Bald over Baghdad.
I used to be terrified of death. The summer before my sophomore year of college I was sure I was going to die before I had a chance to get back to my friends in Minneapolis and the greatest semblance of freedom I’d yet to experience. I made it, clearly, and have since realized that what I was really afraid of was never getting a chance to realize my true identity, to come out of the closet and make a stab at an honest, unapologetic existence.
While my daily commute here in Los Angeles proves more harrowing than a week’s worth of routine back in the Midwest, I no longer fear an untimely demise. Sure, it’d be a shame to be extinguished before I have a chance to fall in love, to sell a screenplay, to return to Paris; but so long as I continue to find a smidge of gladness in each day, I’ll be ready. There are always more reasons to be happy than sad; however – even for one as enlightened as I, negative stressors aren’t always so easily ignored.
“Mmm,” my stylist began to nod, scrunching up his nose, “yeah…it looks like you’re hair is thinning.”
“AH!” I gasped. “WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?”
“At least you’ve still got your body,” he attempted to assuage the alarm he had ignited.
“There’s no cure? No pill I can take?” I begged of his reflection.
“No,” he shook his head, “not to grow back what you’ve already lost.”
“Come ON, science.”
“There is Propecia,” he proffered. “But that’ll only stop any further recession.”
“I’m going to have to look into that. I mean, how much could it be? Whatever, it’s worth it.”
A $100 a month, he said. A $100 times twelve months is $1,200 a year. $1,200 times, what? I’m 23, so, I really won’t care once I hit, say, 70? Yeah, 70. That’s 47 years from now. 47 times $1,200 that’s, ah, that’s – $400 and something THOUSAND. Oh Gawd. Oh – no. NO. YES! Only $41,400. That’s better. That’s worth it. Riiight?
“No, JJ,” my mom stepped in over the phone when I got home. “There are a lot of unworthy side effects that come with drugs like that.”
I can’t remember the rest of her words, exactly, but I do believe sexual consequences were implied and what good is hair on my topmost head if my other one is all but dead. Good point mom. “I NEVER SAID THAT!” She’d be likely to respond, now.
“Your dad never had hair like you, either, JJ,” she’s had to calm my paranoia on other occasions, as well. “He had wispy, baby locks.”
“That’s not how male pattern baldness works,” I whined. “They say it all has to do with your mother’s father and grandpa is almost COMPLETELY bald.”
“- Well –“ she shrugged. “What can you do, I guess.”
Chill the fuck out, is all. According to an ABC news study, “about half of all [American] men” tend to go bald. That softens the blow a bit. And allows for me to savor the compliments in the meantime.
“You know how I knew it was you?” My friend Liana asked after making her way across a crowded bar a few months ago. “Because of your perfect hair.”
While being a hot piece of ass is as new to me as integrating into the gay community, I know it’s the existence of the latter that means so much more than the potential fleetingness of the former. At least we live in a city, in a country, as generally progressive as Los Angeles, USA. At least we’re not soldiers fighting a war that we were misled into. At least we don’t have warts that create the impression of tree bark in place of our skin or fur on our faces, conditions which Liana recently Googled in an effort to bring some perspective to her own self-pitying state.
I’ll take any of those pieces of mind over this glorious swatch of hair.
monoxodil, babes.