Eccentric Flower:201010/Still No Haircut

It's official: I am never going to be able to get a haircut.

I've reluctantly come to the conclusion that, unless some miracle happens, the combination of my various quirks and phobias in this area has created a situation that is logistically unsolvable. This is not the answer I want, and it is going to continue to accumulate mental tension until my brain snaps, but I just can't find any way to fix it.

I will explain the situation, at more length than you would have thought possible, not because I think that you care but so you may be able to derive some amusement from my pathetic state. At least then it will have served some purpose.

But first ....

Two people read this journal who have actively encouraged me to keep my long hair in the past. Neither of them reads the journal in a particularly timely fashion - one of them tends to come over only when I tell her there's something she might want to read here, and the other is busy tending a farm all day - so you won't hear the screaming immediately ... but sooner or later they will come around and say, "No! Don't cut your hair!" and I had better forestall them.

I have mostly had long hair since about the time I entered college. My tendency was to cut it only when needed (usually for job interviews) and then let it grow as long as it wanted until the next time I was required by some external pressure to cut it again. The longest hiatus was when I worked for Fifth Generation, where the boss was a tyrant who would walk the aisles and actually tell employees things like "Go get a haircut or don't come in tomorrow."

I have always liked having long hair, but the reasons I've liked having it have been either blatantly fetishistic (e.g. the joy of feeling it on my back) or linked to my gender issues (e.g. it helped me not look like a boy) or a combination of both.

In practical terms I have never been very enthused. My hair is curly and self-tangles, and does not reward the use of a brush or comb. (I've actually broken a hairbrush in half trying to pull it through my hair. Even when they work, they create static - I can reproduce the Bride of Frankenstein 'do with just a certain amount of the right kind of combing, followed by some Aqua Net to keep it in that position.) I have to untangle it with my fingers every morning when I get up, and remove little knots on a regular basis. When I wash it, it takes nearly a half hour, the greater part of which is my doing the kind of massive detangling of the underlayers that I can only do when the shampoo has given the hair less of a tendency to cling to itself. I also have always had a dandruff problem, and the long hair traps dandruff and so exacerbates this. It stays clean after I wash it for about a day, less in hot weather, and after that looks greasy and thuggish - but is too much work to wash every day, or even every other day.

I run hot. That is, my surface temperature climbs rapidly with even a modest amount of exertion. I don't have a problem with this, but combined with long hair, it makes my upper back and forehead and especially the back of my neck truly miserable places in summer - or on days like today when I wear a shirt that suits me in sixty degree weather and then it turns closer to seventy.

Most importantly, I'm forty-two and it is my feeling that any male who still runs around in a ponytail at that age is in a state of denial of some kind. Either it is a misplaced hipsterism or some sort of arrested development. Men my age with long hair are trying to prove something, and none of the things they are trying to prove reflect particularly well on their personality.* I don't want to be part of that crowd. It's past time to quit.

* There is an upper ceiling on this. If you are a man above the age of fifty-five who can pull off a silver ponytail with unrepentant-hippie finesse, especially if you are an unrepentant hippie, then more power to you. I will call this the "Frank Richards Exemption Clause." But the people my age who have ponytails all either run way-too-full-of-themselves technology companies, or want to, or have posters of Steven Seagal on their walls.

So. It's time to cut the hair. But - and it is very important that you understand this even before I get to my myriad tics about the haircut process - getting this long hair cut off is guaranteed to be psychologically traumatic for me.

You see, by cutting off my hair I am admitting that I don't do drag or cross-dress or even fool around much with gender-indeterminate clothing anymore. By cutting off my hair I am admitting that I wear earrings only a few times a year now and generally discreet studs, not big danglies. Moreover, by cutting my hair I am closing that door - I'm saying that even if I do want to wear a skirt out of the house or wear dangly earrings, I will now be unable to.

By cutting my hair I am admitting exactly what I don't want to admit, which is that despite my efforts, the passage of time has turned me into something I hate and I can't go back. By cutting my hair I am admitting to the jowls and the weak chin and the fact that, while I'm not fat, I am hardly svelte either. By cutting my hair I am admitting that all my girl clothes are folded and in storage in the top of my closet (which they are). I am admitting that I now look ridiculous, not sexy, in a dress. I am admitting that if I cross-dressed today the effect would not be Jonathan Rhys Meyers, but Eric Idle. (Or, alas, Tom Hanks, but we'll get to him in a moment.) I am admitting that time and age and my goddamn father's goddamn genes have conspired to make certain that I will never, never again be attractive on the only scale which is meaningful to me - that of androgynous, if not outright feminine, sexiness. By cutting my hair I am admitting defeat. And while I'm willing to do that (or I wouldn't be trying), it is never going to be an easy thing for me to do.

It doesn't help that I cannot abide the way my hair looks short. I know how my hair looks short. It looks like this. My face isn't as cute as it was then (this would have been my senior year of high school or the year after), but believe me, my hair still does the same thing at this length:

I should note that I'm actually rather fond of this photo, which was taken by my mom, and if I could look like this now I wouldn't be bitching so loud. But my face doesn't look like that anymore.

