The difference a haircut makes
by Matt Worley

One of my co-workers complimented my hair yesterday. It happens from time to time. I either get, "Nice hair," or "Nice goatee." And most of the time it is "nice." Not too scraggly or scurvy--which works well in an office environment. For about six months now, I've been constantly surprised by the way I look in a mirror. The best way to get over this might be to look in the mirror more, but that's not really my style. So every couple of days I wonder, "Who is that guy?" Luckily, the answer comes quickly, and I can think about other things. Like, "I thought I only had one gray hair."

For the first thirteen years or so of my life, I had about the same haircut. It was this bowl cut thing that came down to about an inch above my shoulders. The need for a haircut was always expressed by my mom, who was the barber in our family. There was (and, strangely, still is) one problem with my hair. It was straight. Very straight. So straight and fine (rather than thick or coarse--not ugly) that all it could do was submit to gravity and hang down from the top of my head to where it was clipped off.

I didn't think too much about this look until ninth grade. Ninth grade was the start of high school (even if ninth grade itself took place in a junior high building), and I thought I needed a change. It was the day before a parade (I was in school band, and we marched in parades) in Portales, New Mexico, when the "new me" was launched. I got a perm.

As you may or may not have guessed, I went to junior high and high school smack dab in the middle of the 80s. It was 1985 when my locks curled (artificially) for the first time. And it was then when I realized that a haircut only looks good for about two or three weeks. Usually it take about two or three weeks to grow in from the initial cut, and then there is a comfortable two or three weeks of nearly perfect cut. After that it's just a countdown to the inevitable time when another cut (and, in this case, perm) is necessary. If you want to know what I looked like back then, think about Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer, except with lighter brown hair. Perms always lightened my hair--the chemicals, I think.

I don't know what I thought the new perm cut was going to do to my life, but I kept it going throughout my entire high school career. Most of the time the hair barely touched my shoulders, but I had the sense of being a rebel at least. I identified with Jon Bon Jovi, because he had to get a perm too.

I started college in the fall of 1989--which, coincidentally, was right around the time the Berlin Wall fell. And it was during this period of great change when I was attending college somewhere in the Midwest, but not really paying much attention. Since I was away from home, my hair fell into a bit of disarray. I had decided not to get a perm right before leaving for college and by the time the semester was finished, I had straight hair once again. It was flopping all over the place and, for one of the first times, below my shoulders by an inch or so. I used an extensive network of bandannas and headbands to keep the stuff out of my eyes.

I got my last perm soon after the turn of the decade. My new tactic for hair was to grow it straight, but tease it out with a complicated system of shampoos, conditioners and hair dryers. Sometimes it was as if my hair was lighter than air. And it kept getting longer. Coincidentally, I had the most luck with women at this time in my hair career. I looked glam rock right before the end of glam rock. It was a heady time in the sex life of a young man.

I first cut my hair (into a hip slanted semi-bowl cut) when I suspected a girl I was seeing only liked me because of my hair. We still had sex, but it wasn't the same after that. A very eye-opening experience. I had proved my suspicions correct, but also realized I wasn't done with long hair. As soon as my hair was up to it, I began a regimen of hair growing to 'fix' the mistake. This see-saw hair length program would continue for many years. I'd grow it out, get pissed about having all that hair in my face all the time and then hack it off. I had since cut out most of my hair care techniques--although I still used both shampoo and conditioner and brushed my hair.

During one of the last eras of long hair in my life, I was a co-best man at a friend's wedding. The minister made it a point to tell me he liked my hair. In July of that year, while floating in the Gulf Of Mexico, I realized long hair no longer served my purposes. And since then it has been no longer than the bottom of my ear. Since last September, though, it's been less than two inches all around. Not so severe as to call it a buzz cut, but pretty close.

I came to the conclusion that I no longer wanted to care about what my hair looked like. So I cut it so short I'd never have to see it at all. Unless I looked in a mirror. Sure, there is the necessity to cut it every month or so, but I can usually extend my cutting time to almost two months without getting too ragged. There is still that two to three week growing in period, and the same time of looking pretty good. This way, I don't even have to comb the stuff--but it's much easier to count the gray hairs.

Matt Worley is looking forward to having a shock of Steve Martin hair in a few years.

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