I used to think a haircut was a small thing. A tidy-up, a skin fade, a bit off the top before a wedding or a job interview. I had a chair in a barbershop near Capel Street, and most days were the same rhythm: kettle clicking in the back, clippers humming, lads talking football, rain tapping the window like it had paid rent in Dublin.
The first time I cut hair for someone sleeping rough, it wasn’t part of any plan. I was closing up on a Tuesday evening, sweeping hair into little dark clouds, when I saw a man sitting in the doorway across from us. He had a sleeping bag pulled up to his waist and a beard that had grown into itself. I’d passed him before. Most people had. That’s the awful truth of a busy street: you can learn to step around a person as if they are street furniture.
That evening, he was looking at our window, not begging, just watching the last customer leave. I don’t know what made me do it. Maybe guilt. Maybe the cold. Maybe the fact that my own father had died the year before, and this man had the same tired set to his shoulders. I opened the door and asked, “Do you want a cup of tea?”
He looked surprised, then suspicious, then embarrassed. “If it’s going,” he said.
His name was Martin. He had worked kitchens in hotels around the city, including one near Temple Bar, before drink and grief and a run of bad decisions pushed him from a rented room to a hostel to the street. He told me this in pieces, as if he didn’t want to hand over too much of himself at once. When I asked if he wanted a haircut, he laughed like I’d offered him a holiday.
“Would you not be afraid I’d scare away your customers?” he said.
I told him the shop was closed. He stood up slowly and carried his bag inside like it was something fragile. I put a towel around his shoulders. He kept apologising for the smell, for the knots, for the state of himself. I kept saying, “You’re grand, Martin,” because I didn’t know what else to say and because I wanted it to be true.
It took nearly an hour. I cut away months of hair, trimmed his beard, cleaned the edges around his ears. The mirror did the rest. I’ll never forget his face when he looked up. He didn’t smile straight away. His eyes filled first. Then he touched his cheek with the tips of his fingers, like he was checking if the man in the mirror belonged to him.
“I look like I could ring my sister,” he said.
That sentence stayed with me. Not “I look handsome” or “I look better.” I look like I could ring my sister. A haircut had given him back the possibility of being seen by someone who loved him.
The next week, Martin came by with another man, and the week after that there were three. I started opening early on Mondays, just one hour before paying customers came in. I brought in a flask of tea and a packet of biscuits. At first my boss wasn’t thrilled. He said it was risky, said we weren’t a charity, said people might talk. They did talk, but not in the way he feared. A woman from Smithfield dropped in clean towels. A café nearby sent over breakfast rolls at closing time. One of my regulars, a solicitor who always wanted the same boring side parting, left fifty euro on the counter and said, “For the Monday lads.”
Not everyone was easy. Some came in restless or ashamed. One man sat down and cried before I even turned on the clippers. Another bolted halfway through with foam still on his neck. A woman called Paula asked me to cut her hair very short because she said long hair made her feel vulnerable sleeping near the quays. I learned that you don’t ask too many questions. You don’t say, “How did you end up here?” as if life is a straight road and they took the wrong exit. You offer tea. You ask what style they want. You let them choose something.
Martin became our unofficial doorman on Mondays. He’d tell people, “Don’t be acting the maggot in there. He’s giving his time.” He had a dignity about him that I hadn’t seen at first because hardship had been standing in front of it. One morning he arrived wearing a second-hand navy coat, hair combed, beard neat. He told me he had rung his sister in Galway.
Note: Please be aware that these are written in confidentiality and there is not reference or mention of any real people and their sentiments here. Every incident and Story tends to be emotional so please read at your own emotional risk. Website is not responsible for anything related. HumansofDublin.io is not related to the photography project HumansofDublin by Peter Varga
