London may have had Jack the Ripper, but Pizza Corner has Peter the Clipper. Unlike London Jack, who stalked prostitutes in the fog shrouded side streets with a medical bag full of hidden torture instruments, Pizza Pete waves his sharpened blades freely through the air as he accosts you through the wafting cigarette smoke from the propped open door of his streetfront barber shop.

Longtime readers know of the peculiar relationship I have with my Greek barber. I'm a delicate soul. Alright, hell, I think I'm suffering from that same disease that Samuel L. Jackson had in Unbreakable. Not only that, but I've come to realize that phrases in English such as "that smell of cooking flesh is my scalp so could you please make the water a little cooler," "I think I can see bone now so could you please stop cutting" and "could you please stop twisting my neck because those popping sounds indicate that it won't go much farther" apparently don't translate well into Greek.

So why do I continue to visit him for my once a month scalping? Other than a few of the women I've dated, I don't think I have much of a masochistic streak in me. Sure, his shop might be 15 steps from my front door, but so is that guy that sells meat on a stick and you don't see me doing that to my body on a regular basis.

I guess I'll just chalk it up to this old-fashioned streak of mine. For example, I like how the fact that he doesn't know my name doesn't keep him from trying to use it (today I was "Paul"). I like the peeling wallpaper and yellowing clippings from a 1986 newspaper travel section about Greece scotch taped in random places around the shop. And I like the fact that while he scrapes the top layer of skin off the back of my neck with his dull rusty straight razor I can focus through the pain on the ever increasing smorgesboard of his family photos pasted to the mirror in front of me. With the amount of blood, hair and flesh I've left in his shop, I sometimes feel almost part of the family.

So, yeah, I'm supposed to be at class right now. But I decided to take the night off and dive head first into my accounting assignment in an attempt to survive this post traumatic stress syndrome while awaiting the feeling to return in my neck and make a big pot of spaghetti to replenish my red blood cell count.