It’s Amazing What a Haircut Can Do to a Person

After spending most of his childhood with a shaved head, Jerald Walker finally swears off the cut. Much to his chagrin, it turns out the style isn’t done with him.

This piece is part of a series called Creative Nonfiction Classics, a special collaboration from Narratively and our partners at Creative Nonfiction in which we’re republishing classic pieces from the Creative Nonfiction archive. This story was originally published as “The Kaleshion” in CNF’s 73rd issue.

Illustration by Thomas White/Narratively archive

Kaleshion isn’t a word in the dictionary. It’s a word on your barber’s wall, handwritten beneath a photo of a bald head. There are other photos up there with made-up words to identify other haircuts, but your father never selects those, because they require hair. Male preschoolers should not have hair, your father believes; that’s a crime to which he’ll no more be party than to genocide. Your friends’ fathers feel similarly, so your friends are bald too. But as they turn seven or eight and certainly by nine, their fathers let them try different styles, while yours keeps making you get a kaleshion until you are ten. What’s the deal with that? You don’t know. All you know is he relaxes his stance in the nick of time, because it’s 1974 and the Afro is king. You grow yours the size of a basketball and swear on your grandmother’s grave that you’ll never get a kaleshion again.

But it’s never a good idea to swear on your grandmother’s grave. One summer day, when you are twenty-six and have just moved to a new neighborhood, you try out the barbershop near your apartment. It’s 1990, and the Afro long ago gave way to the Jheri curl, which gave way to flattops, which you are not particularly fond of, so now you wear your hair an inch long all around. As you sit in the chair, you tell the barber you’d like a trim. Close your eyes. Relax. Nod off after a while but be startled awake when the clippers graze your upper lip. Ask the barber, “What are you doing?” When he says, “Tightening up your mustache,” you respond, “Don’t touch my mustache.” But, he says, “It’s too late.” Then he says, “I’ll just finish this up,” as you wonder, What’s this guy’s deal? His deal is he’s incompetent, though you don’t know to what extent because the mirror is behind you. When he spins the chair around, you are surprised to discover the mirror is actually a window, through which you see another man in another barber’s chair staring at you. And yet, somehow, the barber standing behind that man’s chair is also standing behind yours, which means the window isn’t a window and the man is you. It’s amazing the difference a kaleshion can make.