hair

there, everywhere, nowhere

Photo by Macie Jones on Unsplash

Cue Ball. Kojak. Chrome dome. Mr. Clean. Curly.

While I wasn’t always called names, they cropped up and faded out now and again. Cyrus the Virus was a good one. It was given to me during a sales leadership development program early in my career just a few years after I started shaving my head. It referenced the character played by John Malkovich in Con Air - appropriately, also the name of a hair care company - opposite Nic Cage’s Cameron Poe, whose flowing locks were a gif - pronounced correctly as ‘jif’ like the peanut butter - ahead of its time. Our aunt - pronounced ‘ant’; I was born in/on Long Island - took me and my brother to see both Con Air and Face/Off - the Nic Cage Double Feature - on the same day in June 1997 which still remains the greatest summer movie double feature made possible by their release just three weeks apart.

Another good one is Baldie. Both of my daughters’ friends gave it to me, separately and at different times. All in good fun, I’m sure. While never called it, I would have gladly accepted the nickname Yul(e), as in Yul Brynner, the original Man in the Black Hat from Michael Crichton’s 1973 masterpiece Westworld and as in Yule log, for my love of Christmas.

Names aside, a man’s experience with hair - lost where you want it, growing where you don’t, going gray everywhere and anywhere and what feels like all at once - could fill many chapters of the book I’ll never write. As with the hair I lost, this story will start from the top.

Pictures of me as a preschooler show hair, pin-straight, and light brown, with the classic boys cut from the 1980s. I looked like the youngest Ben Seaver on Growing Pains, appropriately enough, played by a guy named Jeremy. In elementary school, I had the ubiquitous bowl cut though the hair in the back in the bottom was only slightly shorter than the top so it really didn’t match the picture I gave the hair stylist - we didn’t go to a barber then, on account of my mom. Perhaps we should have: The stylist nicked the top of my right ear causing it to bleed and me to cry.

By the time I got to middle school, my hair was wavy, and a darker brown. Our sixth grade brought together two elementary schools and that meant new crushes on, and from, those we were meeting for the first time. It was at these dances while wearing my father’s finest flannel fibers, I’d hear the opening notes to Pearl Jam’s Jeremy, requested by one of the new-to-me girls - there was only one - who had a crush on me. While a bit of an odd song to serve as a dedication given the lyrics, Eddie Vedder would come to serve as my hair muse over the next few short years.

Continuing into seventh grade, though my mom wouldn’t let me shave the sides completely (see above: bowl cut back of head length) and didn’t let me grow out the top to cover my eyes, the skater cut looked more like a toupee atop a crew cut, which I was allowed to have in elementary school, though never trimmed too close to the skin (see above, again: bowl cut back of head length).

In eighth grade, with puberty heading down the homestretch, my hair turned curly. In reality, it was more frizzy than anything. While I did my best to part it down the center like Shemp from The Three Stooges, I looked more like Larry. Around this time, I picked up the nicknames of Bushroot, one of Darkwing Duck’s villains, and Broccoli Head, my hair a perfect floret. Don’t believe me? Take a gander.

In the summer before high school, if the humidity was just right, the frizz would subside and I’d have hair curly enough to have friends’ moms ask if I had gotten it permed. One day at the Surf Club, our town beach, at the suggestion of one of the cool(er)¹ kids in school, I was tempted to dread it, though his required recipe of bird shit and honey was not something I was willing to attempt - I was a bit of a wimp.²

Ahead of my oldest sister’s wedding in Vermont, at sixteen I trimmed some of the locks and ended up with a curly haired mullet. I know I was sixteen because as I was feeling sorry for myself, an older women - let’s call her mid-20s - came up and asked if I wanted to dance thinking I was in college. The benefits, and embarrassment, of being tall at an early age while looking like Hasselhoff ushering in democracy to Eastern Europe while tearing down the wall in Germany.

I continued to grow my hair longer as my high school years came to a close. Photos from our marching band’s trip to Disney World show a cacophony of curls with a 6’ 3”, 165-pound frame underneath. I vividly recall, when as a lifeguard at that aforementioned town beach, wearing a bandana with orange Oakleys and felt like a total stud - (tanned) skin, bones and all (except muscles). While curlier, it was as close as I would get to the hair that Jeremy London’s character had in Dazed and Confused.

