A Bad Shave
Returning from our week in Little Corn, a place with few services, I needed a shave. So one of my errands during our first morning in Granada was to stop into a unisex sala de belleza down the block from the market. I walked out with one of the worst shaves of my life. Many of you may remember my shaving travails in India: Well, this ranks right up there with the worst of them.
Entering the shop, a man pointed me to a chair. A woman placed the smock on me and I told her what I wanted. I´d never been shaved by a woman before, but I figured I would give it a shot. But after she finished trimming my beard with the electric machine, things took a turn for the worst. With the manual razor, she took 20 excruciating minutes while she fussed with my beard and mustache. Her technique was all wrong: this part of the process should take no more than five minutes. Also, she applied a cream to my face which I did not like. Worst of all, she spent her time trying to sculpt my mustache without any regard to its natural inclinations. One I stood up, I found myself paying C$40, a relatively high amount, for the worst shave I´ve had in Nicaragua.
To be honest, I think the problem was that she was a woman. Hey, I´ve got nothing against the ladies. In fact, my favorite hair cutter is a woman. But women have hair. They do not, as a general rule, have beards. And this really is the crux of the matter. Much like the 14 year old Indian boy who gave me a terrible shave last summer, this Nicaragua lady had no first-hand understanding of how hair grows onto the face of the man. How could she know? How could she know that when she tried to sculpt my mustache and make it thinner like one of her finely sculpted eyebrows, not only would this feel terrible at the time but it would also leave me itching insanely when it grew back in over the next days. No, she had no understanding of that at all.
I wish I could say that there is a happy ending to this story. But for much of the following week I was extremely itchy and irritable. And I think we all know who is responsible for that.
From now on, I am returning to the rule I originally expounded: Hayden will not be getting a shave from any barber who is not capable of growing facial hair.
Entering the shop, a man pointed me to a chair. A woman placed the smock on me and I told her what I wanted. I´d never been shaved by a woman before, but I figured I would give it a shot. But after she finished trimming my beard with the electric machine, things took a turn for the worst. With the manual razor, she took 20 excruciating minutes while she fussed with my beard and mustache. Her technique was all wrong: this part of the process should take no more than five minutes. Also, she applied a cream to my face which I did not like. Worst of all, she spent her time trying to sculpt my mustache without any regard to its natural inclinations. One I stood up, I found myself paying C$40, a relatively high amount, for the worst shave I´ve had in Nicaragua.
To be honest, I think the problem was that she was a woman. Hey, I´ve got nothing against the ladies. In fact, my favorite hair cutter is a woman. But women have hair. They do not, as a general rule, have beards. And this really is the crux of the matter. Much like the 14 year old Indian boy who gave me a terrible shave last summer, this Nicaragua lady had no first-hand understanding of how hair grows onto the face of the man. How could she know? How could she know that when she tried to sculpt my mustache and make it thinner like one of her finely sculpted eyebrows, not only would this feel terrible at the time but it would also leave me itching insanely when it grew back in over the next days. No, she had no understanding of that at all.
I wish I could say that there is a happy ending to this story. But for much of the following week I was extremely itchy and irritable. And I think we all know who is responsible for that.
From now on, I am returning to the rule I originally expounded: Hayden will not be getting a shave from any barber who is not capable of growing facial hair.
posted by Hayden @ 1:00 PM
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