In the chair: Give me a head with hair
The Aspen Times
Sometimes I see the Facebook pictures of girls I used to go out with, notice their wedding photos and think, “This is what I was competing against?”
I’m sure these are fine dudes. The kind who if you stopped by would greet you with an IPA they brewed themselves. The kind who plays the ukelele and also loads the dishwasher religiously after every meal. The kind who rubs your feet and sits stoically while you watch “Teen Mom OG.” (They’re not teen moms anymore, just 24-year-old mothers who got rich off MTV and carry on with “Trailer Park Boys”-esque antics.)
Eff those guys.
The difference between me and them? They’re as bald as Verne Troyer (RIP) in “Austin Powers,” and I have locks like Samson from the Book of Judges (but slaying more than Philistines with my jaw bone).
I’m the kind of jerk who tells my girlfriend to pour me another drink from the bathtub/distiller even though she’s already busy microwaving my Hungry Man TV dinner. I don’t give her a key to my apartment because I only have one and it says “DO NOT DUPLICATE.” She would have left me long ago if I didn’t have such a great bod. I’m in that sweet spot where all my weight gain goes directly to my arms and chest, so people think I’m working out when I’m really just getting fat. I look like the old-time fighters in the pictures at The Red Onion when I pull my boxers up to my belly button. I guess that’s why they’re called that.
It didn’t have to be this way. Ready for my bi-monthly haircut, I ambled to a local barbershop in readiness for my $110-per-hour trim. Imagine my torment and astonishment to discover they were closed at 1:30 in the afternoon on a Wednesday.
A previous time while getting a cut, I watched through the window as a teenager who was skipping school barfed in the middle of the alley. The barber burst through the door and confronted him, pointing toward the garden hose. The juvenile sprayed the yack into the gutter. “Disgusting,” I thought. “That’s some people’s bathtub/distilling water.”
And so there I stood that fateful Wednesday, confusedly gazing like Frodo and Legolas outside the Doors of Durin. I fumed, not typically a vengeful man — unless I’m slighted in the most innocuous of ways, like hearing about how I don’t know how to paddle a raft on Stillwater or that my moonwalk doesn’t make me a better dancer than someone stumbling through the cha-cha slide.
“I’ll just never get my hair cut again!” I vowed. And so I went thusly.
Eight months later, as the weird back-of-the-neck hairs have curled into something resembling a grown-short-man version of Shirley Temple, I’ve accumulated some reviews:
“You look like a dirtbag.” — Sean, who’s still mad I beat him twice in darts the other night.
“I can’t wait to see what happens.” — Amy, party sherpa and wine subscription service connoisseur.
“Your handwriting sucks. It looks like a serial killer’s.” — Tim, bald.
“I’d confuse you with Daniel Radcliffe.” — My mom, who envisions every 20-something male celebrity as a less attractive version of her son.
I’ve learned a lot during this journey in keratin growing. Like how to use a blowdryer (also good for those hard-to-reach places). What it feels like for the wind to gently caress your hair for the first time (some sneak about to give you a noogie). How to tie a ponytail on the top of your head (and connect it with the ponytail you’ve already tied at the bottom of your head). I don’t really have a goal in mind for how long I want it to get, but portraying White Jesus in a play is on my bucket list, along with dressing in drag at the Highlands closing party — sans wig this time.
