In “Shape-ups at Delilah’s,” your story in this week’s issue, a woman named Tiny opens a haircutting business in the town of Cross River. At the time, you write, “the Great Hair Crisis was raging on with no visible end.” What’s the Great Hair Crisis, and what is its cause?
The Great Hair Crisis is some sort of curse that has afflicted just about all the barbers in Cross River, Maryland. Something has descended upon them, making them incapable of delivering even decent haircuts. The greatest barbers of all time find themselves losing their powers. I first explored the Crisis in a story called “Razor Bumps,” in my first collection, “Insurrections.” What’s causing it? That’s what everyone in Cross River wants to know.
For Tiny, haircutting and intimacy are entwined. She has rules about cutting lovers’ hair, and about how often she allows herself to cut other men’s hair—what’s the effect of these rules?
These rules allow Tiny to enact a measure of control over how and when she deploys her powers. She’s the only one in town who has the ability to cut beautifully in the face of the Crisis. That puts her in high demand. Her rules allow her to protect herself and her abilities, but they also breed envy from the haircutting men who just don’t have it anymore. It also breeds envy from the men who need the haircuts but feel that barbering is a craft reserved for men.
Tiny’s ex-lover Jerome tries to weasel the secret of her talents from her, so as to spread them to the male barbers in Cross River. What are the links between his growing desperation and his increasingly ragged appearance—and what, besides straight-up misogyny, is behind his desire for Tiny to fail?
I’m not sure Jerome himself fully understands his motives. Partly, for him, there’s the desire to be the victor in the breakup. I don’t think that’s his main motive, though. Like most of us, he doesn’t see himself as a bad guy, a snake, a weasel. He sees himself as doing some good. He figures that, if he can spread Tiny’s “secret,” he can speed the end of the Great Hair Crisis. Of course, Tiny doesn’t have a secret, she’s just good at cutting hair. Some see the black barbershop as a sanctuary for black men. Like most other men in Cross River, Jerome doesn’t fully believe Tiny and her team of “lady barbers” have the right to master a space previously reserved for black men.
Cross River features in many of your stories in your new book, “The World Doesn’t Require You.” What kind of a town is Cross River, and what are some of its mythical properties?
Cross River was founded after the only successful slave revolt in America. There, God’s last son invents his own music. River sirens rise from the Cross River, hypnotize men, and then lure them to their deaths beneath the water. There are sentient robots and cyborgs and giant birds that live amongst other mythical creatures in the Wildlands and hunt humans. Fun place.
