My first thought was that I should cut off my head.
I quickly realised that it would be a fairly expensive proposition to persuade a friendly Beijinger to carry out the dirty deed, and with a lack of gun waving islamic extremists in that part of the world my chances of doing it on the cheap were slim.
So I ventured out of the hotel to attempt to find a barber.
I stepped out onto Chun Xiun Lu (choon zshun loo), a sedate, wide boulevard in the embassy district, with a few restaurants and banks, and a lot of old people sitting on benches. Apparently it also happened to have a lot of barber shops, because it wasn't long before I saw a rotating barber's pole. I decided it would be crazy to walk into the first place I saw, in a similar vein to my policy of buying the second cheapest product in a catalogue in the irrational hope that it will be somehow superior in quality to the less expensive but equally shit-looking option.
I skipped the second place as well and finally settled for option numero trez, a little shop behind a row of bushes, primarily because over the bushes I could see pictures of hot, scantily-clad women above the barber shop's entrance.
The first thing I noticed as I stepped through the open front of the shop, was that there were several lovely young ladies sitting around with bored looks on their faces and not very much clothing on. I realised with elation that I'd struck hair cut gold, the utopia of the hair cutting world, a man's paradise of barbershoppery, spoken of but never written about, mumbled through drunken lips in dark whispers, a place where the gods come to eat grapes, drink wine, and have their holy hair cut by buxom maidens.
Then I noticed there weren't any hair cutting seats, or indeed scissors, mirrors, or any of the usual paraphernalia of the trade.
An older lady jumped up and bustled over.
"Hello sir, you want massage". It was a statement.
"Uh... no, actually I need a hair cut"
She looked confused. I made cutting motions with my fingers on my hair, and said again
"Hair cut, hair cut".
A couple of the girls started giggling.
"Oh, hair cut, yes yes, you want hair cut." The older lady sat me down and a couple of the girls looked over coquettishly. She wandered out the back for a second, then came back and bent down to peer at me.
"You want massage?"
This crazy hair cut stroke massage place was doing my head in, so I rose again, and backed out of the shop, thanking them and explaining I just wanted a hair cut in the knowledge they didn't really understand a word I was saying. They all seemed suitably amused though, so I left with a sense of having brightened someone's day, if not by paying lots of money to fumble awkwardly with a young asian girl's body, then at least by making them laugh at my comically evident naiivety.
I strode quickly past the two rotating barber poles I'd seen previously, heading up to the corner where I remembered seeing a place with people actually having their hair cut inside.
I walked in, somewhat flustered but with a determined look on my face, and declared to the startled man in the corner that I wanted a HAIR CUT. He flinched, and pulled back in his seat a little, but then rose as a hairdresser beckoned him to the next available chair.
A young sharp-looking man with spiky gelled hair noticed me from his desk near the back of the long shop and hurried over.
"You want hair cut?"
"Yes, yes, oh god yes I want a hair cut"
"Yes?" he asked thoughtfully
"Yes."
"Yes?"
"Yes."
"Hair cut?"
"Yes."
"Yes?"
"Yes."
He herded me towards a chair and hurried out the back, bringing back a very good looking and somewhat under-dressed young lady. She put her hands on the backs of my shoulders and looked into my eyes in the mirror.
"You want hair cut?"
"Yes"
"You want massage?"
"No, just hair cut"
She looked confused, but motioned me over to the hair washing basin.
It was the most erotic hair wash I've ever had. My scalp was like putty in her hands. My hair was a seabed of kelp caressing her mermaid body. My skull was a fortune teller's orb, glowing with visions of our future together; Her lying breathlessly beside me, me smiling proudly, my wallet lighter but my soul enriched, gazing calmly at the clock on the wall, advanced a full ninety seconds from when it all began.
After the hair wash, she sat me down in the chair again, my head clean, my mind... not so much.
"You want massage?"
"Yes. I mean no, NO! Just a hair cut... just a... uh... yes, just a hair cut, just a hair cut." She was toying with her long hair, curling it around one finger.
I shook my head much more firmly than I felt, avoiding looking into her lovely eyes.
It seems they don't give hair cuts very often in that place, except perhaps to cadets for the Red Guard:
Later on I related my story to another guy from the North Korean tour, who worked in mining in the Philipines. He chuckled, saying a friend of his was a fan of the embassy district in Beijing but complained that if you got a hand job she'd use the other one to send texts to her mates while she was doing it.
I decided to stick to hair cuts.
