I've been blessed, if blessed is the word, with a naturally full, thick head of hair. Hair stylists used to ask me all the time if I'd like them to thin it out, in addition to whatever other work I'd asked them to do. I began shaving my head with an electric trimmer in my late teens for hot-weather comfort; even when my hair was only two inches long, I felt as if I were living under a mop. By the time winter rolled in that year, I'd long realized I enjoyed the convenience of one-minute showers, as well as other practical advantages, enough to continue the practice.
I occasionally let the unruly stuff grow for a few months, out of procrastination more than anything else. People frequently told me I looked better with it than without. From the beginning these remarks evoked a vague resentment in me; without fully articulating the feeling, even in my own mind, I was galled that anyone should think his aesthetic sense might conceivably trump the environment I had to live in--my own physical body--to any degree whatsoever.
It was partly from this resentment, I think, that I began to make shearing myself a respected weekly ritual rather than a nagging, ever-delayed chore. But there was more to it than that. I was in a gradual process of streamlining my life, honing my discipline, and found a glowing satisfaction in the sight of dead-weight protein cells dropping by their millions into the trash can over which I held my head every Sunday evening. In those flaking bristles I saw all the weak pleasures I had foregone, would yet forego, in pursuit of an iron physique, a sharp mind, a strong and forgiving nature. I saw myself letting them go. The hum of the trimmers became a sound of tranquil strength, a focus, my own version of a Buddhist's "om." I often thought about the price I was paying for this little symbolic act, this affirmation of everything I respected most about myself. Most women liked my lush blondness better than my malformed egg. Strangers made trite jokes. Cops looked at me differently, and not in a good way.
It was a real sacrifice--and therein lay the pride.
I'll write more later.
