The Hairdresser

San Francisco has blessed me again. I just started working in a coffee shop that's two blocks from my house. It is the only one in this neighborhood that doesn’t belong to a chain. It's popular with the locals since the city has this long history of counterculture and anti-corporate-resistance.
Across the street from it is a hair salon. The walls are a light spring green, and there are white, fancy hair products displayed in the window. The women who owns it comes in every late morning. She always gets two coffees and some freshly baked muffins.

The coffee shop gets busy in the mornings. Sometimes there are long lines of people stretching until the outside. I can see them through the large glass windows, while I'm handing out pastries, bagels, lattes and the likes. You would think that by the time they'd get to the counter people have made up their minds. But no, it's the same thing every morning. People wait and wait and only when they have just arrived at the counter, they look at me, then at the board with the menu behind me, and THEN they start thinking about what it is they want. It annoys me. They just stand there and leave you and everybody else waiting.

One morning, when it was finally the hairdresser's turn, she was fuming. She must have waited for a while. Or maybe she was just stressed. With a grave expression on her face she ordered. She barely moved while she was standing there. She just stared at me and when I handed her the pastry bag over the counter she yanked it out of my hand. She stormed out of the shop, the bag with the muffins in one hand, the paper tray with the coffee in the other and I could see her speeding across the street.

But then something happened. When she came back the next day, she was extremely friendly. She gave me compliments about my hair. "It is so thick and shiny", she said and looked at my dark, short hair, admiringly. "You could probably do anything with it." She said I should come over some day. She would really love to cut it.

When I went the next day, the hairdresser welcomed me with the same sweetish smile she had given me the morning before. I was the only customer. She washed my hair and we talked. She usually charges 80 dollars for a simple cut, I found out. Kathleen, that was her name, had moved up here about ten years ago from Los Angeles. She had worked on film sets a lot, she explained. Her life as a stylist had been busy, a bit too busy for her taste. She told me the names of celebrities she had worked with but I didn't know any of them so I don't remember. While I watched her from up close I figured she must be in her early 50s. She dressed younger, I thought. She wore black capri pants and a classy, yet casual, slightly translucent black top. The fine fabric swung loosely around her skin while she adjusted the towel she had just slung around my head. It had been the wrinkles around her brown eyes and her hands that had given her away. Maybe she would have been shocked, had she asked me how old I would guess she is and had I told her. She seemed the type. Kathleen stood so close now I could smell her perfume. It smelled fresh.

After many years in which she had earned her credits and a good reputation, she decided she wanted a more quiet life. So she opened the salon. "Some of my old customers still come here", Kathleen said. She had started cutting my hair. She sat at a small black stool right behind me. I could see her in the mirror. It was fun watching her. She was very focussed, yet, always, when she was about to say something she would look into the mirror and our reflections would make eye contact.

She cut for a long time, taking breaks in between to critically observe the progress. When she was finished I looked like the perfect little boy. I mean, I always look like a little boy, but in this moment I could really see myself roaming the river shore with my best mate, knees scratched, face dirty, pants ripped. I was amazed. She had brought out something in me no hairdresser seemed to have seen in me before.

I left her 10 dollars as a tip. She didn't reject them. She was not exactly thrilled about the tip, either. She just gave me that same impervious smile again and shook my hand when I left. She had a firm grip. It felt like she meant it. Ever after, when Kathleen came in, things went fine. She didn't offer me a haircut again. But that was okay. She didn't act out her frustration on me, neither. We were even.

Swans

In the photo album my father made for me when I was born, there is a picture of me standing at the shore of a lake. The picture was taken in the park of the town where I am from. It is the winter of 1981. I am wearing a brown cardigan (at least that´s the color I remember it to be – the picture is in black and white) and a thick hat with a toddle. I look into the camera, look like a little boy, my face distorted somehow, almost angrily. I am not happy in this picture. Is it, because there was no more bread?

My father sometimes put half a loaf of bread aside during winter times. When it got dry he cut it into small pieces and put them in a plastic bag. Then we took the bread and went to the park. When we got to the lake shore, my father usually gave me the bag – at least that´s how things went before my sister was born. I don´t remember the time after, even though in the photo album there are lots of pictures from this period, too.

And then I waited for „my“ swan. Charlie was his name. A beautiful, huge, white swan. With my four years I was convinced it must have been always the same swan coming close when I put the first pieces of bread into the water. I always marvelled at him: How far he could stretch his throat to reach for the bread, how elegant his feathers looked and how beautiful his eyes were.

My whole romantic swan world fell apart when Charlie started a riot one day. He had been swimming some meters in front of me in the water just a minute ago. We were eyeing each other. And then, very suddenly, the atmosphere changed. Charlie started flapping his wings wildly and hissing loudly. He came closer and closer to the shore. I backed off, irritated. Finally my swan reached the shore and started running towards me above the icy ground with his red swan feet.

My father pulled me to the side. To this day I remember clearly the way my heart was racing with fear that day. I was scared of the swans hugeness, of his power and I was afraid he would reach for me and beat me with his strong wing. I grabbed my fathers pants and clasped my arms tightly around his leg. I was horrified, shivering and confused, all at the same time. What had happened to Charlie?

Back then I owned a record with the story of the little duckling that feels ashamed because everyone tells it how ugly it is. I had always felt a deep sympathy and solidarity with the young duckling, I loved this fairy tale and I was very happy when I saw a swan family swimming on the lake in the park. You ain´t ugly at all, I thought. That´s why I felt somehow betrayed after this experience with Charlie.

For a long time I did not dare going back to the lake, I didn´t enjoy feeding swans anymore, not even ducks. Comparatively, I thought, they were pretty boring. In general, the experience caused me to instinctively back off for many years, when I saw swans anywhere. In the last years I have become more relaxed around them again. Today I admire their power and the diva in them. They are beautiful and so very graceful until something starts annoying them. Then, very fast, all smoothness disappears and unambiguously they claim their space. They know how to defend themselves.

Today I think, in a certain way swans are almost a queer feminist symbol. It stands for a lesson: "Don´t let my appearance fool you about what power lies behind my elegant, plushy feather dress", they breath and squint their beautiful, smooth eyes, while they are confidently swimming in circles, in the water, in a safe distance...