When Jim was a kid, he visited the local barbershop whenever his mother decided he needed it. He really didn’t care, as long as the appointment didn’t make him late for Little League practice or miss a television show he wanted to see. Since he’d been old enough to be in charge of these things, Jim had only had two haircuts he’d describe as not entirely voluntary. While neither was exactly forced, calling them self-determined would be a stretch.

Jim had never been one to spend much time thinking about how his hair looked or to ascribe any particular importance to it. A quick comb run through it after his morning shower and shave typically sustained him until the next day. So the fact that it had assumed so much significance on two separate occasions struck him as a little ironic.

The first time was in his senior year of high school. He was the star of his school’s basketball team - in spite of himself, if he was being honest. It’s not that he wasn’t competitive; if anything brought that streak out in him it was the adrenaline rush of a close game. He had always loved to play, but the older he got, the less it felt like a destiny. He was the proverbial big fish in a small pond and that was fine with him. He had neither illusions of standing out beyond that nor the single-minded dedication it would take to get there. Now, the state championships loomed. Suddenly it all became Serious Business. He could feel his drive waning in inverse proportion to the increasing expectations.

Complicating matters, just as the team began gearing up for the championships, Tracy, his first serious girlfriend, finally – mercifully – decided to allow him to relieve them of their respective virginities. Jim found himself almost continually keyed up, but not about basketball. To say he was distracted was an understatement. As was claiming he’d only missed a couple of practices. Saying his coach was pissed off didn’t begin to describe the situation.

Shortly before the big game, the coach delivered a pep talk about discipline and purpose – the usual high school coach-speak.  Furthermore, he announced that his players were looking unsuitably shaggy and asked them to get short haircuts. Very short ones. It was only a request in the rhetorical sense, delivered while staring Jim straight in the eye. The message was not subtle: the spotlight was on him to renounce his lackadaisical attitude and prove his allegiance to the team.

Problem was, Jim hated the prescribed near buzz cut. It would make his ears look huge and him feel like a fraud. Had there not been a possible college scholarship at stake, requiring his coach’s recommendation, he probably would have balked. But, the unanimous wisdom of his parents and friends was that the payoff was too desirable to let slide. There were some opportunities you just didn’t walk away from. Did you?

‘It’s only hair, Jim. It will grow back,’ his mother reminded him when he expressed his dismay.

The only one who sympathized with his reticence was Tracy, and he suspected that was because she was given to grabbing onto his hair, as if for dear life, when they were in the thick of it.

‘Trace, you okay?’ he’d pant, worried that the sounds she was making beneath him meant she was in pain. ‘Am I hurting you?’

He guessed he wasn’t, because when he’d pause and try to hold still for a second she’d only gasp, don’t stop. So he didn’t. Luckily, his lack of hair didn’t seem to deter her from their self-taught crash course in Teen Sex 101. He continued to be an enthusiastic, if somewhat fumbling, study partner.

While the dreaded haircut did nothing to diminish his hormonally induced fugue state and refocus him on basketball, it did seem to signal to his coach that his heart and mind were back in line. In the end, he played hard, but his team lost the championship anyway. Jim was just glad that the coach couldn’t blame it on his unruly hair. He figured it didn’t really matter if he secretly felt like he was just going through the motions.

After all, coach knew what was best. 

Jim’s second not quite voluntary haircut occurred years later. Once again, it was an act of acquiescence. Of getting back on track after being unexpectedly derailed. Blindsided one night around a campfire by a lake, when a door he’d believed was sealed shut had suddenly been flung open.

Problem was he’d attempted to cross that threshold before. It had been impenetrable. It had been awful. He wouldn’t have wished that on his worst enemy - and that included himself.

So, this time, Jim had done the sensible thing – made a conscious decision to stick with the program. He was lucky to have Karen, lucky she still wanted him on her team despite his less than stellar performance as a boyfriend. Like all his coaches had told him, the thing was not to over-think it. He knew the drill: all he had to do was follow her lead and memorize the plays. There was even a uniform, though his expensive new suit and tie were considerably less comfortable than his old basketball shorts and jersey.  

All week, he’d watched Karen struggle to pretend everything was fine. That they were still – had ever been - poised to win. Together. As good as her game face was, however, the score was painfully obvious. He tried to reassure her, but she wasn’t one for vagaries. So, when she said she thought he should get a haircut, he didn’t resist.

‘You want Wallace to hire you, not throw a quarter in your cup, right?’ she’d teased him. ‘Cause you’ve got a serious homeless thing going on with that hair, Halpert.’

It seemed to make her happy to arrange it, to watch his new corporate image emerge as piles of his hair accumulated on the salon floor (no more ordinary barbershops.) He was just relieved to see her smile again. He owed her that; at least that. It was only hair, after all. 

He’d quite literally played ball with the CEO before, he could do it again. He figured if he kept feigning interest, eventually he’d stop feeling like he was dressed and groomed to play a part. He’d actually become that guy. It was a proven fact: with practice, you can become a better shooter. He concentrated on ignoring something he also knew to be true: certain things, like a great jump shot, are simply in your bones. You can’t will them into being. Nor can you talk yourself in or out of love. He worked hard at not knowing that either.

