Flow it, show it, long as God can grow it...

Orange Self Portrait
August 2004 Raleigh, NC
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So, from the Heavy, Deep and Real to the Far Less So. I'll blame currawong for prompting this post. I was going to wait a few days, but he went ahead and used part of the lyrics I was going to use in his posting this morning. Oh, well.

Back in the mid-70s my father used to take my brother and I to a local barbershop. Located on the first floor of one of the tallest buildings in our suburban DC area, the barbershop was owned and run by a father and son from Hawaii. It was always a neat place to go to, the family was constantly in and out of the shop and the son, a tall, well tanned guy in his late twenties/early thirties, played in a lounge act cover band.

By the late 70s I was hanging out over the weekends with my friends Toddrick and Ian the Brownski. Toddrick and Ian both had long, long hair -- Toddrick's being red and Ian the Brownski's being, well, brown. Blond as I was, I still envied both of these guys immensely and wanted to be like them. So, the next time my father announced that it was hair cut day, I declined.

"But dad," I said. "My hair is finally getting the way I want it." My father was a child of the fourties and I'm sure he had no real idea what was going on with me in the late 70s. Still, to his credit, he shrugged and left with my brother, leaving me and my hair to continue to grow.

In the intervening years I've only cut my hair twice.

The first time was back in 1992. We'd moved to NC in November of '91 and taken in Bonnie's son ("The Boy") and had to go to court over custody rights. The hearing was scheduled in the coastal NC town her psychotically deranged ex lived in. While talking to our lawyer over the phone a few weeks before the hearing I mentioned that I had long hair and asked if that might be a problem.

There was a long, silent pause on the other end of the phone.

"You might want to consider cutting it," came the eventual reply.

"How short?"

"Short."

My father came down for the hearing, in part to testify on our behalf and, in part, because he wanted to see me with short hair. He greeted us at the hotel with a camera.

It took about a year or so for the pony tail to grow back. In that time I got a job teaching in the public schools. The shorter hair probably helped; by the time my hair grew out they were stuck with me.

The second time was this past August.

After being out of work for three months I'd only had two interviews. I was scheduled for an interview with a local University for a job I really wanted and thought I was going to get. (Some of you may remember this from earlier posts) The day before the interview Bonn suggested a haircut, saying it would probably be best to not give them any reason to form a negative first impression about me. We went to the local Hair World and Bonn started looking through men's hair magazines. She found a style she thought would look good on me and showed it to the hair stylist.

I knew I wasn't going to look anything like the picture in the magazine. I lacked the suit & tie, the body build and the chiseled face that looks right with short hair.

Not only that, but I didn't get the job.

A few weeks ago I saw pilote when I loaned him an Amazing Race tape so he could see an episode he missed. The first thing he said to me was about the hair. Apparently word got back to my former place of work because last Friday night I saw another friend of mine from another floor in that building who said she had heard that I'd cut my hair.

Might as well blog about it then.

So, right now my hair is sl-o-o-o-ly growing out. It's now in that Nick Nolte mug shot stage where it doesn't look good no matter what I do, so I don't do anything with it. If I comb it back I look like a very scary southern holy roller preacher. ("Puh-raise Jeeeeeee-zuhuz!")

Both haircuts were done out of a sense of Responsibility. The first one worked out and was worth it. The second, well, I feel like I'm still doing penance every time I look in a mirror.

"Oh, say can you see
my eyes
if you can then my hair's too short"

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