The Cutting Room Floor

During the late 50’s and the early 60’s, visiting my Father’s office was always the best and worst of times. Quite honestly, the best probably outweighed the worst by a large margin but there were always consequences to having a good time with my Father. Ultimately his power asserted itself, never with the intention of hurting me but simply his way of saying Father knows best.

I can remember each year coming home for the holidays from boarding school in Connecticut. We would take the train from Hartford, making our rounds through New Haven, eventually arriving at Grand Central Station around 1 pm on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. My father’s office was only a few blocks from Grand Central, by two o’clock I would be standing in his office while he and Gunther, his partner, talked about their newest adventures.

Gunther was Austrian, tall, elegant, refined and distant. My father, a New Yorker, was funny, short and fearless.

My father was the salesman who all the women buyers adored and Gunther was the man who worked most clearly with the designers. For over 25 years, they made a towering duo.

Of course as soon as I got to their offices, I would slowly, surreptitiously make my way back to the cutting rooms where the models were. There were always a few girls for me to gawk at.

I was the boss’ son so they were always so nice to me, even though I probably wasn’t as tall as the top of their legs. I would simply stand afar and fantasize about all these women.

Of course, unbeknownst to me at the time my father carried his fantasies slightly further. He probably was sleeping with all of them. No wonder they we so nice to little me, because they were extremely nice to my father as well.

By three o’clock, almost like the clock that kept perfect time at the Biltmore Hotel where I would meet my classmates to go back to school, my father would inform me to go downstairs and get a haircut.

On the ground floor of his building off and back somewhere, through a set of doors into another Manhattan building was this long, long room with what felt like 50 to 100 barbers. It was right out of an Al Capone movie of Chicago in the 20’s. All the men were surrounded by women, doing their nails, giving them suntans, massaging their scalps, shampooing them, etc. It was a sea of white with the lonely male barber and his client. This was an all male bastion that just happened to be occupied 3 to 1 with attractive women. Perfect, as far as I could tell.

My father’s barber was of course expecting me, and I was immediately sat down in a chair, with a crisp white apron placed over my body. Immediately, out of no where someone started to polish my shoes and my father’s attractive manicurist quickly came over started her work on my nails. She could have taken all day as far as I was concerned. Of course, not till my father died, did I learn that not only was he sleeping with his manicurist, he had actually set up an apartment for her. But I obviously was in my own world and innocently thought all was perfectly fine.

So here it is where it all began, I would ask the barber to keep my hair long, desperately trying to emulate some masculine “Errol Flynn” look-a-like trait where all of the sudden the buzz saw would come out and all my hair was cut to look like a field of barely planted grass. Even a brush couldn’t have made the slightest of difference.

The barber had defied me. He had been given strict orders by my father, and off went my hair; it might as well have been my head. My father for years had this idea that somehow ridding me of my hair was analogous to cleansing my soul. No matter how much I complained, without fail, off would go my hair whenever he had the chance. I imagine still to this day if he was alive, we would be battling about the length of my hair. As he is no longer alive my hair is now as I would like it. The whole experience at the barber as a young boy was truly wonderful and magical, but as I got up to leave I left behind my hair on the cutting room floor, with all my fantasies of the models and the women I was going to conquer.

Better luck next year.