Certain Age use to secure their rollers and pin curls. Iâd sleep in the tape, peering hopefully into the mirror each morning as I peeled it free, thenâ ptoing! âit busted out like sprung watch works. I think of my father, quiet farmer that he was, slogging upstairs to bid his firstborn son good night with Bible verses and a kiss on the brow, only to find that brow swathed in pink hair tape. I wonder that he didnât just grab the phone and book me for Scared Straight.
In seventh grade I began to care how I looked, which is a shame. My first attempt at hairstyling was a modified Monkees mop worn in a left-to-right swirl. The swirl overcame the cowlick by flopping it sideways, a happy effect that lasted only until I nodded or the wind changed. Then in the 1970s, Shaun Cassidy parted his hair in the middle and launched the golden age of feathering. The nation and I went for it whole hog. For Christmas I requested a blow-dryer, and in my eighth-grade school portrait, I am no longer fighting the cowlick. Instead, exercising a form of follicular judo, I have turned the cowlickâs own momentum against it, combing and blowing it straight back. This in combination with a velour shirt gives me the appearance of a youthful televangelist emerging from an explosion at the hair-spray factory.
This was also the era of the white manâs afro, but my parents wouldnât allow it. This is theoretically too bad, because a perm was the one intervention that would have put that cowlick in a full nelson, but in reality they spared me one more set of bad hair pictures. (Or worseâwhile leaning over to notate his lab book during chemistry class, my friend Marco Bucklinski stuck his faux âfro in the Bunsen burner. I looked up at the sizzle and snap and found him playing his head like the bongos.)
Eventually I backed the blow-dryer off HIGH and let my hair hang a little more lank. To the left of the part, it feathered back à la Shaun Cassidy. To the right, the cowlick rose and fell with a swoop. I took this to be mysteriously moppish in a Sweet Baby James sort of way and got in the habit of fine-tuning it with a sweep of my right hand, an idiosyncrasy that quickly hardwired itself into a permanent tic that persisted through my late thirties. By my senior year in 1983, I was leading the football team in sacks, but was forever fussing with my hair. My teammates voted me Most Valuable Lineman. My classmates voted me Biggest Primper.
During the college years, my hairstyles evolved under three central influences: Pre-Mellencamp John Cougar, Bono Vox circa The Unforgettable Fire, and onceâwhen I teased and spray-painted my hair pink in order to establish street cred with the ditchweed-dealing ruffians at the roller rink where I was employed as skate guard and roller-skating Snoopyâthe Great Hair Metal Scare of 1986, specifically as personified by the bands Poison and Cinderella. Ultimately, Bonoâs influencewas most pervasive, leading me to scavenge Eau Claire Countyâs lone mall for boots like the ones he wore in the Pride (In the Name of Love) video. The closest match I could make was a floppy-ankled pair from an all-womenâs shoe store. I take a ladiesâ size 10, as it turns out. I tucked my parachute pants in and wore the boots with an air of meaty goofball angst. It has only recently occurred to me that technically, wearing those boots counts as cross-dressing. Mistakes were made.
Your 1980s man had a multitude of hair options, and in May 1987, I achieved critical mass, graduating from the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire School of Nursing with mousse spikes on top, a mullet in back, and a moustache up front. The bad hair trifecta. I gave the commencement address wearing a crumpled white linen suit and a pastel blue tie as wide as a pencil, then drove off to the future in my rattletrap pickup truck. The hood lettering said International, but my hair said hot red Fiero
In seventh grade I began to care how I looked, which is a shame. My first attempt at hairstyling was a modified Monkees mop worn in a left-to-right swirl. The swirl overcame the cowlick by flopping it sideways, a happy effect that lasted only until I nodded or the wind changed. Then in the 1970s, Shaun Cassidy parted his hair in the middle and launched the golden age of feathering. The nation and I went for it whole hog. For Christmas I requested a blow-dryer, and in my eighth-grade school portrait, I am no longer fighting the cowlick. Instead, exercising a form of follicular judo, I have turned the cowlickâs own momentum against it, combing and blowing it straight back. This in combination with a velour shirt gives me the appearance of a youthful televangelist emerging from an explosion at the hair-spray factory.
This was also the era of the white manâs afro, but my parents wouldnât allow it. This is theoretically too bad, because a perm was the one intervention that would have put that cowlick in a full nelson, but in reality they spared me one more set of bad hair pictures. (Or worseâwhile leaning over to notate his lab book during chemistry class, my friend Marco Bucklinski stuck his faux âfro in the Bunsen burner. I looked up at the sizzle and snap and found him playing his head like the bongos.)
Eventually I backed the blow-dryer off HIGH and let my hair hang a little more lank. To the left of the part, it feathered back à la Shaun Cassidy. To the right, the cowlick rose and fell with a swoop. I took this to be mysteriously moppish in a Sweet Baby James sort of way and got in the habit of fine-tuning it with a sweep of my right hand, an idiosyncrasy that quickly hardwired itself into a permanent tic that persisted through my late thirties. By my senior year in 1983, I was leading the football team in sacks, but was forever fussing with my hair. My teammates voted me Most Valuable Lineman. My classmates voted me Biggest Primper.
During the college years, my hairstyles evolved under three central influences: Pre-Mellencamp John Cougar, Bono Vox circa The Unforgettable Fire, and onceâwhen I teased and spray-painted my hair pink in order to establish street cred with the ditchweed-dealing ruffians at the roller rink where I was employed as skate guard and roller-skating Snoopyâthe Great Hair Metal Scare of 1986, specifically as personified by the bands Poison and Cinderella. Ultimately, Bonoâs influencewas most pervasive, leading me to scavenge Eau Claire Countyâs lone mall for boots like the ones he wore in the Pride (In the Name of Love) video. The closest match I could make was a floppy-ankled pair from an all-womenâs shoe store. I take a ladiesâ size 10, as it turns out. I tucked my parachute pants in and wore the boots with an air of meaty goofball angst. It has only recently occurred to me that technically, wearing those boots counts as cross-dressing. Mistakes were made.
Your 1980s man had a multitude of hair options, and in May 1987, I achieved critical mass, graduating from the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire School of Nursing with mousse spikes on top, a mullet in back, and a moustache up front. The bad hair trifecta. I gave the commencement address wearing a crumpled white linen suit and a pastel blue tie as wide as a pencil, then drove off to the future in my rattletrap pickup truck. The hood lettering said International, but my hair said hot red Fiero
Similar Books
