One afternoon last week I did something reckless. I got a haircut.
To be clear, I am in favour of the lockdown, and despite this one indulgence I don’t intend to march on city hall to protest my right to eat at East Side Mario’s or go back to Canadian Tire before the curve has been flattened and the experts conclude the country is good and ready to reopen safely. But as we approach three months of militant self-isolation — and as many stores, restaurants, and other businesses across Canada are in the early stages of reopening anyway — the prospect of meeting my stylist in private for an under-the-table session was too much to resist.
I was instructed to stand a short way down the block in front of a bus shelter, trying to look occupied and discreet. At half-past two my stylist would unlock the front door and text me the green light, and I would approach the entrance, double-check that I wasn’t being followed or watched, and quickly enter the salon.
“Did anyone see you come in?” he asked nervously, snapping shut the bolt lock after me. I told him I didn’t think so: we were clear to proceed.
The modern salon was dimly lit, the overhead lights off. At the far side of the room a woman in her mid-thirties sat in a chair leafing through a magazine, her hair wrapped in ribbons of aluminum foil. She smiled and nodded as I took a seat. In a face mask, hands thoroughly sanitized, my stylist draped an apron over my shoulders and set to work on the back of my head with a pair of clippers, forgoing most of the customary banter. He shaved three months of overgrown hair off the back and the sides, palpable relief washing over me as the clumps of hair fell to the ground.
As he took to the top with a pair of scissors he looked at me in the mirror gravely. “Do you think I’ll get in trouble if I get caught doing this?” he asked. I told him I didn’t think so: the salon was technically closed, these were private meetings. In desperation — the salon had been without revenue for months now, with no firm date set for any kind of official reopening — he had begun to reach out to friends and select clients privately, checking to see if they might be interested in a surreptitious cut. I’d agreed as much out of need as simple curiosity. I wanted to know what it would be like to get a haircut in the midst of a pandemic lockdown, as some parts of the country are slowly reopening.
Of course, going to a hair salon doesn’t constitute proper social distancing, and in the sense that effective social distancing requires diligent and uniform collective action, I concede that what I did was irresponsible. But if it was a risk, it seemed to me a calculated risk, and given the mild physical contact involved, the precautionary measures taken (masks, gloves and so forth), and the sensible practices observed from the beginning of the process to the end (I washed my hands when I arrived and when I got back to my apartment, obviously) the danger, on the whole, seemed minimal.
It will be some time before haircuts feel normal
In British Columbia and Alberta, hair salons have already been given the okay to conduct their business as usual. In Manitoba, where COVID cases have stalled to the point of nonexistence, things are returning to normal on a much wider scale. It won’t be long before Ontario follows suit, if more cautiously.
Once salons do officially reopen, I suspect an air of caution and discretion like the one I experienced — there are too many unknowns still at play for people to return to these businesses with the familiar feelings of nonchalance and confidence. The services themselves may come back and be made accessible to us once more, and we may be able to stroll into our favoured salons for a cut that’s legally above-board. But the atmosphere of suspicion and anxiety that have settled in over mandated quarantine won’t just evaporate overnight. Pastimes we’re free to enjoy for the first time in months will still be approached tentatively, with a sense of insecurity.
Haircuts will soon return for everyone. But it will be some time before they feel normal.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2020
