Cocktail Cuts

College students are poor.  That’s a given—hence the Natural Light beer, steady diet of Top Ramen, etc....  When you have no money, you do what you can to cut costs, from the simple—stealing food from the cafeteria—to the extreme—living in your school’s library like NYU’s Bobst Boy did.  There are, however, some things you should never do to save money.  Here is one of those things:

It was sophomore year, I was poor, and my hair was shaggy and gross.  I needed a haircut.  It was a Thursday night and I planned to wake up early the next morning and go to the local salon for a haircut.  But when I pulled out my wallet to do some quick budgeting, I realized I only had 20 spare dollars. 

Since the next day was Friday, I knew I would need weekend supplies—beer and pizza.  I started to run the numbers:

Beer- $15

Pizza- $5

Haircut- $20

I was 20$ over budget.  Something had to go, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be the beer or pizza.  I decided I’d have to continue to rock the dirty mop that had become my hair—until I was struck with a brilliant idea.

I had recently purchased an electric shaver to trim my beard.  Why couldn’t I use it to cut my hair?  I’d seen it done before—dudes on my floor would cut each other’s hair with electric razors all the time.

I yelled across the room at Perry, “dude, wanna cut my hair?”  “Oh HELL YA man,” he responded, “hold on though, let me have a couple cocktails.”  I didn’t know what to think of this—a liquored up rookie barber with a sharp, motorized object isn’t the safest combination, so I asked, “why do you need cocktails for this job?”  Perry’s response took care of my fears “oh, don’t worry man, the cocktails will steady my hand, trust me, I need to be on my game for this.” 

Perry slammed a couple cocktails, burped, and then announced proudly, “ok man, Cocktail Cuts is open for business.”

We went into the bathroom, I sat down on a stool, the electric razor was plugged in, turned on, and the Cocktail Cut began.  What follows is why I will never trust Perry with a sharp object again. 

I made sure the buzzing razor had a length guard on—I figured Perry would need the training wheels to help him cut my hair the right length.  “Ok man,” I told him, “just go over all of it with the guard on so it will be one length and we’ll be good to go.  Under no circumstances are you to take the guard off.” 

I felt halfway comfortable as Perry ran the buzzing razor from the front of my skull to the back.  But a minute or two into the cut, Perry started to bitch that the razor wasn’t chopping all my hair and that he wanted to take the guard off—apparently my $15 Amazon.com razor wasn’t strong enough to chop through my thick mop.  I didn’t care.  “No dude, you’re not taking the guard off.”

For the next ten minutes Perry kept going back and forth across my head, but it didn’t seem like he was making much progress.  Certain spots were cut to the right length, while others were still long—my head looked like a game of Tetris.  “Just keep going man, slowly but surely it will all even out,” I reassured him.

After five more minutes Perry became bored—what he thought would be a fun evening involving cocktails and a motorized chopping device was starting to feel like manual labor. 

I sat vigilant and unwavering as my mind drifted off and daydreamed.  Until I suddenly realized that at some point in my daydreaming Perry had taken the guard off the razor.  “DUDE WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” I shouted as I pulled my head forward to get it away from the unguarded razor. 

“DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT,” Perry yelled back as he lunged forward to continue the Cocktail Cut.  Mid-lunge his liquored up feet moved faster than his liquored up brain could process and he tripped.  The razor bashed into my skull.  I heard a loud BZZZZZZZ as I smacked the razor from his hands.  Then I felt my head in horror.

Perry had cut out a long, one and a half inch wide landing strip of hair, transforming it into pure white skull.  I now had a massive hairless white spot in the middle of my multiple length black hair.  I left Cocktail Cuts in disgust.  I would have demanded a refund, but Cocktail Cuts is a non-profit venture.

The next morning I went to a real haircut place.  I sat down, explained to the nice lady what had happened, asked if she could save my head, and took off my hat.  “Jesus Christ did he do a number on you,” the hairdresser said.  “I really can’t do anything but buzz your entire head. 

I left the hair salon with no hair, no money, and spent the entire weekend sober, pizzaless, and bald.  Some cost cutting measures come back to bite you on the ass.

It was a lot like this.  Click to watch.