It’s the Tuesday before the Super Tuesday primary race and it’s a slow morning at Fairfax Village’s J’s Barber Shop.  The window sill is loaded with magazines.  Only one of the six barber chairs is occupied as a gray haired customer is being prepared for a straight shave by a gentlemanly bald barber.

At the age of 26, Kevin is a thirteen year veteran of the barber’s trade, and today he is handling of the business that comes in.   There’s me, a woman with her two little boys , a young brother with a four inch bush who left nearly clean shaven and a couple others.

The two wide flat screen TVs are tuned to “Good Times.”

Kevin remembers me from the cut he gave me over a month ago.   Since then he has cut his own shoulder length hair that was wrapped down in cornrows.

We compare how unrecognizable we have become to people we know since shedding our long hair, “One of my boys, came to my house and walked right past me,” he laughs at the slight, even with his easily recognizable, perfectly trimmed full beard he continues to wear Philadelphia style.

Kevin sits me in the chair, thows the black apron over me, and secures My neck from stray hair scratches with a knot in the white tissue that he wraps around my collar.

I tell him of my previous morning at American University watching Senator Edward Kennedy endorse Barack Obama for president, and  my subsequent evening discussing politics at a bar.

“The woman next to me had just been stood up for the fourteenth time in two weeks. She decided to end it with the guy.  Crying as she confided her story, she had me answer the phone when he called.   When the State of the Union address came on, she just started cursing at Bush – it was hilarious.”

“A dude at the end of the bar told her to shut up and then called her ugly – white dude, white girl,” I added to set the scene.

“She told him, actually yelled at him ‘There are other fucking TVs to watch this!  This still is a free country.’  Accused him of being a slave owner!”

“He kept calling her ugly and I am thinking - shit is about to pop off and then BOOM! She throws her glass of Pinot Grigio at him.”   Bartender eventually turned the volume down.

I want to know what Kevin was hearing in the barbershop, “What are people saying about the election?” I ask.

“You know, not much,” he says pretty quickly.  “Most people are talking about football.”

Astonishingly, Kevin tells me of one guy who came in and said “Black guy is running for president?”

“Not enough are keeping up,” he sounds disappointed, too.

Kevin keeps up, though.  He knows about most all of the candidates. While he works on my low fade, making sure not to touch the front, he offers his pros and cons on the candidates.

Kevin agrees with President Bush’s  support in his State of the Union address for admitting immigrants for “positive reasons like work.”

“Without immigrants taking jobs, we won’t have money circulating,” he added sounding like Ben Bernanke.

Kevin wasn’t so supportive of Bush’s policy on the war. “He made our home more vulnerable by going over there. He is so manipulative.”

“Even doctors can’t afford to go to the doctor,” JJ opines in front of the laugh track as Thelma and Michael convince him to go the doctor to get a VD test whispers the TVs overhead behind us.

Kevin and I compare the Bush presidency to the recent remake of the “Manchurian Candidate.”

As I was trying to think of the name of actor who played the candidate, he reminded me Denzel was in the movie.

“Mitt Romney, I’d hire him first for the economy,” Kevin brings us back on topic.  “He’s no president though.”

He jumps back to the Democrat side, “Barack Obama is our man,” he says sounding like a confirmed believer.

“You know gang, I want to thank you for bringing me down here,” JJ tells Thelma and Michael after getting a negative test.

With a steady hand, Kevin comments on the analysis of the seating arrangements around Obama during the State of the Union.

“Someone on TV asked what kind of role Ted Kennedy would play.   Would he be a Bill Clinton –role like for Hillary?  The media was focusing on Ted Kennedy sitting next to him, but Obama had a Republican supporter to one side and an Independent behind him,” Kevin pointedly observes.

“I’m jealous of Obama,” he says between the question of how to finish off the back of my head – squared off or natural  – and actually fading it out.  “I wanted to be the first Black president.”