Born bald, so I am told, and it took a long time for any hair to grow. Bonnets in pink frills covering my bare pate did not stop people from telling my mother what a cute little boy she had. Thin, stringy brown easily tangled, fine and flyaway stuff covered my head as a small girl (oft assumed to be a small boy.) I do remember my first haircut, in a carousel horse barber chair. I was very still. I had the feeling that the man who cut my hair was half expecting me to throw a tantrum. But I knew about seeing the doctor, and being brave, and I knew cutting my hair would not hurt like a shot. I had at some point taken scissors to it myself. I liked cutting things, and that cutting other people's things was bad, but my hair was mine, so I figured I was safe. My mother figured differently. Dramatically so.
My mother had her own issues about hair. Hers was red, straight naturally and coarse. She permed it and had it in rollers at night, and hated the color. Her parents lived apart for many years, her father was an alcoholic who drank himself to death in a flophouse, and was "found" several days later. Perhaps her mother told her she was "just like your father, it's the red hair!" But I base this on no information, just a guess that she hated her hair for more than just aesthetics. She considered dying it to be too vain for words. Although this may be an example of her tendency to endure and complain rather than change. Her older sister Grace was a beautician, and the story may be there. Grace was the one who did her perms, up until a few years before she died. Mom would, many years after I left the house, find a stylist who would convince her to let her hair be straight, and blow dry it, by now grayed to a lovely sandy color.
I wanted mine long, for sensual reasons, to feel it on my back as the wind blew it from my face. Some of it came from dancing, ballerina buns tight and glued down. But dancers' hair was very long, and when released, could cascade and flow with wild abandon, as I had seen once in a performance of Giselle.
It was emotional, and I had an irrational affinity for hair. My only crush on a woman involved her waist length silken blonde hair, when she cut it I lost interest, so I can only assume that I am not lesbian, but that I have a hair fetish.
Bangs and curls were my father's ideal, so I stayed far away from that, since for me, if he liked it, I hated it. I certainly did not want to be attractive to him. Stubbornly resisting a great deal of parental harassment to get it cut, "you'd look so CUTE in a Pixie!" (yeah, when I was two.) I grew my hair from the time I was five until I was 14, resisting pressure all the way. Then I took skating lessons when Dorothy Hammill was winning gold. I cut my frayed, splitting, mistreated hair into that Dorothy bob. It was better.
Perms came later, with mom's approval, even encouragement. I always wanted easy, and sleek, braided back and clean. The ex liked the perms, and begged me to let it grow long, I kept it short. Until I went to Basic. It was growing along nicely, until about a week before I left him. We went to one of those 'Family Cuts' type place, and I needed a trim, but told the woman, "cut it all off", then said, no, just trim it. But all he heard was the first, and without a word, he left and walked the 6 blocks home. It was bizarre. That week later when I'd escaped, I went back and got my hair cut very short.
A few months later, while in Saudi Arabia with my Guard Unit in Kobar, sleeping in an underground garage, and with no idea what kind of place we would be stationed, probably out in the dirt- we were told that there was an Army barbershop set up for us. D and I went, along with many others, to where a long row of Philippino barbers shaved and cut, and gave a neck massage for a few rial. It felt funny, but that was nothing compared to how it looked. A line of shaved hair, topped by what was left, a bowl cut would have been more appealing. Captain Crockett looked at me, and I looked at her with the same haircut, and simultaneously we reassured each other- "It'll grow." It was always to D's credit that he fell in love with me when I had the worst haircut of my life.
Growing it and keeping it neat in nursing school, then working in nursing homes, was impossible, so I kept it short for years. Then D broke his arm, and I was overwhelmed with taking care of him after surgery, so I buzzed off
all my hair. Marvelously freeing, so easy. Except for the comments from people at work. "I could never do THAT!" was the one that baffled me. It is very easy, if you want to. D's favorite theoretical response to "What does your husband think?" was that I should say, "I don't know. Should I ask him?" He liked rubbing my head, and frankly told me, "It's your hair, I love you, whatever you want."
That cut revealed just how grey I was getting. I felt I looked piebald, so I started dying it. (I will buzz it again when I am tired of dying my hair, sometime between 60 and 70 years old, and let it be whatever color it wants.) I once cut off all but the un-dyed stuff - 9 months before my visit to my parents, knowing their feelings about women dying their hair, and wishing to avoid the issue. Faint hope. My father insisted it was dyed, because it wasn't the brown I had as a child. One of a bale of last straws that ended my relationship with him.
Then, finally, wearing a hat in surgery all day so the awkward stages didn't matter, I let it grow, trimming as I went and conditioning the fuck out of it. It's been nice - childhood dream realized, but as with all such early fantasies, it doesn't matter so much now. If I have learned anything, it is the danger of investing too much emotion in hair. It annoys me when the women at work exclaim "Your hair is so long, it grows so fast" I want to slap them and say
it took me 37 years to look like this. But I make some innocuous reply, and keep my own counsel. Really, I do it for my own pleasure, and how it feels when D strokes my hair down my back. Stuff so visible, yet so intimate. My friends are welcome to touch or comment,but because they are my friends, they usually do not.
Hair is public, no matter how much I might wish it otherwise. And many people who cannot keep their thoughts to themselves are deeply invested not only in their own, but in others' public images, epitomized by hair. One man who saw me at the barber getting my hair all buzzed off, approached me in the grocery store the next day to ask me why I had done it. This is the reality. To everyone I am conforming or rebelling, making a public statement. I endeavor to learn tolerance, trying to be amused that I am being taught this through such a trivial matter as stratified, keratinized, squamous epithelium, that dead matter that is hair.
