The Thing On My Head

When I was around thirteen, and just waking to the tragedy of male pattern baldness, I decided to make a pact with my hair. “Hair,” I said. “here’s the deal: if you promise to not fall out, I promise I’ll leave you alone, forever.” My hair gave its silent assent, and I’ve been true to my word ever since. I have resisted any urge to comb, treat, mouse, shape, or otherwise molest my hair; I cut it rarely, and when I do the barber has strict instructions to refrain from any impulse to style, or sculpt, or in any way impose order on the chaos occurring on top of my head. “Shorter,” I say. “Make it not so long. That’s all.”

This policy has had the expected repercussions: the tumbled haystack of my hair gets many amused glances from peers, friends, professional associates, passersby. Clowns mock me. Mimes burst out laughing. But that’s fine. It was a bargain worth making.

Nevertheless … I’ve recently decided to break my oath. This morning found me standing in the bathroom, brush in hand, staring at myself in the mirror. “Ok,” I said. “Time to be a star.” I placed the brush on top of my head, and pulled it to the side. My hair let out an outraged protest, and held. I tried again, tugging hard, until, finally, a great shelf of hair rose up, trembled for a moment, and then fell.

I had a achieved a part.

I stared at myself, uncertainly, and tried: “Damn you’re good looking.”

Silence. The dog, loitering at my feet, snickered, then, when I rounded on him, dropped his head and snuffled at the floor.

I turned back. The hair was still there, sitting on my head like an ungainly ferret. An ungainly parted ferret.

So, holding the brush with the wary care of a pacifist wielding a bazooka, I dragged the hair back to the way it was, and then forward. It collapsed over my forehead like an untidy awning, like a circa-1980’s faux-punk do in mid-primp.

Grumbling, I tried parting it the other way. It tumbled rightward, settling into something that resembled the twisted aftermath of a forest fire.

I combed it straight back. It reared up and stuck, the profile of an ancient mountain range caught in mid-avalanche.

“So,” I said, in a low, dangerous voice. “It is to be war between us.” Glaring balefully, I reached down for the magazine on the sink, held it up to the mirror, and turned to the picture: a handsome outdoorsy thirty-something-looking fellow with a tousled thatch of artfully disheveled hair, previously authorized by my wife. “Tomorrow, you bastard,” I said, pointing, “this will be you.”

Because the truth is that all of this mucking around with my hair is, more or less, a direct result of persistent complaints from my wife; who after a decade of forbearance, has finally had enough. Whenever she ventures a look at my head these days, she cringes, points, and screams: “Oh my god! There’s a squirrel attacking your head!”

“Ha ha,” I say. “You like it. You know you do.”

“Your hair looks like a 75 cent halloween wig.”

“Ha ha,” I say.

“No really. It looks like a blackened cairn that’s just finished consuming some ancient Saxon king.”

“Ha ha,” I say, a little uncertain now.

“It looks like the tall fuzzy hats those English guard people who can’t move when you poke them wear.”

“You know, you’re about this close to hurting my feelings.”

She looks at me. “Cut it.”

“But I just cut it. A month ago.” I sigh. “Fine. I don’t think the Hair Slaughtery’s open now, but …”

She shakes her head, silently, and gives me a look that says “real haircut.” It says “expensive salon.” It says “divorce.”

“No!” I wail. “Not again! I can do it better than they can! For free!”

And that’s what led to the bathroom, and the mirror, and the brush, and the abject failure.

I still haven’t cut my hair, but I don’t think I can hold out for much longer. I have nightmares about great slavering shears with pointy yellow fangs and bulbous eyes bearing down on me. I wake screaming, pointedly, in the direction of my wife, but she just rolls over and goes back to sleep, muttering something about deadlines and prenuptial agreements.

This weekend, I go under the knife.

Goodbye, head squirrel. I hardly knew ye.