Operation One-Quarter Jew-Fro, Phase One
Mission Accomplished.
It was 1991 when I first sheared my head. It was the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college, and I had just had my first, best mental breakdown. For those of you who have never had one, I highly recommend it. Clears the sinuses right out, better than wasabi, easier than an orgasm.
It was a lot quicker than I would have imagined, too. Mental breakdowns had always seemed like such long, drawn-out, tedious affairs, the way they're portrayed in movies. And so unpleasant and sad. The Crack-up. The Bell Jar. But the truth is, the actual event isn't unpleasant in the least.
When I crawled out, after lying quite comfortably in the fetal position under the surprisingly light and feathery debris of my former life (I had, of course, thought it would be weightier than it was — a common error), I felt like Saul when the scales dropped from his eyes.
I realized immediately that all my life I had been looking at the world through the wrong end of the telescope, because all the sudden, now, here it was: up close, desolate and real. Not scary, and not yet beautiful. Just new. And uncharted. No signs. It was like I was standing naked on the surface of the moon for no apparent reason.
Like all the best breakdowns, a kind of unrequited love was the catalyst for it, but that hardly mattered now. If it was the catalyst, it was not the source. I had built my whole life on false and flimsy premises with no basis in reality. I had done it cavalierly, with incredible hubris. As if it were obvious what life was. As if I knew what it was, when, of course, I didn't have a clue. The further along in years I got, the more discrepancies I was seeing. Love was only one of them, but it's the one you can't ignore, innit?
I can't say why, but one of the first things I did was visit the barber (yes, as luck would have it there was a barber on the moon), who was reluctant to take the clippers to me. "Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked.
There's nothing strange about shearing yourself after a trauma, of course. People have done it as a sign of mourning for millennia. Tonsuring, as it's called, dates back at least to Biblical times. Job "arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, and said, naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither."
In Ezekiel, the Prophet describes his God's final revenge on His people. Those who are not destroyed outright "shall also gird themselves with sackcloth, and horror shall cover them; and shame shall be upon all faces, and baldness upon all their heads."
Somehow the rending of garments and the shaving of heads, and even self-harm in extreme emotional distress seem to be hardwired in us. It is a step beyond the wailing of animals in pain. It's a kind of atavism, an emotional reversion combined with an intellectual need to unmake the world, a protest and rejection, however impotent, of time, and our helplessness in it.
When the barber had finished his handiwork, I thought, rowr, that's hot! I should've done this years ago.
And so I left it, and resolved to shave my head on a regular basis, with or without the attendant mental breakdown.
Looking back I think I may actually have been victim of a stealth meme, something I'm loath to admit in this age of runaway memes, because it soon became apparent that everyone was shaving their heads. These things do tend to come in waves, don't they? And then the goatees came out. And the tribal tattoos.
We all have heads, and there are only so many ways to wear what hair we have on them. But there is a tipping point. While you might have had nothing particular in mind in the way of a fashion statement when you got tonsured — it may have felt to you, in fact, like an achingly earnest expression of an overpowering emotion — it now looks to all the world like you're just another PFC in the Gay Brigade. Like you did it to fit in and get laid. The rule of unintended consequences has kicked in.
Not that the consequences were so bad. Men are shallow enough that a hairstyle is sometimes all it takes to make them want you. One of my most memorable lovers, a big beefy Pole (and yes, he had a big beefy pole, too) named Jacek, revealed to me after we'd been carrying on for awhile and things were cooling off between us, that the only thing that mattered to him in a lover was that he had a shaved head. He said it sort of sadly, and I took it as his apology for feeling nothing for me except when he was feeling my stubble.
Truth is, I didn't care as long as I was getting laid.
But when I came back to Boston in the late nineties, it seemed like the whole South End had been sheared. It was like Club Cafe had been commandeered by oversexed Krishnas. P-Town was like a Skinhead love-in. The shaved head was a shibboleth. It had clearly gone too far. A rabid meme, foaming at the mouth, in its final throes. The look had crossed over from an innocent cliché to full-blown camp.
Don't get me wrong, when done properly, macho drag is still pretty hot. I had spent a lot of time and effort perfecting the rough-trade look, and I'll admit I was reluctant to give it up. It was sort of a reverse-Samson effect I was afraid of. I would lose my sexual appeal and potency the longer my hair got. The uniformity so brutally enforced in Boston's highly regimented gay scene only intensified the anxiety. I was sure I would never get laid here if I let it grow out. You might call this "internalized hairophobia."
But after my last break-up I asked myself if I really even ever wanted to get laid here again. In fact, the prospect of celibacy, as I have mentioned before, seemed sort of appealing. So I figured it was high time to conquer my internalized hairophobia.
But it hasn't been easy. I've been on a scant two dates since starting my project many months ago, and I showed up to both wearing a ski cap (not a balaclava — just an ordinary knit cap), some curls spilling out in the back. So as not to shock them, I was so sure they would reject me out of hand as some kind of queer-eye hairetic.
Neither seemed to mind once I exposed myself. My locks, I mean.
So, slowly I'm gaining confidence. And with time, I may yet get to the full Jew-fro I know I have in me. I've just got to ease up on those mental breakdowns.
I just watched "Gay Sex in the 70's" a few days ago, and your new hair totally reminds me of that time. I think you should watch it, and maybe that'll be enough to get you to snap out of this madness and go back to buzzing your head, which makes you look MUCH hotter, judging by the pictures. I'm just saying.
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I have a hunch gay sex in the 70's might've been hotter than gay sex now, though there's really no way to quantify that, is there? Sex is just one of those things, I guess. I'm not sure what role big hair and mustaches had in any of this, either. A little, probably. But that's something for future Queer Studies grads to work out in their dissertations on the topic.
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Don't you wonder how you'd look with a big, bushy, 70's homo mustache? I dare you.
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Well, it's not that hard to find out. I'll catch up with you in a week or two.
I actually have had one of those once or twice over the years, as a kind of lark, and the thing that really turned me off of them was how high-maintenance they were. You almost needed to hire someone to come by three or four times a day and clean 'em, otherwise you're always thinking, "what is that smell?" That's the danger serious facial hair. They're like rugs -- they just draw in all manner of debris.
I had more in mind the old varsity mustache some of the hot high school athletes in my neighborhood I used to look up to when I was a kid used to sport. Something like this...
(Sorry -- I couldn't find a better example than this still from an incredibly hot, um, art film from the era.)
Whatever the case, I'll take almost anything over those goofy chinstraps every college freshman in the city was sporting last fall. They looked like a bunch of rejects from Amish Acres.
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I think I know that guy.
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I've got some shots of his bare bum, too, if that would help you to identify him.
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I may be showing my age but I was more reminded of the Holbein portrait of Thomas Wyatt the Younger that was discovered a couple of years back:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/03/13/basales113.xml
Don't get any ideas, though. He led a rebellion against Queen Mary and was beheaded & quartered ...
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Well, I suppose my new do is my own little rebellion against the cookie-cutter queens and marys at Club Cafe... As for Wyatt the Younger, you have to admit his neck was very long, and must have been inviting. People who lead rebellions should have much shorter necks if they want to get away with them.
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I think you look quite handsome with the curly top. Of course that may be me getting nostalgic for the days when I could still raise a full crop of hair.
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Well, if it's any consolation, you've got me beat in the full beard department, hands down. Mine's kinda spotty.
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God damn if you aren't just the finest looking man....sorry I have a crush. :)
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See, now that's what I'm talkin' about. Thank you, RG, for getting the point of my post!
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Anytime. Get my number from Tony and call me. hahahahaha
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