The Warrior Roy - a podcast by The Q

I woke up this morning and decided that I needed to get my haircut, due in no small part to the fact that I looked like a crazed jungle terrorist. When I called the my barber's cell phone and asked about his availability he informed me that he was no longer at the shop, but was now working for some other hole in the wall place that was thirty minutes away. My usual place is five minutes away from my house and I didn't want to venture into the seedy underbelly of Toledo. I declined Montel's offer, essentially ending what had, for the better part of a year, been a fantastic relationship.

I called Steve (owner of "Steve's Sport-N-Cuts), and asked him if there was any way I could get a cut today. His response, "If you come right now...I've...I've got someone." At this point I felt like I was looking to hire and assassin to carry out a hit for me. Steve's cryptic response was all the motivation I needed to toss on some clothes and rocket over to the shop.

Now, as fond as I am of embellishment, especially in the arena of storytelling, you must understand that this next bit is completely true. I walked into the shop, Steve pointed at a man I had never seen and said, "That's him. He'll take care of you."

I approached his chair, sat down, and this mystery barber whipped out the vinyl cape, snapped it, and draped it about me.

"Hey," he said, his voice a wave of smoky deepness, "I'm Roy. What's your name?"

As he turned me in the chair and I said, "You can call me Q" I noticed that this older, bald gentleman, had a scar that ran from his forehead to right below his left eye. He conveyed an air of sage-like brilliance and hardened gunslinger experience. These impressions were nothing more than ethereal markers until...he started cutting my hair.

In his hands, the clippers were sharpened implements of hair decimation. Imagine that Akira Kurosawa had directed the movie Barbershop...yeah...it was like that. It was a flurry of styling craftsmanship as this artisan blinded me with his prowess. The clippers would stop buzzing, I would hear clattering, and then a new hair-cutting sword would be unsheathed and he would lash at my head, my locks spinning away from me like the maimed rag doll bodies of O-Ren's Crazy 88s.

Then, as if that wasn't enough, for the final confrontation, he sparred with my beard. The blades of his clippers skimmed across my skin so quickly that I imagine that he slashed away, stepped back and the hair simply fell from my face.

When he was done his hands flew about my head and face, applying balms and salves, he whipped the cape away and I rose from the chair, not completely sure of what had just happened. But I gave him my money and walked away, hoping and praying that I would once again meet this...this being that had forever redefined the words Afro Samurai.

"Q"

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