Haircut

Her name was Chlamydia.

No, not really. That would be stupid.

Her name was Courgette.

Courgette was physically very appealing. She was what someone of my father’s generation and intellect would have called ‘a dolly bird’. I heard my father using that expression. I was never sure if it was meant to be complimentary or not. I’m still not sure.

Mentally, Courgette was not exactly a vegetable, but to say she was all cleavage and no critical faculty would not be stretching the truth.

Still, A Levels or not, when she sat me in her chair, wrapped me in her silvery cape and stood behind me, her hands on my shoulders and her glorious breasts not quite nuzzling my neck, I found myself thinking thoughts of a sexual nature.

I am only human.

‘How do you want it then?’ she asked, her voice all provocative like the town strumpet in a northern soap opera.

I told her, and she said, ‘I’ll just give it a going over with the clippers first, then we’ll give it a quick wash.’

‘OK,’ I said. 'Lovely.'

Courgette was a talker. This pleased me immeasurably as I adore big-hearted simpletons. They are such a pleasure. Not for long obviously, but for twenty minutes or so. It’s wonderful to be reminded what a privilege it is to have been born with a brain in your head.

God, I'm a cock.

It's true though.

Courgette is 21. She has large green eyes and luscious meaty lips. She wears too much make-up and her earrings are over-large and over-dangly. She has a butterfly tattooed on her wrist, and a couple of rings of barbed wire tattooed around both ankles. She showed me.

She loves going clubbing. Her favourite place in Burnley is a place called Lava Ignite. Gaze upon the film on the front page of the website and despair.

‘Haven’t you got a funny-shaped head?’ she said.

'Yes,' I agreed. 'It is hilarious.'

Courgette was lovely. Thick as a barrel of pig's tendons but sweet as sixpence with a winning smile and a nervous giggle that wasn’t even slightly annoying.

Halfway through my haircut, Courgette led me over to the wash basin and leant me back. The feel of the hot water was nice, but the feel of Courgette’s hands on my head was really lovely.

I don’t think she could possibly have been aware of how much pleasure I was taking from her fingers as they massaged soap into my scalp and moved across my head, over my ears and down onto my neck. Thankfully, my groans were mostly drowned out by Chorley FM.

Back in the chair, when my sexual thoughts became quite feisty and my groin began to twitch and stir, I remembered something.

My parents used to read The Sun. Worse still, they actually had it delivered to their front door every day. (Once my mother took a biro to one of the topless women on page 3, angrily inking a zealous brassiere, so zealous in fact that the nib of her pen went all the way through to John Major’s lipless grin on page 7. I suspect my mother was certifiably insane.)

However, the story I remembered this afternoon was a story from The Sun itself which concerned a man who’d been killed in a freak hairdressing accident. I don’t think I ever believed the story, but what the hell. It went like this. A man was having his hair cut by a young lady. Toward the end of the operation, the man seemed to take a moment to adjust himself around the genital area. The young lady couldn’t actually see what he was doing of course, because his entire body was covered by the protective cape she had secured around his neck. Only his head peeked out of the top. As she began to dry his hair however, the action continued beneath the protective cape and his hands began to move in an irregular fashion just above his genital area, and although the young lady couldn’t actually see what he was doing, she could see quite clearly the look in his eyes. And it enraged her. So much so that she lost her temper and struck the man hard across the temple with her hair dryer.

Whereupon he died.

This is one of those stories that make you realise how tenuous our grip on life is; how from one moment to the next, we hang by a thread, and perilously. It reminds you how, at any moment, and for the slightest tiniest, most ridiculous cause, your life can come squealing to a premature end. You could be standing on a train platform and with a modicum of force, a passing loon could take a chemical turn and push you into the path on an oncoming train; you could be in your back garden, lying back in the sun with your dearest loved one rubbing lotion into your thighs… you open your legs a touch and feel the moment turn, when a wasp flies in through the open window of a large white van on a road near your house. The van is in motion, the driver freaks out, his hands fly up to his face, his foot shoots out and jams onto the accelerator. The first thing you know, a van screams through the hedge at the bottom of your garden, bounces once on your lawn and that’s it. It’s done. The moment is ruined. Both you and your dearest loved one are no more.

Or you could be about to serve the winner in a Wimbledon final when a passing eagle drops a rock on your head. Or a spear of frozen urine from an overhead toilet facility pins you to the turf. You writhe for a moment, then die.

Or of course, you could be clubbed to death by an uptight hairdresser.

You could argue of course that the chap in this last scenario had it coming, or that at the very least he played some small part in provoking the reaction that caused the event of his death. And it’s true. When the single blow from the hair dryer sent him falling, sprawling to the salon floor, and his protective cape fell away from his dead body, the extent of his crime became clear.

He hadn’t been pleasuring himself at all. He didn’t even have an erection. What he'd actually been doing was rolling a cigarette.

If, that is, there was a single word of truth in the story.

Back in a Burnley barber's shop however, I had an erection. And when I had to adjust myself because my foreskin had grabbed hold of a pubic hair and was pulling at it rather painfully, I apologised. ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a woody.’

Courgette gasped and blushed and looked adorable.

When it was all done and I gave her a mammoth tip, she blushed again and said I should try Lava Ignite on Halloween.

I said I would but I fear I lied. I’ll be back in London by then. Keith’s dad is fine. Just a bit depressed. Sad, rather. Horribly sad. I think the family might need some time on their own. I might leave Keith here and come back down on the train tomorrow.

Or, I might go and get my hair cut again and ask Courgette out on a date.

Amazing lips.

I keep imagining her eating a watermelon.

God, I could love that woman.



CWOTD :: Is it possible to be happy with someone who loves Harry Potter and genuinely thinks that Mrs Blair's first name is Cherry, like the pie? Or in other words, is it necessarily a bad thing to shack up with a mental inferior?