Hair today... gone tomorrow?

Me, 35

Eighteen years ago I shaved my head bald. Not for any particular reason other than I wanted to. Maybe it was some kind of fresh start. The four years leading into this time of my life were actually quite tumultuous, starting with the end of my first marriage and through the greatest mistake of my life, my second marriage, which ended after about 18 months and left me so broken that even today I don't consider myself the same man I was prior to those four years.

There was nothing about that second marriage that mattered to me at all except my son Charly. He was everything to me and was the only real reason I had for living. There's a good story in all of that, but this isn't that story. I suppose it's not a story at all... it's more of a contemplative moment about, of all things, my hair.

I'm not sure if my willingness to discuss my hair is a matter of vanity or more of a coming to jesus moment... whoa... don't get so excited all ye christians, and wipe that drool of your chin. Your numbers didn't just increase by one, I'm still a hardfast atheist, unwavering in my non belief. No... I'm talking about a matter of acceptance of the inevitable... baldness.

Me, first grade

I grew up with a mostly bald father and two mostly bald grandfathers. It's always been an expectation that I will eventually go bald. Although the gift my mother gave me was thick luxurious dark hair. I exaggerate a little.. it was always less than thick... not in the thin and balding way, but in the thin straight strands that used to swoosh around my head if I turned it quick enough. My sister Maryjane ruined that in the summer between my ninth and tenth grade years of school when she convinced me to get a body perm. She was a cosmetologist. That sounds like a lyric to a song, or the opening line to a short story...

"She was a cosmetologist... which led most people to believe she studied the cosmos, especially because of the way she often stared at the stars at night, but that was because she was always hoping the only man she had ever loved would return from his planet soon to whisk her away. In the meantime she whiled away the hours as a cosmetologist... cutting hair... a skill she had learned from her aunt who raised her after her mother had died."

Aren't you just dying to know how the rest of that story goes now? Ya, me too.. alas, I digress.

Me, high school

So my sister gave me a perm, which was supposed to give my straight thin swooshy hair some body, but gave me curls instead... stupid ridiculous curls. That combined with the fact that I grew nine inches between leaving ninth grade and starting tenth grade and literally none of my friends recognized me at first in September when school started.

Did I ever mention that I grew nine inches in just two months and that my feet went flat? It's a mostly boring story consisting of that one sentence that I just wrote. So there's another story for you.

So back to my hair. Eventually I grew out of the perm but my thin straight swooshy hair was never quite the same after that. There's always been an unwillingness for my hair to swoosh, which seems so unnatural to me, but lemons often make the best lemonade and less than swooshy hair seemed to make a better impression on girls than my former swooshy hair, so I moved on.

Me, 19 thru 34

In general I always had a bowl shaped haircut, or perhaps a somewhat football helmet shaped hair cut. But shortly after high school I discovered this amazing product called mousse and I began using it to shape my somewhat flatish hair into something not so flat. Suddenly the whole girl thing stepped up a notch.

My hair was working for me... it could almost  be called good hair, and I used it for every advantage that I could... what with the girls and all. But even at work while I was often surrounded by bald older men and guys my own age with truly bad hair (I worked in engineering and engineers back then always had bad hair) I was often the envy of  many. From those who recalled longingly the days of their youth when they had good hair to those who plotted in quiet evil circles against me out of pure jealousy for my mane.

But I knew this would not last forever and even by the age of 26 I had that thing going on where your hair starts to recede at the sides of your forehead into little inverted V's. My sister Maureen would tease me about balding just from that occurrence, but truth be told all men as they ahem... mature, will get those little V's. After that it's been a long slow road to hair that went from bad to worse. It was actually pretty good for an older guy even about 18 months ago, but then the real thinning began.

Me, last year

A year ago I got a haircut and I noticed it just wasn't coming back in the same. There seemed to be a lot less hair and more glimpses of my shiny scalp through the blades.

I've always told myself that when I start going bald I'm going to go all in. That being said, there was still plenty of hair up there and I wasn't doing a comb-over just to hide the approaching baldness. So I wasn't quite there yet.

Then in October, the transplant, and then the meds that follow the transplant, then the symptoms that come from the meds that follow the transplant, then the realization that one of these symptoms is hair loss.

Now I'm staring at a head with far more shiny spots than a year ago and its starting to feel like I'm dancing around the truth.  I hide it pretty well most of the time, but my hair almost has to be a little dirty to appear thick and so I only shampoo every other day and just get it barely wet the next so I can shape it. Sometimes I skip an extra day of shampooing and just rinse it in the shower to extend the clean but dirty thing a little longer.

Me, this morning

I'm fully aware that I'm in denial, but this is bigger than me. First there's the girls... no not those girls... they stopped checking me out years ago, I mean my girls... Meg and Annie, who both just don't want me to shave my head bald. But then I think back to all of those men who envied me. I almost feel like I have to work at this for them... to give them someone to look longingly at... and of course to give them someone to focus their plots against in their quiet evil circles. I'm serving a purpose by attempting to keep what little hint of decent hair that I have left.

So I ask you my six readers... what do you think? To quote the clash, circa 1982, the year I entered my senior year of high school... the year I ruled the high school... no really, I was the senior class president, so essentially I literally ruled the school, should I stay or should I go now? To milk what limited strands I have for as long as I can, or to accept my fate and shave my head bald?