I mean, the first barber I went to
was a white English guy
and I got butchered.
I was absolutely butchered
to the point where, on Monday,
when I went into primary school,
I didn't want to take my cap off.
Of course not. Of course not.
And, when I took it off,
the laughter was worse than it is here.
-That's the worst, isn't it? -It was horrible.
About as quiet as a mouse?
Download Tinder. Download Hinge.
Trust me. Your girl is out there, fam.
Gus, how long have you been married, mate?
I've been married for 39 years.
I'm still together with my wife.
Raised by my grandmother.
She gave as much love as she could give
and I have that to be grateful for.
I went on Tinder to chat to girls, alright?
And it just so happened that
I chatted to the girl that became my girl.
I went to a party in Thornton Heath
with a mate of mine.
I saw her and it was weird.
I just knew straight away that
I would marry her.
I knew that straight away.
I started chatting with her
and she gave me a bogus telephone number.
I was gutted.
I was totally and utterly crestfallen.
But there was a party at the same house
three months later.
I finessed things a lot better than I did
the first time around
and we arranged to meet again afterwards.
And we've been together ever since.
I think, for me, the most important part of that,
in all honesty,
was to be able to transfer that onto our children.
We don't realise how much we model
what we want our relationship
based on either our parents' relationships
or significant relationships that are in our,
you know, in our family or in our network.
We take a lot of that in subconsciously.
For me, having been raised
predominantly by my grandmother,
traditional, typical, Jamaican…
Everything she did was for the three of us.
To be a woman in her mid-60s,
to take on three grandchildren,
raising them while your daughter
has absolved herself of responsibility.
She is and always will be, you know,
my role model, my hero.
Some people walk in
and then they go straight into the chair!
I've been here for an hour and a half.
My dad used to cut my hair when I was a little boy.
But the funny thing is
my dad has been bald for so many years
and, when he used to cut my hair,
he forgot that he needed to comb out the knots.
He'd have the razor just going…
And I was just like: "Ah!"
He'd be like: "I didn't know."
Growing up, my parents were very affectionate.
You know, my mum was always a very loving person.
She loved to get people together.
She always wanted to see other people happy.
She was always sort of
sacrificing her own happiness
for other people's happiness.
A lot of that has rubbed off on me.
Especially after she passed away,
I feel like I've kind of embodied her in some way.
I sort of took on that role in a way because
I wanted to feel like mum was still…
That she's present,
spiritually or in whatever way.
There's something in our society
which has definitely been rooted in my upbringing
which basically suggests that, as men,
we should suck it up, you know?
We should just deal with it internally.
We don't need to be cathartic.
We don't need to talk and communicate.
And that really stymies us.
I guess, also from my perspective,
just reflecting, it just holds us back from
having the space to actually not only receive love,
but also as well show love and care
when people are going through challenges,
when people put up the flags.
Coming out of a relationship,
I was with her for 16 years in total.
And, since we split up,
I've been exploring, trying or striving to be
more vulnerable with my emotions and sharing more.
Because I really do see that
that was one of the reasons, the big reasons,
why I've gone through my divorce.
And maybe I put too much of that on
her telling me how she felt,
but she probably couldn't tell me how she truly felt
because I hadn't created a safe environment
for her to do just that.
I don't know where the need to be stoic is rooted
or where it's coming from,
but I know that it's passed down from my dad.
You know, he's old school.
He's, you know, never gonna talk to you about
what he's feeling.
But I remember, at one stage,
he turned around and said: "Carl, look."
"I think I'm depressed."
And I squirm at my response to that
because, when I look back at that,
my response was: "What do you mean you're depressed?"
"Stop being silly. Come on. Man up." You know?
And I see that almost as a cry for help.
And, yet still, my response was
one that he instilled in me
of being just ridiculously closed.
Yeah, I just think that
if I was probably a bit more open to
recognising the signs
and recognising what he was going through,
then, yeah,
I could have been a bit more supportive to him.
