The Black Man's Country Club

ART: "Barber Shop" By Jacob Lawrence

My father introduced my brother and I to the barber shop at a very young age. As children, we entered into a world that we automatically recognized as distinctly male, free, and liberating. Here, surrounded by peers and away from the prying ears of both the world of women and, more importantly, the white world, these black men were able to talk and express their honest viewpoints on just about anybody and everything.

I probably heard many things in the barber shop that my mother didn't want me to hear but, what could she do? She wanted our hair cut so we would look like the neat and clean little colored gentlemen she was attempting to raise and would one day unleash on an unsuspecting world. So, this was the price that had to be paid. Besides, she was never privy to the sometimes salacious and definitely subversive conversation that went on there. My father, my brother, and I all understood that this was men's talk and what was said in the barber shop stayed in the barber shop.

Flash forward to the future and I'm 17 years old... I was working, had a little money in my pocket, independence, and a need to make my mark in the world. I began by choosing my own barber shop. The shop I chose is in a "bad" part of town (not that there were any "good" parts of town that I could function in with autonomy). The two young barbers were not much older than me and the owner was somewhat of a neighborhood character (he was asleep most of the time). I don't ever remember him being awake (I always wondered if he was alive or if he was actually dead and being used as a front). I chose this particular shop because everybody knew that you could get cuts that were really "fly" from there and any up and rising young "playa" had to maintain a "fresh cut".

The guys in this shop were guys my age. Most of them were either working somewhere like me or selling weed. Cocaine was not yet affordable in the black community and nobody in his right mind would've entrusted kids our age to sell heroin. This just goes to show you how much times have changed. All of us, regardless of how we made our money, were still just kids... still unsure of ourselves and insecure.

A lot of bragging and boasting went on back then... from who had the sweetest "j" (jumpshot) to who slept with who and how many. It wasn't until I was around 26 years old that I figured out most of what was said by those guys were lies. There was a lot of lying and tall tales told in the barber shop. But, here (as in the barber shop of my father's generation), we were still free from the world of women and the white world, which hadn't started to effect us yet. We were safe in the company of each other and could express any idea in our minds, no matter how radical or outrageous.

Several months ago, I introduced my grandson to this "last bastion of male independence". He was not impressed. The little guy had a fit as soon as he heard the electric whirl of the clippers. Only a lollipop calmed him down. He's far too young to appreciate the secret society he is being inducted into... I'm sure that in time, he will understand.