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I hadn’t seen Fish in ten years since we shared an apartment in Ocean City. I learned he had opened a barbershop and owned a small apartment house in Carolina Beach, North Carolina. There were a couple of weeks before school began—a detour through the coastal town made sense since I had never been there and I needed a trim. Fish had set up shop seven years earlier and stayed. Located on the main coastal road of the barrier island Fish’s Barber Shop was one of those old fashioned jobs with two large barber chairs, bent metal seats for waiting, and large bottles of colorful fufu water on the counter in front of the mirror. If you wanted your hair washed you’d best have done it before you came in to sit down. There was, however, always beer in the refrigerated trailer in the back, and a fenced in yard on the side where a buxom young woman could be watched through the window doing nails, mostly women’s. The occasional man, daring or darling, would have one or more nails decorated. Payment for the beer was left, on the honor system, in an old wooden cigar box with a false bottom. Fish sold quite a few cigars because of the beer-money cigar box to men and women who would take a cigar while putting in the beer money. He rang up the cigar sales on the old brass register.
“Sullivan,” he said, “I can’t run anymore. Sometimes this life ain’t worth a duck’s ass.” It just so happens that a DA was his styling specialty. Men and women of every sexual preference came from miles around to have Fish shape their head into a tail. Fish had always been a creative inspiration having only been a wage slave early in his career as an insurance adjuster. His ability to adapt as an entrepreneur and to keep moving did make it tough on his relationships. Fish had lost his last wife, Stretch the Yoga mistress to Wilmington a small city on the mainland where the film and TV movie of the week industry ruled.
Fish had been cutting hair for a long time, the same way, while everything else around was changing, his only consistency. That made his little shop rather chic. I had only a day to hang out before I made my way south to Orlando. I sat in the barber chair and puffed on a cigar and drank a beer while Fish examined the long braid down my back. “Are you sure you want me to cut your hair?”
“No, I guess I just wanted to say hey.”