squirrelking.com

I am waiting to be sheared at Mastercuts when a guy strolls in dressed like a medieval monk. He is holding a large photograph. The guy stops at the desk and says, “How much for a haircut, m’lady?”

Lady d’Mastercuts gives him the once-over and says, “$14.95, friar.”

“Is tonsure included in your price?” he asks.

The lady shrugs. “Whachoo mean by tonsure?”

The monk slaps the photograph down on Lady d’Mastercut’s table. He pokes it with a bony index finger. “I mean, how much will it cost to make me look like him?”

Across the room, I peer over the top of Popular Hairplugs magazine. My curiosity is piqued. Which celebrity hairstyle, I wonder, is currently in vogue with the medieval monastic crowd?

I move in for a closer look. At a display case near the desk, I pretend to examine a bottle of Bed Head Creative Genius Sculpting Liquid. The monk and his lady friend are bent over the celebrity-hairdo photograph. But it isn’t a photograph after all — it’s a page torn from an art history book. A painting fills the top two-thirds of the page, and a short descriptive passage follows. The subhead reads, “A Portrait of Thomas Aquinas.”

Painted Aquinas is holding a bible in one hand and a cathedral in the other. It’s an unbalanced load and he is listing badly to one side. The top of Tom’s head is shaved bare. A thin strip of hair, just above the ears, circles his bald crown like an English hedge.

“Ah, tonsure,” the lady says. “It’s just the Little-Boy cut with a big bald spot on top!”

“Indeed?” says the monk. “What price for the Little-Bald-Boy cut?”

“$14.95.”

“Can you do it?”

“With my eyes closed,” the lady says. She looks down at Thomas Aquinas and then up at the guy who thinks he’s a monk. “You know,” she says, “you really had me worried for a minute. Dudes usually bring pictures of George Clooney.”