Hair Expressions

I don’t really give a fuck about how I look because I was raised as a man and well the prevailing wisdom for centuries (and still maybe now) is that men should not give a fuck about how they look. Buzz cuts. Polo shirts. Pants that zip off at the knee and become shorts and also have lots of pockets to put things in.

Up until very recently I used to have long hair. I’d had long hair for a long time. In middle school, believing (probably rightfully so) that a barber shop in Rockville, Maryland might not know what do with a 13-year-old boy who had hair down to the middle of his back that he both refused to take care of and also get cut, my mother would take me to her hairstylist. I forget their name of her hairstylist. I forget the name of the hair salon but for the sake of this story let us give it a silly name like Hair Expressions. Her name wasn’t Dianne, but for the sake of this story let’s call her Dianne.

I would dread having to go and get Dianne to cut my hair because I was already sensitive about my masculinity (or lack there of) and sitting in a waiting area as the luxurious scents of hair care products traditionally marketed towards women wafting towards me did not help.

Most of the time I would prefer not to think about my hair. It would get caught in things, and then would get ripped away from my scalp. I can’t say that it was the only reason that girls wouldn’t talk to me (I would also routinely forget to wear deodorant) but I’m sure that it did not help. My therapist believes that it was my way of taking myself out of the game entirely, so that I could instead exist entirely in the etherial space inside of my thoughts and I am mostly inclined to agree with him.

The first stop at the salon was to get my hair washed. Dianne would not wash my hair because this sort of thing was beneath Dianne. She would come over and greet my mother and me and then introduce us to the woman whose charge it would be to struggle through the tangles and knots and do much of the physical labor while reaping a minimum of the financial reward. (My mom would hand be two dollars to tip her after all was said and done.) Once that was completed and the back of my neck ached from prolonged exposure to the porcelain sink I had been leaning against, I would be lead over to Dianne’s chair where she would proceed to brush my hair and begin the process of cutting out the matted sections (there were always a couple) so that I could be presentable again. Of course I also resisted any sort of shaping or product or anything to make my hair look what the industry calls “healthy” so Dianne’s battle was uphill and futile. And I would finish what felt like a five hour ordeal with my hair blown out and 75 dollars paid, sucking on a jolly rancher hoping that it could be another several months before I would be sitting in the waiting room of Hair Expressions again.

I got a hair cut yesterday. I’m now 28 years old and live in a part of Brooklyn known for its pretentious beer selection and racist landlords. I don’t know how I feel about the haircut because I never know how I feel about change. No. I know how I feel about the haircut because it’s how I feel about every haircut. I don’t like the haircut but I will live with it. And the next time that I go into the barbershop on Bedford Ave that I go to because to find another place would be too emotionally taxing I will ask for the very same thing. And they will give me what I asked for and I will again become unhappy. I will become unhappiness and will live with that for a while until I forget that I didn’t like the way that my head looks and just grow used to it.

Because my entire life has been structured so that I can get used to my unhappiness and discomfort, convince myself that I am wrong in feeling the way that I do, and then eventually detach to the point that I forget that I was unhappy in the first place. Because I am a child of children of the mid 1950s and was told that my feelings mattered and were worth it, but somehow interpreted that to mean that the only way I had to judge my self worth was by objectively looking at my output and asking others what they think of me. And when I am too shy to ask, I read minds, and I tell myself that I know what others are thinking about me because they must be thinking of me constantly.

Maybe I should stop cutting my hair and let it grow out and get matted. Because this whole being alive thing is exhausting!