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whatever personality I can project through personal fashion, I discuss numerous haircuts with a sycophantic stylist, who
     is really just pondering my face in his hotly unflattering lights and thinking that it's irredeemably loaf-shaped.
    Having arrived at some inscrutable decision about how, precisely, he is going to cut two inches off the back of my hair, he
     turns me over to an eighteen-year-old in three-story-high platform shoes, who starts massaging my hands with aromatherapeutic
     almond-scented oil, making them so slippery that I can't grip my coffee mug.
    I get escorted to the sinks to have my hair lathered with Product, even if I have washed it already that day, and for the
     ensuing hour, the highly fashionable stylist clips microscopic strands of hair from all over my head while engaging in forced
     banter.
    "Who trimmed your bangs— they look fabulous."
    "I did, with nail scissors."
    Silence.
    "So, what do you do?"
    "I'm a writer."
    "Oh cool."
    Silence.
    "Do you ever dream," I ask sometimes, trying to hot­wire the conversation, "that you're cutting someone's hair, only instead
     of using scissors, you find that you're holding a stalk of asparagus or something?"
    "No, not really."
    Silence.
    I can't read because the stylist wants my head up straight, so I have to stare into the mirror at all times. It's like the
     stylist is shouting "Look at yourself! Look. At. Yourself." It reminds me of that classic Saturday Night Live skit, in which a drill sergeant is haranguing his recruits by calling them names; he says to one of them: "You! Yeah, you.
     You with that . . . hair . . . on your head. Know what I'm gonna call you? HAIR HEAD."
    I walk out with a "hairdo" that falls apart as soon as I wash out the conditioner/touch of mousse/finishing spray that has
     propped it up like egg white in meringue.
    Some women love going to the hair salon, I realize, so I should point out that I have straight super-fine hair. There is simply
     nothing you can do with straight super-fine hair that makes any difference if you don't have a one-inch wide face. If your
     cheekbones aren't apparent, and your chin doesn't end in a piquant point like Gwyneth Paltrow's, then this kind of hair is
     going to be the bane of your existence no matter how much cash you have. I always leave feeling disappointed and shafted,
     and over the years, the intervals between salon visits has been lengthening.
    Finally, the moment of eureka. I went to a barber. Mind you, this was easier to conceive of than to execute. It took me weeks
     to pluck up my courage. But at last I felt bold (or desperate) enough to walk into Enzo's Hairstyles for Men, a plain room
     in Toronto's Little Italy, which was truthfully and indeed very clearly marked Enzo's Hairstyles for Men. I sat down in an
     old vinyl chair beside a stack of Sports Illustrated magazines and waited my turn. Enzo, barber and proprietor, nodded at me courteously when he spied me on the chair. He didn't
     seem to balk at my presence. It was all about my own confidence, I felt certain. All I had to do was get over the feeling
     that I had walked into Enzo's Hairstyles for Men, and I would be free. Free at last!
    Enzo was attired in pale yellow work shirt and gray pants. He could as easily have been a hardware store manager. He was using
     a straight razor on a sallow young man with round wire-rimmed spectacles who was dressed all in black and seemed penniless,
     perhaps scribbling away at a novel. Another fellow waiting for a cut was burly and macho in his soiled white T-shirt— perhaps
     a mechanic. It occurred to me that the last thing these three men had in common was an interest in fashion. On the other hand,
     they were having a great, animated conversation about who was destined to win the World Cup.
    "Spain," vowed Enzo.
    "Argentina for sure," offered the burly man.
    "I think Somalia might stay in the game," said the probable-novelist, just to be provocative.
    They all pooh-poohed the Portuguese,