When I was still a young man, I realized that I would go bald. My father was bald, my mother, sparse. My father’s father, a cue ball. My oldest brother, ten years my senior, was hairless by the time he was thirty.
I liked my hair but I was going to lose it. Not that I had much choice, but I decided to embrace it. That was made easier when I realized that the most important women in my life all loved bald men.
My hairline began to recede in my early twenties, right on schedule. By the time I was twenty six my hair was half gone. I bought a pair of electric clippers and learned to cut what was left as deftly as a barber. No more appointments for me. I washed it with bar soap. Later, on the advice of a dermatologist, I switched to a mild dish detergent. I don’t think it made a difference to my scalp, but it was cheap enough; a single two dollar bottle lasts almost two years. When it’s shorn close, the wind caused by stepping out of the shower blows it dry.
Baldness is a cinch. To me, a man without hair looks just right, while a man with hair looks odd, almost artificial. I’m not passing judgment, just saying, a head of hair on a man over fifty makes me laugh. Sorry guys, your hair is lovely, but I feel for you: cut, color, comb, what a pain in the neck. I’m not surprised that more people don’t shave their heads, but not having hair was a pleasant surprise, and is a genuine pleasure.
Still, despite acceptance, baldness comes with a few minor insecurities. Do I look older than I feel? Does my wife like my baldness as much as I do? How about women who’ve never met me? Is the skin on my scalp healthy and attractive? Do I have a pleasant shaped head? What about corners or points? How about bumps? But easily the worst thing, in fact, the only drawback exclusive to being bald and what occasionally makes me wish I had hair is cold weather.
I knew this problem was coming because I had all those role models. So being a former boy scout who likes to be prepared (yes, I wore one of those vintage boy scout hats that are pointed at each end and come to a peak), I started wearing hats long before I lost my hair. It gets cold in New England. I bought no-names and brand names: Stetsons, Kangols, Capas, and every style I could lay my hands on. I wore dress hats, cowboy hats, fedoras, caps, crushers, outback hats, skullcaps, headscarves, do-rags and stocking caps. They were cotton, felt, wool, leather, linen, canvas and hemp. Anything. Everything. Hats from Russia, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Europe, Africa, North America, South America, anywhere, everywhere. Almost.
Of course, if you know me, you know where this is going. No hat was right. None of them felt like hair. I was always aware of having a particular one on and they each made a statement that I didn’t want to make. Embarrassing or serious or funny. Take baseball caps for example. If you wear one everyday, after a while it becomes part of your persona. I couldn’t be so casual, so acceptable, so ordinary. I wanted people to look at me and form an opinion, even a bad one. I couldn’t be just another guy in a baseball cap. Every other hat seemed to have its own personality too, and after trying each one out, I decided I didn’t like it. This went on for years, so I gave up a lot of hats. Some I wore for a while, some just for a day, or a week. Some I wore until they fell apart, but not too many. Of course I still have some because they are special or perfect for a particular job or event. On the coldest days I still wear a nice thick stretchy wool hat that pulls way down over my ears. In the brightest summer sunlight I like a broad brim that keeps the rays off my head and neck. I can picture myself in Mexico, sleeping against a whitewashed wall, white cotton everything, droopy straw hat and three-day’s growth of beard and mustache. What a hat that would be! Under my bicycle helmet I wear a red headscarf, scorpion adorned, and to a funeral I will often wear either a black or a gray fedora with a black hat band. Hats talk.
Probably because I like being bald, I didn’t realize how much I wanted a main hat, a hair substitute. One brilliant, sunny day on Cape Cod, my wife and I were walking around the Wellfleet flea market with our kids. I was about thirty. My hat obsession was well into its seventh year. As usual, we were looking over the hat table and to my shock and dismay she picked up a beret and handed it to me. I shook my head and put it down, not a beret, I had ruled them out a while ago, I had a navy blue one at home in my closet. I circled around the table a couple of times and then went back to it. I picked it up again, showed it to her as if she hadn’t already given me her opinion, hoping she would say no, I even gave her my sad eyes, but she nodded. Yes, she said. Try it on.
You have to understand, not only was this a beret, something I considered too French and effeminate, but this particular beret was red, --no, gorgeously, unashamedly, magnificently, in-your-face red. How could I wear that? I looked around, hung my head a little, saw that no one was paying any attention and slipped it on. I adjusted it with a little twist of the wrist, tipped it jauntily down toward my right ear and then was distracted by my kids. As you might know, kids in a flea market require a lot of attention, especially toddlers, so I did my job and that’s when the miracle happened.
I forgot that I was wearing the hat. Literally forgot. No one had noticed me put it on and when I walked away from the table, chasing after my kids, no one hollered. No one asked me for money, my kids didn’t say anything, my wife was otherwise occupied and I was wearing a completely comfortable, apparently invisible, bright red stolen beret. Eventually I remembered that it was on my head, realized how natural it felt there and found the vendor and paid him his asking price. Usually I dicker at the flea market, but the hat was two dollars. Yup, I found my hair replacement and it cost me two dollars. I’ve been wearing it ever since. Little babies love it. It catches their eye; I’m the only man they know with truly red hair. As for adults, other men probably hate it, but they admire the chutzpah that it takes to wear it and much to my delight, women know a man when they see one in any color hat, but especially in a red one.
Finally, the first one wore out, and I’ve had to spend a little more since then, but I bought one for five dollars from a street vendor in New York about eight years ago. Sometime in between I bought one from a retail-clothing store. It was in the women’s section. There might have been one other, but I think that’s it. Twenty five years, maybe twenty bucks, four actual hats and I still have two of them, which is what prompted me to write about this in the first place. I have two of them and they are different.
One is a little smaller than the other and a little lighter, they’re both definitely red, but you know how color is, the slightest variation stands one out against the other. I prefer the smaller one. I like its slightly faded color, its barely wider band, its thicker little nub at the top, they’re like your hair’s characteristics, untamed cowlick, left flip on the right side, widow’s peak, gray roots, but no one else even knows that I have two, that there’s a difference, and that it matters to me which one I’m wearing. I don’t think my wife knows the difference, or if she does, it makes no difference to her. But these hats are my hair, I know how each looks and feels, and I prefer to wear my hat just so. I tease people with hair about vanity, but obviously I’m vain too, it’s just that I can take my vanity off or put it on at will and no one suspects a thing.
Today I washed them both and laid them out flat. See, look at these. Different hats. I probably won’t wash them again for a year. Right now I have to wait for them to dry. In the meantime, I’ll be bald.
