A visit to the barber
Yesterday I made my monthly visit to the hairdresser. I have been using the same guy for nearly two years. I would not describe him as a friend but we get on well and I am surprised by the level and amount of his confidences. It would be wrong to go into too much detail but as a student of relationships I am always interested to hear of his. He is gay.
He had just returned from a trip to the Canary Islands with a friend. He did not seem to know the friend that well prior to the trip and it soon became appparent they were incompatible in their holiday aspirations. My hairdresser Paul liked to go to breakfast and is a morning person whilst the friend wanted to stay in the bedroom. Paul is a good mixer and soon connected with others in the gay fraternity. Each went out to dinner with a couple but on separate occasions ; it sounded a bit of a disaster to me and I wondered how much preparation they had made in discussing the trip beforehand. Their relationship seemed a casual one so perhaps they went on holiday on a whim. Heterosexual couples do the same – this post is not about gender relationships – but here there is more likely to be a paying party who puts himself/herself in charge.
I should add that Paul is in his late twenties. I recollected back to my days of dating at that age. There were no mobiles, texting or Tinder but you had dating agencies which I never used. The first date was something of a nightmare: do you make a move and if so how and when ? Now there are all sorts of apps and blogs. Yet now if you make the wrong move you could face a prosecution particularly if the woman has had too much to drink. This happened to a friend of mine who went out with a lady – 3 bottles of wine were consumed by him and his lady friend with whom he already had a sexual relationship. She much the worse for wear collapsed into his spare room bed and my friend wisely left her there untouched. It’s all a bit of a minefield. I am not sure if anyone is the more contented nowadays. I am not in favour of arranged marriages but I can see a certain logic in families connecting to arrange a date. Here more knowledge is shared.
Oh and by the way Paul is an extremely good hairdresser.
