My Russian Haircut

When you have difficulty communicating in a foreign language, it can be daunting to deal with service personnel who are waiting for your specific instructions. Its nerve wracking enough when you’re talking about things of some importance – train tickets, reservations, etc. But the things that have most intimidated me are those few things which can go really wrong and have a certain degree of permanence. In particular, I’m talking about getting a haircut.

Moscow is a cosmopolitan place, with more than its fair share of beautiful people in beautiful clothes. Like residents of most big cities, citizens of Moscow take some pride in their appearance; even if they can’t afford to shop at Armani, they make some effort to look neat and presentable. It’s entertaining, in that respect, to see high-heeled women struggling down a dirt path in a park, or a pensioner with war medals on his well-worn – but well-kept – blazer. So I have a lot of respect for Muscovites.

On the other hand, Moscow may very well be the world capital of bad hair. Things you see are truly shocking. Orange hair, purple hair, ice blue, port-wine hair, and the even more ubiquitous peroxide blonde bottle-job are all common on women here – women of any age and nearly any socio-economic position. Some even strike out in new directions by combining colors. Witness my fellow metro traveler yesterday; short hair, pitch black to the tops of her ears, bright red the rest of the way. Not the same hairs dyed two colors, but two separate, distinct dye jobs on one head. Anyway, those relative few women who don’t participate in this madness tend to wear their hair straight, slightly longer than shoulder length, and tied back simply in a barrette.

Men’s hair tends to remain naturally colored, but subject to horrendous haircuts. Strange things long dead elsewhere have persisted in certain pockets here – like the Pleistocene coelacanth that still occasionally shows up in fisherman’s nets. Things like the rat tail, the duck’s ass, etc. And that’s on men who don’t have the traditional Russian look of a crew cut. Some local combinations are even more frightening; the crew cut with long bangs, the crew cut side with long top, the emergence of a peculiarly Russian mullet.

One American colleague came to class the other day with a new haircut. He was quite proud of it, how he acquired it, and especially how little it cost. That’s when I decided that I was definitely not going to go for the economy option. Not that he looked ridiculous, mind you. It’s just that it’s difficult to use the word “hairstyle” when each and every hair on his head had been sheared off at exactly the same length; Unfortunately, at exactly the length at which his hair stands straight out. So he’s been walking around as though he has a Vandegraaf static generator hidden in his pocket.

I resolved to go somewhere nice, lest I end up like him. I did my best to brush up on all the words I’d need for this. I made a little vocabulary list, and studied up a few verbs to prepare. Bravely, I went in for the cut.

Pleasant greetings, friendly faces, offers of tea and a magazine to read while I waited; I had a feeling that this was going to be a nice, albeit expensive, experience. So I sat in the chair while Sergei prepared his station. He looked at me in the mirror and asked what I wanted. Out came my new vocabulary in a torrent of directions and directives and desired outcomes. I even used hand gestures and tugged at my hair in the appropriate places at the appropriate times. When I finally stopped, I noticed Sergei looking at my head with a bit of a perplexed expression, scissors at his side. Then he looked up at me in the mirror and gave me a rather blank look with a bit of a shrug. That’s when I realized that I had just given him a cogent, fluent description of every haircut ever done, i.e. longer on top and short on the sides.

We looked at each other helplessly for another few seconds – he not knowing what I wanted, and me out of words. I grasped at the only thing I had left that he might understand; “Like George Clooney.” It worked. A relieved “Ah hah” from Sergei and he happily set off to work.

It went well – if I may say so myself. I paid a NYC price, but I got the quality and outcome that I would have expected in NYC. That is to say, somewhere where I have the language capability to get what I want.