Funny thing about that haircut. When it was finished, Karen and the hairdresser stood back beaming, admiring how ‘sophisticated’ Jim now appeared. But when he looked in the mirror, all he saw reflected there was himself as a child, after his mother had licked her palm and smoothed away the cowlicks in his freshly cut big-boy hair, making him look ‘presentable’ enough to go to a church youth group mixer or to a Boy Scout awards ceremony. Someplace he knew he didn’t really belong. 

Karen knew how to play the game. She cared about him. She knew what was best. 

Jim needed a trim. The first night of his Sports Journalism class (no pressure, just testing the water, Pam kept reassuring him) the instructor had asked if he was a college student. It might have been his jeans and untucked shirttails, but he was pretty sure it was mostly his hair. As usual, it had been a while between cuts. He wanted it cleaned up enough to clear his collar and get it out of his eyes, but not enough to look like the poster boy for corporate America. He asked Pam her opinion on the matter, but she didn’t seem to want him to look any way in particular.

‘You looked really handsome with your fancy pants hair, but there was nothing to hold on to,’ she’d equivocated.

Pam shared Tracy’s tendency to wind her hands in his hair at heated moments, but it was abundantly – fantastically - clear it had nothing to do with being in pain. And though he hadn’t been this enthusiastic himself since was a teenager, he’d thankfully long since outgrown his fumbling phase. Curled up on the sofa in front of a TV show, or late at night in the dark, drowsily discussing everything and nothing, he’d mention scheduling a haircut. As if on cue, Pam would run her fingers over his scalp and it would feel so damn good he’d forget why he ever thought he needed a trim. He’d forget his own name.

After listening to him repeatedly bring it up for a couple of weeks, but not get around to doing anything about it, Pam ended his procrastination by volunteering to cut it herself. She claimed to have done it before (he didn’t want to know for whom.) She even arranged to borrow good scissors and an electric clipper from Kelly, who’d apparently once attended beauty school for twenty minutes before realizing her interests ran more toward being on the receiving end of the primping.

By the time Kelly remembered the equipment was in her bag the next day, Pam had already left work a little early to go to her graphics class.  So she brought it to Jim instead.

‘Oh my god, Jim! You must love Pam so much,’ she exclaimed. ‘I mean, cutting crazy thick hair like yours is really hard and she has no idea what she’s doing. She’ll probably butcher it and you’ll look totally ridiculous.’

‘Great.’

‘You know how people say the eyes are the window to the soul? Wrong. Your hair is. Why do you think I got this sassy little bob?’

‘Yup,’ he nodded. ‘Makes sense.’

‘Exactly. And, no offense, Jim,’ she continued consolingly, ‘but that haircut you got last spring when you blew the corporate job? You looked hot and everything, but it was just so not you. You looked like some soap opera yuppie guy…’

‘M’kay….thanks.’

‘Anyway, letting Pam cut your hair is so romantic…like Samson and Delia.’

‘Delilah.’

‘What?’

‘De…uh, nothing,’ he decided to cut his losses, reaching for the implements of his hair’s prophesized destruction. ‘I’ll make sure Pam gets these.’

When Pam got home from class that night, she went to change out of her work clothes while Jim set a kitchen chair in the middle of the room and took off his tee shirt, so it wouldn’t get covered in hair. When she returned, she was wearing a tank top and his old boxer shorts that had shrunk too small to fit him, but were still huge on her. They hung low, exposing a few of inches of belly and rounded hips beneath the hem of the shirt. He fought the urge to put his hands there to feel how soft and warm it was; he could tell by the way she was scrutinizing his head that she meant business.

Manning the scissors, she approached with conviction, ready to attack. She moved around him, frowning in concentration as she clipped away. Every few minutes, she’d stand back squinting to assess her progress. Snip, snip, snip at the back. Then the buzzing of clippers. He couldn’t see what she was doing. Maybe Kelly was right and Pam was in over her head. He didn’t care. Snip, snip, buzz and the sides were done. It was only hair.

She straddled his legs to finish the top, pressing the inside of her thighs against his to steady herself. It felt like foreplay. Sometimes everything between them did. He imagined later, sweeping up the floor and then showering the itchy clippings off his shoulders and back. Maybe she’d get in with him. Maybe she’d wait for him in bed. Maybe nothing was impossible.

‘Enjoying the view there?’ she smirked, looking down at him.

He didn’t realize he’d been staring, but as she leaned over him, her thinly covered breasts were only inches away, precisely at eye level.

‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he felt his face flushing hot, caught in the act. ‘Okay, maybe a little.’

‘Just like at the barbershop, huh?’ she chuckled, taking the last few snips.

‘Hmm… kind of a Hooter’s barbershop. I like it.’

‘Good thing you’re taking that class,’ Pam concluded, setting down the scissors. ‘You’ve obviously been working for Michael too long.’

Jim just grinned and leaned into her, gliding his hands over the exposed skin at her waist until his arms were wrapped tightly around her. Pulling her closer, he rested his cheek against her chest. When he tugged her, just barely, she yielded instantly. She sunk down into his lap, letting her forehead lean against his.

‘You look good,’ she said quietly, her lips almost touching his, fingertips strumming through his freshly cut hair.

It felt like defying gravity, air beneath his feet, the ball swooshing through the rim.

It was in his bones. He knew it.