(Call Me?) Ishmael

Even in these post-shoulder-length-hair days of mine, haircuts are not a common occurrence. But yesterday, I walked around the corner to Thomson's Barber Shop (no website or Googlemaps listing; it's at Penn and Kelker streets, if you're curious). I pass by Thomson's often: it is at the corner where I turn right to go to work, or left to go to Alvaro's for cheap pizza and delicious homemade bread.

Thomson's features a beautiful little stoop and, on the glass doors, the legend "No Hanging Out."

Yet every time I walk or bike past Thomson's, there are folks hanging out on the stoop. This encouraged me -- people sticking it to the man in the smallest and most meaningful of ways: by co-opting His space for personal connections. So it surprised me to learn that one of the regulars on Thomson's stoop is Terry Thomson himself.

It was my first time in, so I didn't ask about his paradoxical signage. I mostly just sat, listening to him banter with the other barber in the shop. He took a small, thin trimmer to the edges of my hairline, giving me a "lineup." As he moved down to lineup my sideburns, he said "You wanna keep that Ishmael?"

I wasn't sure what he meant. And had he said "You wanna keep that Ishmael?" or "You wanna keep that, Ishmael?"

Then I realized he was talking about my beard, and I told him that yes, I would be keeping it. But the mystery remains: was Ishmael a colloquialism for "beard," or had he given me an impromptu nickname?

Needless to say, I would be pleased and honored to be nicknamed after Melville's enigmatic, unreliable narrator, but I would also be pleased to refer to my beard as an ishmael.