Like everyone else, I have longed to destroy my hair. Ungainly and uncontrollable, it has plagued me from my earliest days. The Eras of my hair all have ominous names:
Unkempt Straw
Brown Helmet
No Party Mullet
The Fin
Which brings us to the most recent era: Thinning Mess. But no matter what you do, it keeps growing back, with lessening volume and increasing misfortune. Remarkably, however, one of the few bright sides for me during the Year of Lockdown had to do with my hair: I started cutting it myself. And thank fucking god.
The Freaks are Winning
Haiorcuts are right up there with teeth cleanings in terms of horrifying forced intimacy. Just as I think my dentist can see straight down into my gross, Cheetoh-eating soul, I figure my barber can take one look at my hair and know what kind of life I’m living (hint: Not good). I dread the small talk, and I have a tendency to doze off while it’s happening, which can have catastrophic results on the actual haircut I end up with. After decades of suffering through banal conversation and the creepy experience of having some weirdo touch my head, I finally found a local barber who fit my ideal: She operated in virtually complete silence. Our entire conversation consisted of the same two questions:
Barber: How are you?
Me: Fine, thanks.
Barber: Same thing?
Me: Yes.
The “same thing,” it should be noted, is a #3, a little longer on top, square back. As you can see from the photos above, I have learned to not try anything fancy when it comes to my hair.
This was an acceptable situation, though it left me vulnerable to my barber’s vacations and appointment schedule. Every now and then I had to go to an alternate, and they were inevitably chatty folks who exhibited an unseemly curiosity about me. Why we can’t all just perform our duties in grim silence, I’ll never understand.
And then the pandemic hit.
When we all retreated into our homes like hobbits to peer fearfully through the window blinds, my hair was not a major priority for me. Hardening the house against the inevitable zombie hordes was pretty much my priority for the first few weeks, and when that began to seem increasingly unlikely and I realized I might someday have to step back into civilizaed society (a disappointment to be sure) I realized I was going to have to figure out the whole haircut thing. So I decided to order some clipper and do it myself. And I will never go back.
The DIY
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that my hair is not complicated, and a trained ferret would be able to cut my hair with minimal training. My needs are few — actually, my needs are one: I just don’t want to look crazy. And so far, mission accomplished, which means it’s been more than a year since I had to sit in a strange chair while a stranger snipped at my hair, clucking in disapproval and suggesting an endless stream of hair products I should be using but never will.
It’s been great. My hair still betrays me, and if there was a pill that would stop it from growing forever I would take two, immediately, without water. Until then, I will continue to shave my own head, like an exceptionally smart monkey, and I welcome you to my new Hair Era: The DIY. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to see if I can shave my entire body without asking for help, because the tiny demon in this bottle of whiskey told me to.