My son came into the world with hair to there. The nurses marveled at the sandy helmet framing his cheeks, running their fingers through at every chance. At the hospital nursery window, the grandparents of other newborns would coo at their offspring’s wisps of down and then, seeing Alex, startle. A snapshot from his first birthday party shows a boy with big dimples and a mane to make Samson swoon. As Alex bounced on a little plastic trampoline, ringlet after ringlet took flight in an upward cascade.
Even once we began getting his hair cut, the sensation continued. Hair salon professionals would light up when he settled into their chairs for the baby boy trim, the big boy cut, the pre-teen fade, even (although they tried to talk him out of this) the soccer team buzz. They were like master gardeners in the presence of an outsized topiary, like Michelangelo before the purest granite, blissfully chiseling and sculpting and burnishing.
And, oh, the glory once he hit adolescence. Each morning, Alex strode from our home and into the world with evidence — gelled, ungelled, combed with his fingers or why comb at all? — that there was at least one element of teen insecurity that would not touch him. Forget zits, math homework, the annoying kid at the next locker. When you’ve got The Hair, the seas part.
“I want to have sex with that hair!” effused one Facebook admirer.
As I settle into my chair at the neighborhood barber shop, I don’t spend much time wondering if anyone wants to have sex with my hair. (That is, unless back hair is … well, let’s not go there.) Don’t get me wrong; I had my day. Coming of age in the late ’60s and early ’70s, I found myself caught between the crew cut ethos of my Depression-born father and the psychedelic stylings of the young people just a few years older than me cutting loose (with uncut locks) at Max Yasgur’s farm. My hair was thick and dark but, for many years, subdued on Dad’s orders by barbers, one of whom liked to say he could “shave the fuzz off a peach.”
I hit my teen years about the time Richard Nixon got his one-way ticket out of the White House. For reasons that remain unclear to me — maybe moving our family to Omaha, Nebraska gave him the sense that there was less danger afoot — my father finally started letting me grow my hair across my forehead, then over my ears and finally to my collar.
More pictures: Blown-dry hair parted in the middle, powder blue tux, posing before prom. A bleached-out tangle from the summer of lifeguarding on Long Island Sound. Tousled and angry, framing the resentful young man astride a Yamaha 360 that broke down five miles into a 100-mile race.
The years passed. Then came that awful day. Crawling after Alex through a maze of mirrors at a children’s museum, I caught a glimpse of the back of my head. I’m nearly a foot taller than my wife, so maybe she had not noticed. Or maybe she was simply too kind to tell me.
Before long, I didn’t have to look in a funhouse mirror to see the evidence. I began noticing the ads for Rogaine, for weaves and plugs and transplants. I gained a measure of understanding for guys walking down the beach with their ridiculous combovers flapping in the ocean breeze, although I wasn’t tempted to join them. I smiled wanly when my uncles told me I was looking more and more like my grandfather — you know, the shiny one.
Alex is off at college now, most likely continuing to use his mane to his advantage. (I don’t ask for details.) On the rare occasion when he gets it cut, it’s at a salon equipped with shampoo basins, an arsenal of scissors and glossy books of styling options. I used to go to those places. But nowadays, I find a seat in a shop where my father would have felt at home. I lean back in the chair, gaze at the jar of combs in blue Barbasol antiseptic, the chrome shaving cream dispenser, the t-shirt on the wall that chides, “Hey Hippie, Get a Haircut.” There’s not a blow dryer in sight.
The barber picks up his electric razor and snaps in a No. 2 blade. He asks, “The usual?”
I laugh just a little. “Do I have any choice?”•
Jeff Good can be contacted at jgood@valleyadvocate.com.