This is the "Tom Hanks" hair. I spent a lot of my late adolescence and early adulthood (actually, my early adulthood was my late adolescence, alas) being told about certain resemblances to Tom Hanks. I got nothing against Mr. Hanks, but I don't want to look like him in any way, and that includes having a short crop of ringlets. I don't care if you think it's cute; I grimace when I see it in the mirror.

Longer lengths are not much better. Basically, the only times I've been reasonably happy with the way my hair looks are when I've been able to get it into girl styles. So this is pretty much a doomed-to-fail procedure from the word go. No matter what length it is, no matter what style it is, it's likely I'll still be unhappy with it for some reason or another.

And that's all before we get to the actual process part.

We must begin this section with a brief discussion of terminology, not just because it's indicative but because it complicates the writing of the rest of this essay: There is no good term, in my book, for "person who cuts your hair."

"Stylist" has always struck me as an overly fussy term. "Fussy" is not quite right, but I can't come up with a better word. A "stylist" is someone who talks about things like the "texture" and the "movement" of your hair, who discusses your "look" and your "personal style." I don't have a look and I don't have a personal style, and I have no idea how I'd go about finding one were I interested in doing so. And I don't care about the texture or the movement of my hair, so long as it looks good. I just want a freakin' haircut, not a lifestyle change. A stylist uses things like gel and mousse and other products I'm not sure belong in one's hair at all. It implies a fair bit of touchy-feely in a place where I don't necessarily have the patience for any.

"Barber" goes too far in the other direction. A "barber" is an older straight man who rolls his eyes if you try to tell him anything about what your hair will do when it's cut or what you want it to look like, and gives you the Don Draper cut regardless of your wishes or whether it looks good on you. A barber does not have a shampoo sink at his station; he keeps his combs in blue disinfectant; and if you look around, you can probably still find a tin of pomade in his vicinity somewhere.

(There is also the now-archaic "hairdresser." A hairdresser puts your hair in rollers and sits you under a hood dryer for a while while you file your nails and then gives you a bouffant and sprays Aqua Net on it. I am actually perfectly okay with that, but I'm the wrong sex and about fifty years too late for it.)

Let's go with "stylist"; even though I find it a more pretentious word than "barber," I am considerably more comfortable with the idea of putting myself in the hands of a stereotypical stylist than a stereotypical barber.

Here is the impossible set of ideals I am looking for in a stylist:

• Must not be intimidatingly hip, standoffish, or indicate through her manner that she is way cooler than I will ever hope to be - even if she is.
• But also must dress and have own hairstyle in a way that indicates to me she understands that being male does not automatically imply I am a collar-and-tie type - because I very much am not - and that while I do have to go to a workplace every day, that doesn't mean I want the same haircut as every other straight male my age on the planet.
• Must seem like someone where, if I did tell her that no hairstyle will ever be entirely adequate because it isn't a girl hairstyle, I wouldn't immediately be embarrassed for having said so.
• Must understand very curly hair.
• Must understand boy hair (even though she probably mostly cuts girl hair - which I take as a sign of better ability, because boy hair is easier to get away with doing a half-assed job on).
• Must be observant and creative enough to assess what would make a good haircut for me and do it, because she will not get any input from me, yet my penalties for her making a wrong decision are high. (More on this in a minute.)
• Must be female or a gay male. Straight men don't understand me and I don't understand them. Besides, they all tend to be barbers.

To this we must add a set of pure logistics issues:

• Must be a place that accepts walkins. I have an entirely separate set of psychological issues about calling places for appointments, so badly that it leads me to put off my yearly eye appointment for 1-2 months every year even though I love my eye place, and usually means I need about three months to work up the nerve to call my doctor's office for any reason whatsoever. (Memo to my wife: If you use this as an opportunity to nag me about making an appointment, I will add another week to the tally. I'm working on it, and making me stubborn out will not help.) In the case of hair appointments, even if I didn't have this separate bundle of twitches - I can't plan hair appointments, not when it's the first time. I have to go to the place - when I can manage to get there during day hours - and try to work up the nerve to go in first. Possibly on future visits to the same stylist I could make an appointment successfully, but when I'm still in the assessment phase? Forget it.
• Must be somewhere I can get to by foot or public transportation (sorry, people who have made recommendations of places in Billerica and other Siberian regions, but first off, I'm not likely to have access to a car during the times when I can go, and second, if I plan to become a regular it needs to be a place I can get to regularly).
• Must not be a place on Newbury Street. There are two types of people on Newbury St (except for the parts nearest Mass. Ave where a college student occasionally sneaks in): full-of-themselves urban pricks, and people who make their living selling to full-of-themselves urban pricks - which means they have to act like pricks themselves, since the only approach that sort of snot responds to is the I-am-too-hip-too-give-you-the-time-of-day escalation. They figure that if the stylist or salesbeing or hostess acts like that, it must mean it's something worth having. Me, I just call it bad service. Also, the difficulty of obtaining second mortgages means that getting a haircut on Newbury is a tricky proposition.
• Despite that comment, money is not much of an object, but it does increase the psychological cost of entry - that is, I am going to have higher expectations/demands of someone giving an eighty-dollar cut than of someone giving a forty-dollar one.