As I entered college, things got hairy. In my shower drain, that is, as this was the location that the bald-faced lie³ I was telling myself - that I wasn’t losing my hair - was proven wrong. And like every man who starts losing his hair - whether it’s with a comb-over, a toupee, hair plugs, or other tricks - I did my best to hold onto whatever locks I had. I tried Rogaine, but it dried out my scalp and didn’t work any better than snake oil. I would attempt to make my hair appear thicker by brushing it back but ended up looking more like Jeremy Jamm from Parks and Recreation, the humidity doing God’s work. As I boarded the plan for my junior year abroad, I looked more like Jeremy Piven’s character in PCU. It was a few weeks later that I decided I was not gonna protest and shaved my head for the first time.

After using a cheap electric buzzer to get the hair as short as possible, I lathered on shaving foam and with hesitation applied razor to scalp, from back to front.⁴ While I missed multiple spots the first few times, I did manage to nick the top of my right ear. Yes, the same one that the bowl-cut butcher bungled ten years prior, but let’s be honest the chances of that were 50/50.

If it’s not already clear, I loved my hair. The first 10 years after I took control of my recession with and confidently shaved all my hair off, friends’ moms would still comment on how they wished that they had the hair I used to have. And that was hard to take. But as they say, if you love something, let it go; if it doesn’t come back to you, it was never yours to begin with. So there I was, twenty-one, misty-eyed and hairless.

Yet it’s at this point where I should point out that for all my struggles, there are benefits to being bald. I haven’t had a haircut for more than half my life and I’ve done the math. The average men’s haircut costs $50 today. Conservatively, let’s assume I would have gotten it cut once a month. $600 annually over 22 years. In today’s dollars, that’s $12,500 I’ve saved my wallet by not saving my hair. I don’t even want to know what this cost would have been if I had the hair regimen that most women undertake. And you know what this means: more money for books.

In addition, in no particular order, additional benefits to embracing one’s baldness include: no bad hair days, just bald ones; no fretting over dying one’s hair as they go grey; not giving money to Hims or Ro or Keeps; looking more threatening than one really is; learning to be the butt of jokes and withstanding name-calling (see above); always having an excuse to buy that hat, a trait inherited from my dad, though instead of going bald, he’s gone full Kenny Rogers, minus the plastic surgery (though some medically necessary eye work was required recently); no dandruff; no lice; no need for a swim cap; and thermodynamic advantages.

Being bald can also serve as a teachable moment. My wife recently asked her kindergartners to draw pictures of their families. She asked that every detail be included: glasses, relative heights, unique clothing. She demonstrated by drawing herself, our two daughters, and me. “But Morah Jessica, you forgot to draw your husband’s hair!” they shouted. “Oh no, children. Mr. Morah Jessica hasn’t ever had hair since I met him.”

It’s important at this time to point out things that one with hair doesn’t realize, and learns the hard way when one is without.

We all sweat, it’s a part of life, yet before losing my hair, I failed to realize how much of that sweat forms on ones head. Hair is designed to retain some of that sweat. While this is easy to collect with a cap while running, or a bandana or buff at the gym, it is not always possible to don one of these at certain times. Anything from eating spicy food to an unexpectedly hot humid day will cause my head to shimmer and drip with beads of sweat. In the summer, I’ve taken to carrying a handkerchief or paper towel on my person at all times. And year round, this drying agent can also be used to remove the oils normally absorbed by hair turning a glistening head into a nice matte finish. Fortunately, my dad’s side of the family is blessed with a brow-line that is distinct, like the facades of New York City brownstones, but unlike buildings, ours serve more than artistic and aesthetic purposes. These Brezhnevs protect my eyes from the extra beads dripping down my Lenin-like dome like the Volga River.

Hair protects against the elements. In winter, a bald head loses heat 68% more quickly than a haired head. I made that up, but it’s no less true that I’m reminded that I’ve left my hat at home then stepping out of O’Hare International Airport (see what I did there) in the middle of January.⁵ In summer, I reliably travel with a hat, but during the shoulder seasons I tend to forget and a sunny day can leave me with a burn, followed by a peel and a few more freckles.⁶ While standing, being taller than average allows me to hide this red mark of shame to avoid stares and gasps.

Being taller has a downside - honestly, the only one - that when combined with baldness produce reasons for odd looks: the bumps and bruises and scrapes and scratches and scabs of past incursions. Conflicts with cabinet doors, blows from low branches, arguments with the bottom of my standing desk after dropping my pencil, meetings with the garage door not pulled high enough are but a few of the recent encounters that have left a mark most men would be able to conceal with a full head of hair.

