#297 Get My Hair Cut
I’ve had a mohawk for most of SYED. I shaved it for a post awhile back. The response was surprisingly positive, unless people were just being nice. Though it wasn’t just from people I knew. Strangers came up to me and complimented me on it. Suddenly, just by having a haircut, I gained some cool points which when you have zero to begin with, is pretty, well, cool.
I have to admit. It felt pretty good when people assumed I was cool by my hair style alone. “Do you race cars or something?” somebody randomly asked me at a club. “What? No. Why did you think that?” I asked incredulously. “I dunno. You just have that look.”
I never had a look. I heard that again when I was buying glasses. The only look I’ve ever had is one of mild annoyance. A look I wear through 90% of the day.
Clara loved it. “Don’t ever change your hair! It suits you.”
But then me and Clara split. And I began to wonder if the people who thought my hair was cool also thought I was 26 instead of 36. Should a 36 year old man who isn’t a skater or in a band have a mohawk? I make internet ads for God’s sake. What is less cool than that?
It had become something that defined me. That also made me nervous. I didn’t want to be defined by the way I looked.
Plus I just wanted a change. So I started growing my hair out a few months ago.
I’ve never really had long hair and I wanted to see what it was like. I wanted to see what it was like to shake out my hair like a shampoo commercial. What it was like to come out of pool and slick my hair back. To stare somebody down through the hair hanging in front of my face Antonio Banderas in Desperado style.
And if I looked like Alcide from True Blood, that wouldn’t hurt either.
The thing is, my hair is thick and wavy. Very un-Asian like. So when it grows, it doesn’t lay flat obediently. It starts to get wild. Three months in, my hair was looking very Jean-Ralphio.
I desperately wanted to shave it off. But I knew this was a test of perseverance in the face of an Asian-fro. Just ride out the awkward phase. I always knew there would be one. How bad was my hair really? Let’s put it this way. I was glad to have the hair I did when I was pretending to be a homeless person.
As a compromise, I opted to get an intermediary haircut. Something that would just clean up the scruff while leaving as much hair as possible. The only thing was while I had cut my own hair for the past 7 years or so, I had no experience with hair so long. I’d probably fuck it up if I did it myself. So I went to a barber.
Going to a new barber is fucking scary because they are all loose canons before you get to know them. Some barbers don’t give a shit about what you say, they’re going to use a no-guard clipper and shave your fucking head bald. Some have wild ideas that you would look great with that flock of seagulls haircut.
After I told mine what I wanted, he took out a pair of no-guard clippers and I thought I was fucked.
But it turned out he did exactly what I wanted. He cleaned up the nasty overgrowth around the sides and the back and trimmed a little on the top. At first I thought he didn’t do enough. The whole thing took about five minutes. But he said since I was growing it out, he didn’t want to give it too much style so I would have something to work with when I figured out what I wanted.
He did a better job on my hair than I first thought when I went home and combed it. I was relieved. I still had the majority of my hair but I didn’t look like Jean-Ralphio any more.
Before and After…
