
Until the other day.




In and out.  Nothing complicated.

But when I walked into a local barber shop, there were approximately twenty guys sitting or standing as they waited to get their hair cut.

I immediately walked out and Google Mapped another barber shop.  But when I got there, it was even more crowded.

The same thing happened at the third barber shop, and that is when I realized that it was five o’clock on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend.  Every guy in the area apparently wanted to get spruced up for the holiday weekend, and I had once again miserably failed at planning.

5ac0e-delicious-pizzaDejected, I decided to forego the whole haircut and just get pizza.  Because, let’s be honest — pizza cures everything.  Including being so unsynchronized with the world around you that you’re unable to coordinate a simple haircut.

I found a nice little pizza joint and proceeded to stuff my face and then walk out, licking my fingers and feeling satisfied for abusing greasy goodness as a means of drowning out the feelings of failure.  I could barely remember that I had been conquered by the one simple task that I had set out to accomplish.

The good thing about crushing my body with tons of food in such moments is the fact that it makes my brain forget about whatever sadness it is currently trying to process.  The bad thing about this is that the numbness in my brain is not solely pinpointed to that specific pain, but to my whole brain in general.  In this zombie-like food coma, the parts of my body take on a life of their own and have to do things for themselves.

It was at this point that my eyes droopily noticed a sign that read “Salon.”  The sign hovered over a store in the same shopping center that seemed to be completely void of customers.

Though they were very far from the top of my head, my feet remembered that the other pole of my body needed a trimming, so they instinctively began walking in the direction of the salon.

After walking a few feet, my brain started to realize what was happening, so it sent out this thought: Wait!  Girls go to salons!

A few steps later, my feet stopped walking.

As if to alleviate the hesitancy of my feet, my eyes trained on the word before “Salon,” which read “Unisex.”

My brain sounded out the words again, just to make sure.

Unisex Salon.

Aside from bathrooms and locker rooms, almost every room that I have ever entered was, in fact, unisex.  This salon, however, would be the first place that I had ever entered that felt the need to describe itself as such.

This fact troubled me a bit, as I didn’t know what it would imply for me to enter a unisex facility that explicitly described itself as such.

But as I contemplated this fact, my feet had already begun walking towards the place that would cut my hair, and eventually my eyebrows.

Maybe it was the food coma.  But maybe it was something else.  The temptress known as The Salon was acting like an alien spacecraft which was shining a bright beacon of light in my direction.  And I was staring and dumbly pacing towards it, like a moth to a flame.

This beacon of light that says, you know the salon is for girls, but come on in anyway.  Because you know that there is something tantalizing about the world of salons.  Why else would women pay exorbitant amounts of money to go to them all the time?

You don’t understand them, but after today…you will.

And you will love it.

And that word, “Unisex?” 

Well, that’s a personal invitation to you, Youngman Brown!03970-3walking_into_light

If any of your “bros” make fun of you for entering a salon, your defense is as simple as proclaiming the name of the salon.  “It said it was for men!” you can tell them.  “It said it right on the sign!”

Oh, Youngman.  We are going to have such a lovely day, here at the salon.

It is a “unisex” salon, alright.  Because your hair is about to get u-ni-sex’ed up.
My brain kept telling me, “No, no!  It’s a salon!  It is for women!  This isn’t natural!”

But my feet kept walking.

Continued in Part II

-Youngman Brown

0 thoughts on “The Unisex Salon: Part I

  1. On the edge of my seat, did you get them all cut? Did they manscape your eyebrows? No details below the neck are needed, unless of course the GIRL cutting your hair was named Vixen.


  2. Pizza takes all my pain away. When that doesn't work, I'm in some serious shiz…and it's time to break out the big guns, ICE CREAM. That always works, or at least induces a nice sugar coma, so I pass out 🙂

    Can't wait to hear what happened next.

  3. Just the word “salon” would deter me, unisex or not. But when your feet are under control of something other than yourself, it MIGHT be excused….pending the follow up to this post!

  4. I go to a hairdresser who does pretty equally male and female clients. It does not say “unisex salon” on the door, or anywhere else though. And the place just says, “Courtney Cuts” on the sign. Maybe the fact that there is no word salon makes the guys more comfortable to come in.

