Sinead O'conner I'm not.

There's nothing like shaving your own head. I've done it once before, but it was along with my brother. We grew long hair together, we shaved heads together. Sort of a bonding experience. Back in the day, I would shave down to nigh the scalp coming ever so close to needing to Shick it to get any less hair. Well I've gone and done it again. In a desperate act of hair dresser avoidance, I clamped the #3 guard onto the clippers and let fly with about 3 months of mop.

I tell you what. Something very cathartic about shaving your own head, even better if it's on a whim. I had planned to get my hair cut, and threatened to "trim it up" myself, but never to just go at it with some clippers. So as I stood staring at myself in the mirror, stripped down to my shorts, looking at my Johnny Storm hairdo, something profound came over me. Not a sadness, but an acceptance. Like a drunk finally making the first step in recognizing his problem. So the clippers came to life and I began hacking away like a weed whacker to that unruly patch of grass underneath the gas meter. The clippers sang out like a heavy metal guitar as lock after lock was dumped into the sink. I start slowly, and around the back and sides, so if I changed my mind I could still wear a hat for a day or two while seeking professional intervention. Then with one fatal swoop, I went for the widow's peak.





Widow's peak is a euphemism. I'm 30 now and the hair is receding so it's not so much a peak as it is a remnant. It military terms, as most balding men tend to use in these situations, it's scrimmage line for an ordered retreat. But there's frightfully few of them boys left. It almost looks like I'd just missed a spot. It's thin and scattered and hopeless. It's mere presence is a reminder that, while I feel young again by taking drastic stylist steps on my own, I am moving steadily on toward the end of my life rather than moving away from the beginning. It's humbling and ridden with anxiety.