But being bald conceals things: going gray. Keeping things shorn, I’m able to limit a look that is worn; that is, gray. Until the novel coronavirus shut down the office, I shaved my head every weekday for work, and usually once on the weekend. As my wife said to me at dinner recently, other than the weight loss, I still look the same age, though, she did add that maybe I’ve just always looked like a guy in his 40s. Letting things slide since the move to full remote, I sometimes going a few days without shaving and it’s on those days where I can see my age poking through millimeter by millimeter.

But not all gray can be concealed. There are studies that show a man’s baldness is inversely correlated with testosterone: the more testosterone a man has, the less hair up top. But that comes with a tax: body hair in abundance. The gray advances south like the ashes left behind William Tecumseh Sherman’s march towards Atlanta.

Being rather hirsute,⁷ while looking at my hands on the steering wheel while stopped at a light the other morning, I recalled that in high school I was embarrassed by how hairy the tops of my hands were and shaved them to the wrist. As we age, hair shows up in places we don’t want it. Ears and noses are the usual culprits. Periodically, a random translucent hair on my forehead somehow grows an inch before I spot it. And to spare everyone details, my take on manscaping is simple: just don’t.

Yet for all the discoveries I’ve made since going bald, the oddest occurs at night. Sometimes I dream - nightmares really - about forgetting to shave my head, and I am no longer bald: I am balding. I will catch my reflection in a shiny surface and staring back at me is George Costanza, the classic horseshoe pattern clear as a crystal. And sharp as a knife, I feel like I’m no longer in the prime of my life and instead someone who is headed over the hill. And with that Billy Joel reference somewhat landed and gently receding (like his hairline - I can tell these jokes as a bald), we continue with another oddity brought on by baldness: lucid dreaming. It will be present day, I’ll be at the pool or the beach, with my kids, who have only ever known me bald and I’ll see a shadow of my head that looks different. Or I’ll be out to dinner with my wife, whose never known me haired, and I’ll glance in a mirror and see myself with long flowing, wavy locks, a modern-day Samson and think instantly, this cannot be real, this is absolutely a dream, now I am in control.

Losing my hair was a struggle. And for all the above attempts at humor, it absolutely fucking gutted me when I noticed I was losing it at 19. I still see the hair in the drain. I still see the Rogaine bottles. I still feel the glances and the side eyes on first dates from decades ago. I still feel the pit in my stomach.

As a father, I worry about my daughters’ futures. While my father-in-law’s baldness will not make it another generation - his only daughter, my wife, has, and will only have, daughters - I must live with the legacy that I’ve bequeathed unto my two daughters should they have sons. While they by nature will be balding, my hope is that by nurture, they go full bald. Balding is an act of retreat; bald is a state of enlightenment.

And while this has been just one man’s perspective, the fairer sex has weighed in on the matter,. “Bald guys are no-nonsense, bald guys have other things to think about,” said Edith Zimmerman in this article in the Cut. Though written nearly 20 years after going bald, I wish I came across words like these when I started thinning. She continues:

“Bald guys aren’t using a bunch of hair supplies, bald guys have more time to spend doing attractive and useful things, like building houses and making jokes. Bald guys are magnificent. Bald guys seem to have seen something more of life. Bald guys know things.”

She added a rejoinder to that last sentence, which cheapened the meaning, so we’ll leave it there.

Face/Off actors Nic Cage and John Travolta could also have starred in a sequel called Hair/On as both went through hair transplants. For John, the host rejected it, maybe not physically, as he now sports a clean look, finally embracing his mother’s father’s genes. For Nic, while the hair has held, his recent roles have him starring as a bald man in Butcher’s Crossing and even a balding man in Dream Scenario. Jeremy Piven has more hair - if one can call it that - now than when he was on Seinfeld in the early 90s. Is it worth it? Not when one remembers that hair is dead cells, and holding onto it is like some reverse memento mori: I see dead cells and I remember that I must die.

So to the man with a full mane I say: enjoy your daily glimpse in the mirror, a reminder of death that awaits us all, and do so with joy and grace and love and gusto. And to the man, of any age and any wisdom, who finds himself thin of hair: be bold and let it go, all of it. Grow a beard if you must. But give up clinging to the hair of your youth, for it is only death unto which you hold.

Sometimes with words, as like with hair, less is more. I've ignored that advice today. That is, with the exception of hair. So let’s cut it off here.

1. Est?

2. Still am.

3. I couldn’t resist.

4. Also the correct way to load a dishwasher.

5. And then seeing all of those billboards for Brian Urlacher shilling for a hair transplant firm

6. And increased risk for cancer.

7. I used to think this was hair suit and in my case, it would be accurate.