wow, she was a tall one with a slick dark slate pea coat. Her hair was almost grey and came sharply down to her shoulders. I greeted her with a hello and my arm straight out, book in hand.

“Let’s get this back where it belongs.”

“In a city like this, you have no idea what this means to me. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

I was pleased with her reaction. “Like I said over text, I’ve been there before and I wish someone had tracked me down. In fact I think I had my name and contact info on the first page and yet, only heartbreak.”

She had a brown paper parcel wrapped with twine like someone buying meat in the fifties. “You said you were an artist, so I assumed you drink coffee? This is my favorite blend that my whole office is crazy about.”

“Ah, you are correct. I drink far more coffee than I should.”

She was older than I was and it made me feel comfortable with the quiet energy she put out. I almost wanted to invite her in and make some coffee, but I didn’t want to make her feel uncomfortable or obligated to do so. She’s a direct person and I’m sure all her days are busy days. That’s when she surprised the hell out of me.

“Are you working on something now? I admit when you told me you were a painter I couldn’t help but wonder what your work was like. I’ve also always wondered how these studios were set up.”

“Um... yea, did you want to come in? See what I got going on? I guess its only fair since I’ve seen behind the scenes of the architect’s secret pages.”

I gave her the tour, showed her what I was working on and a couple of series from the past. She told me that she had been obsessed with Reddit’s studio setups and all the photos of how different artist set up their space and work flow. She loved that fact that I was into old typewriters and swooned over my small collection. Then it was the stack of paper pieces I had in a corner that really lit her up.

“Oh what are these?” She said sdude oh as she had already started picking them up.

“Yea, thats a little obsession I got into this past summer. I took around a hundred shots of one of my typewriters with a macro lens. I captured all the metal strikers with each letter and number and the shift key and backspace buttons. I just wanted to dive into the microscopic world of a typewriter, as if you were an ant on tour. I spent each day banging out these pieces on paper. I think there’s like 80 of them in there.”

She took her time pouring through the whole stack making those sounds of shock every fourth or fifth piece. It was nice. Most people flip through something like that until they kind of have a gist of what’s going on and then they say: niiiiice.

“How much do you sell them for?”

“I haven’t gotten through all the photos, so I haven’t really thought of it. They’re all oil, so I’d say $250 each? I always imagined them in some sort of grid formation hanging on the wall like a platoon of soldiers.”

“Well the coffee was a thank you gift, but no where near a suitable reward for your efforts and kindness. Would you at least allow me to buy some artwork from you?”

“Well, yea that’d be great. Thats what they’re there for. Which ones do you like?”

“All of them!”

I laughed and said thank you. I then waited for her to maybe take another look and start pulling two or three out. She didn’t. She just kept looking at me with that warm smile like she knew she was about to make someone’s day. I remember blinking a few times and then awkwardly stating, “I don’t know what’s happening right now.”

“I’d like all of them. I think you’re right. With a simple black frame, this would be an amazing long wall piece. I have a lobby that is just screaming for a large piece. I didn’t think about a bunch of small pieces put together. I love that feeling of structure and clean lines.”

I started to piece together that she owned the architect firm and this just might be one of those crazy right-time-right-place moments that you read about in the New Yorker. I fumbled around a little bit and showed my excitement and my disbelief, but I tried to stay professional and remind myself that this is sometimes part of being an artist. Every once in a while something goes right, and you actually sell the work. Doing the math in my head, that added up to 20 grand and she wasn’t asking for a discount. I mean, that would’ve made my whole year. Back then, I was selling work, but it felt more like it happened just enough to technically call myself a working artist. In one small afternoon, this woman changed everything because I decided to get a haircut. That wasn’t the end of our relationship. She kept up with me and even sent several of her clients my way. That lobby of hers was like a permanent exhibit in the best part of town; you could see it from the street and there was a lot of foot traffic. In the beginning, I wondered if she was just trying to help me out because I couldn’t buy into my own self worth. It was her random visits that pushed me over the hump of self doubt. She’d show up every once in a while and she’d bring coffee. We’d share an afternoon talking about our latest projects, but this time in a much bigger studio. I’ll always remember the first thing she said to me, that text, “Oh my god I can’t believe you found me.” I’m glad I did, but it feels like it was the other way around.