You see how difficult this is?

One factor muddying this water is that this is apparently one of the few times when my submissiveness is not theoretical. I know, I know, that sounds like Too Much Information and maybe it is, but bear with me, I'll try to keep it clean.

It is not much of a secret that I am submissive by inclination but not by practice. It is one thing to fantasize about being dominated, but in the real world (and I don't just mean the bedroom, either), it doesn't work out that way. Either I am going to break into involuntary laughter or some other equally inappropriate response, or I am simply going to get mulish because I basically don't like being bossed around. I get along with my current boss because he's learned that it is far better for him to tell me why he wants me to do something rather than just order me to do it. (See Also: Why Columbina Would Not Last Seven Seconds in the Armed Forces.)

This is a problem with, say, approaching doctors and dentists. To my mind, a doctor is someone who essentially exists to tell you all the ways in which you are ruining your health or are broken/defective, and who will try very hard to make you stop doing anything that brings any joy into your life, or will put you on an expensive regimen of drugs for this and that which will hopelessly alter your life, or both. To give you an example of what I consider to be the basic temperament of doctors (at least when they're on the job), see The Center for Science in the Public Interest, otherwise known as The Official Enemies of Fun. Dour people who would prefer for you to take all your meals as unflavored Pablum. Dentists exist to tell you that you're going to have to pay a whole lot of pain and money that your insurance doesn't cover, just because our design was flawed enough to be unable to make corrosion-proof teeth. This, not fear, is the main reason I'm bad about going to doctors and dentists (that, and having to make the appointment): It's just not going to end well for me no matter what, and I really don't like having arguments with my doctor, but nor do I like being told to give up food X or take drug Y, and if I get that instruction and then break it I will feel guilty for ignoring her advice. I have never in my life had good news from a doctor or a dentist. As far as I'm concerned, it's not what they do. Even my current doctor, on my first visit, while she basically gave me a clean bill of health, felt a need to add that I could stand to lose a little weight, just so I wouldn't leave without her having pissed in the milk. But I digress.

Point is, whereas with doctors and dentists and lawyers, my tendency is toward "you're not the boss of me" just out of sheer preemptive defensiveness, with a hair stylist, I want - demand! - a stylist who is capable enough that I can simply go to her and say "use your initiative and make it good, I'm in your hands," and let her have her way. It is one of the few times where the desirable, actual, real-world scenario is to go totally sub and wait to see how it turns out. The problem of course is that this requires a huge amount of trust - probably more trust than I can ever give to a stranger who doesn't come with the highest of glowing personal recommendations.

Part of this is because I don't think my hair is going to look good no matter what anyone does to it and thus I want to abdicate responsibility for it - remember, the heart of submissiveness is the control one exerts toward not having to be in control - but the larger part of it is I have no earthly idea what I want my hair to look like, and even if I did, I lack the language to describe it. I am still bearing the scars of the last time I tried to tell a stylist what I want, did a bad job of it, and got a haircut so humiliating that I had to have a second haircut three days later so I could go out in public without a bag over my head.

So, anyway, go ahead and laugh. If you made it through this forest of prose, you deserve a laugh. Laugh all you like, I don't mind - but this is a very real problem for me.

I walked past/around a few more places today. This is my third attempt to go out into the world and catch a wild haircut in the last two months. All three have ended badly. When I say I walked past or around places, I am being literal. I look at them from the outside and can't work up my nerve to go in. My stomach ties itself in knots. After two or three such tries I have to stop or I'll be ill.

I went to a place in Harvard Square recommended by a friend today (they'd been closed on my previous try). They were open; but I went down the steps to read their sign and it said Appointment Only. Now, perhaps I could have walked in and made an immediate appointment - that sometimes does happen - and maybe I would have done so if either of the gentlemen had so much as acknowledged I was there. Yes, they were both busy with customers, but I'm not asking that they stop their work and attend to me. Just a turn of the head and a "hello" would have sufficed. No. That's enough to be a deal-breaker right there.

(I was also put off by the fact that their menu listed "Consultation" as part of the standard hair package, or even offered a "consultation" alone. Having read this far you can probably deduce what my idea of a hair "consultation" is and why I don't find that word a good sign. However, that would not have been fatal.)

What would happen in my fantasy universe is that some smart woman would walk up to me and say, "You know, you should do something about that hair. I have just the idea. Come with me," and more or less bodily drag me to a barber's chair and proceed to have her way and she'd finish and it would look great - just what I had always wanted all the time but never knew I wanted. It may even be that such an imaginary paragon exists somewhere; but if she does, I doubt she is actively looking for me, and I don't know where to go to find her, and chances are if she's that good she's not looking for much in the way of new business anyhow.

I feel doomed. Which, I suppose, is slightly better than when I got home from my hair-seeking attempts this afternoon and felt like breaking into tears.

I realize this is far from a serious problem in the grand scheme of things. But it is a problem nonetheless - at least during the once or twice a month when I make time to confront it - and it is giving me stress I do not need.