  5. I just used pizza to soothe my sadness. Now I'm greasy.

    And have to go to a unisex gym.

    What if unisex didn't mean anysex but meant unicorn sex?

    Would you still go? Yeah, me too. Because who DOESN'T want to see unicorn sex? hint: there's glitter and candy

  6. I used to go to a unisex salon to get my haircut. They actually trimmed my eyebrows once, too. Once I had found out that $20 was a lot of money for a buzz cut, I decided to shell out the money for a trimmer and have my girlfriend do it instead.

    I can't wait for the conclusion!

  7. Scary eyebrows are scary no matter which gender is sporting them. I can understand your trepidation though. I'm female and even I don't like going to salons!

    Can't wait for the next installment!

  8. Oh! You leave us hanging! What cruel authors do that “to be continued” thing? (Oh, wait………..)

    ps–now that I am hooked, I will of course be back!

  9. You're such a tease. In my hometown I can't think of any hair cutting establishments (and we have MANY) that are restricted to one sex. Whatever they are named, Salon is not in the title. You always talk about getting your hair cut like you're going to the dentist, haha, you're so funny.

  10. My husband complains about the same thing at the barber shop…too many people. My 19 year old figured out last year that he likes this girl named Leslie to cut his hair (enjoys the shampoo he also says) at the salon right next to the barber shop. She must be cute because he keeps going back! Costs twice as much!

    Hurry up with the sequel!

  11. Ok, so I had to reread your sentence about needing a trimming at the “other pole” twice. Sorry…but felt the need to tell you that. hahahaha

  12. All of the 'unisex' salons I've ever been in look like I'm walking into the movie set of “Barbershop.”

    Just sayin.

    And you know you're from Jersey when the barbershops are all filled to the brim just before Memorial Day Weekend…

  13. I'm more confused by your song choice at the end than anything else. Did you get made love to in there!? (I get it…the whole minds telling you no but your body's telling you yes.)

    Salons are glorious. I made my father go to one for a mani/pedi and he'll deny liking to to others until the day he dies but as he sat in that massaging chair he moaned out a “I get it now”. Just saying…they are pretty amazing. Pamper yourself now and then…you are worth it. Dying for the next part, you pretty man you.

  14. As a man with bushy eyebrows…I understand that battle all too well.

    There is no shame in a man visiting a salon…if that man knows what they are getting into and have hair worth the trouble. But something tells me that this story does not have such an uncomplicated ending…

  15. Hahhahaah that is AWESOME! I totally just meant the other pole as if my feet were my body's South Pole and my head was my body's North Pole, but I can now see the confusion. I guess I really need someone to proofread my work.

    But I'm not going to go back and change it. Because the way you read it is awesome.

  16. Oh, the song was only meant to show that my mind was telling me, “No! It is for women” but my body kept saying “Yes! You need a haircut! Give in!”

    And 'cause R. Kelly is da shit.

  17. My boyfriend uses hair clippers to do his own hair and I can't bear to watch, I'm always so afraid that it will go horribly wrong and he'll cut his whole head off. (The worst that usually happens is that he ends up with longer strands of hair he missed behind his ears that he only discovers a week later.) I want to know what happened next too! Aaaargh!

  18. Oooo, I can't wait to find out what happens. Thankfully (as usual) I'm behind on my blog reading so I don't have to wait until tomorrow to read the continuation of this cliff-hanger.

  19. Wow. This was a very Douglas Adams-ian style of writing. Well done.

    …who makes a haircut so good it's a cliffhanger? Mad skills, dude. Mad skills.

  20. The good thing about the clippers that I have is that it is pretty hard to mess up. Although I once forgot to put the guard on and actually shaved a square of my hair down to the skin. It was right before I went to Jamaica and slightly embarrassing.

  21. After coming over here directly from Dude Write, I must say I was more than a little surprised to find words consisting of more than two syllables. The use of “dejected” in the very same sentence as the more sophisticated word “forego” was really a nice touch!

    But I digress, I did not come here to poke fun… Ok that might have been a little less than 100 percent honest. I did come here with the intent to poke fun, but I'm leaving here impressed by your wit and wanting to read on…

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