I've been a very angry young man.
I was definitely going down the wrong path.
I used to worry because I had so many girlfriends
that I just didn't think
I was ever going to meet someone
who I could live with
or who could tolerate me, you know?
But then it happened.
You know, one or two people have said about, you know,
creating space.
I created space to allow someone to come in
and now be that person that
I wanted and looked for, you know?
There's so much luck in these situations.
I moved to London in 2000.
In 2001, I met Hazel
and my instinct just told me that
there was something about her
so, while I didn't know
where it was going to end up,
you know, I followed my instinct.
We got married in 2008.
Had our first son in 2009.
Baby number two, Mr. Isaac, was due end of March 2013.
I took her to the hospital.
At seven o'clock in the evening,
she gave birth to Isaac.
But by
two o'clock the following morning,
so just about five hours later, she died.
And I wasn't supposed to be a single dad
with a three-year-old and a newborn baby
having to tell Aaron at three that
his mum had died and she wasn't coming back.
He spoke about what it was about Hazel…
Yeah.
I saw my grandmother in her.
That's it.
So I've lost the two women the closest to me
in the world,
but I'm still here.
It's interesting, isn't it?
Because we do have the barber shop,
but we don't talk about those types of things.
We have the rum shop,
but we don't talk about those types of things.
You know, we go to…
There's a betting shop,
but we don't talk about those types of things.
But we do meet a lot, you know, as black men.
We don't have those discussions.
I don't think I had that, you know.
You know how we're kind of fed
this definition of masculinity as well?
Yeah.
I wasn't that definition of masculinity.
Barber shops,
I would say are a safe space for most,
but definitely from my peers
that are in the LGBTQ+,
it can be challenging to find a safe space.
Even myself, my confidence in barber shops.
It was always a case of:
ok, go in, get your hair cut, leave.
So…
It's generally a safe space,
but what about the people on the fringes of it?
I think James Baldwin talks about
something as a state of abjection
and that's to feel as a foreigner in your own home.
You know, a lot of times we're taught
or the definition of black masculinity
has been sold to us
as some sort of hyper-masculine
kind of structure or construct.
I fully get you on that.
When you talk about tribes,
it's actually really important.
I'm lucky enough to have, like,
a sick, sick group of mates.
We've got this group called Feelings
and that's separate to a number of other groups
that we're all in.
What we all try and do is just support each other
and, whatever anybody's going through,
we allow each other that space
to be vulnerable,
to be your authentic self, I feel.
We're not all trying to do the male thing
and be like: "I'm a big man, yeah!"
"I'm nice. Don't worry about me."
I think that takes great strength
to be able to do that
and to be able to find it in your heart
to be comfortable in doing that.
Men who say that, you know, men shouldn't cry…
In a way, I feel sorry for them
because sometimes I think:
"Well, what do you do, then,
when you're feeling like, you know, crying?"
I'm not afraid to cry with my friends.
I've seen the vast majority of my friends cry,
especially my closest pals.
This is what being masculine is about.
I don't care what their friends are doing.
I'm not doing what their friends are saying
or not saying.
I have to lead by example.
But not just for my boys.
In terms of my responsibility, too.
In my community,
too many black boys, too many,
too many black boys going under.
There's a lot between these ears, you know what I mean?
We just need the opportunity to be able to speak about it
and really put ourselves in positions that
we can have conversations outside of things
that are just physical prowess
or race relations topics.
There's so much more out there
that we all wanna talk about.
We get pigeonholed into these boxes
and I think a lot of black masculinity
falls into that at times.
For me and my experiences,
love really boils down to respect.
It is acceptance,
completely, of another person or people,
regardless of their flaws and their greatness.
I think, for me, love is…
It's like a commitment, duty.
It's responsibility that you give
because that is what you want.
The way I am right now in my life,
it's really about the boys
and me and them as a family unit
and there being love shared between us,
us looking out for each other,
us having each other's back.
-That's what it's all about. -I hear that.