Looking Like This:Hair Tales

I am not a person obsessed with my appearance.I make sure that I am clean(clean feels better) and that I look like I bathe regularly.I'm not really concerned with my clothing.I'm a jeans and T-shirt person for life.I buy the cheapest sneakers I can stomach buying.(My current pair was $15.I will wear them until they need to be held together with duct tape.)

This isn't too say I don't have my peculiarities.I have made some very bold fashion choices in my physical appearance.For one thing, I have 16 tattoos.When I fist started getting thm, I wanted to keep them all in places where I could hide them.Then I got one on my forearm and suddenly it was open season.Some people are curious and might ask a question or two, but I've never gotten any grief over them.I think they're getting more and more common and accepted, so people aren't as shocked as they might have been in the past.

I also have a long goatee, maybe about 6 inches long.I shave only about once a month, and sometimes even less frequent.Once more, I rarely get any grief for this.My job is such that I don't need to be clean shaven.At worst people want to tug on my beard.It's a good prop for wrestling for that very reason.

The thing I get the most comments about, and hard times about, is my hair.I started growing my hair long when I was a freshman in high school.My mother was okay with it, but would never let it get too long.Her idea of long hair must've been an inch long, 80's mullet.I had other ideas and, by the time I was a junior, had won.I could grow it as long as I wanted as long as I kept it clean.I took that ball and ran with it and still won't give it back.

I have cut it short twice in the past:once because I got a bad haircut and the other time was to get a job.Both times I tried to work with the short hair and find a style I liked because short hair IS easier to take care of.It just never worked.It just ends up long.It grows in thick too.I'm not close to balding yet.(crosses fingers.C'mon genetics.)I'm also a redhead(real hair color).That means that not only is it long and there's a lot of it, but it stands out like a signal beacon.There's no mistaking me when you see me.

I love having it.It's just more...fun.It allows for a couple of different style options.Seeing other people's reactions to it over the past twenty years has been an experience in the best and worst that people have to offer.There is a whole set of prejudices and stereotypes that come with being a guy with long hair, none of them flattering.

My first experience came right about when I was a junior in H.S.My family was living in a condominium complex.That means your neighbors were right on top of you and privacy sometimes wasn't possible.One day I was cleaning out the inside of my mother's car.It was a sunny day, I had the radio out with me and was just cleaning and enjoying the tunes.

When I finished my job and came back in my mother pulled me aside.She told me that one member of a family from a condo next to ours, a lady senior, came to the door to warn my mother that there was a suspicious-looking man near her car.Looking back, I'm just thinking"How did she not know that I lived there?Our front doors were only 15 feet apart."But still, she saw me and instantly had me judged as "criminal", or "undesirable".

It has been a recurring pattern all my life.There are people who feel uncomfortable talking to me because of it.It has occasionally made me an uncomfortable spectacle.Almost every time that I've ever been to see stand-up comedy, I've been the guy that the comic picks out of the audience to tease.(Caroline Rhea once called me Jesus!Really.It was before Sabrina and Rosie.)I've been turned down for countless jobs because of it, often with a boldness and frankness that would not be tolerated if their issue involved race or gender.Some might ask why I just don't cut my hair and blend in.Guys SHOULD have short hair, you know.No one forces me to look like this.Peace is only a scissor snip or two away.The answer is simple:I don't want to.Dealing with the bullshit is a small price to pay for being happy with at least one aspect of your physical appearance.I have awesome hair.So fuck you all. I'm keeping it.

Hearing this little rant, you might think that it might be an obsession of my life.That maybe I walk around all day like"Yeah.Look at my hair.Pay attention dammit!!!"I'm not though.It's as unnewsworthy and familiar to me as my own face.It's just something I happen to have.People always will make jokes and I'll get the requisite haircut cracks and offers.But they get used to it.It gets old, kinda like the Superman jokes that Clark Kent endures in Superman:Identity.

These opinions that I wrote about above are always in my head though, even if they rarely are spoken of.I think that anybody who experiences discrimination because of their appearance, no matter how insignificant it may seem in relation to another person's experience with discrimination,retains it and has an encyclopedia's worth of counter attacks and defenses just waiting to be unleashed at anyone who gives them shit. I never really thought about what other guys with long hair go through.I'm too self-absorbed to care.Looking through the internet(That thing again)and I found just some of that:guys with long hair shouting their concerns.Some are more radical than others.I think this guy pretty much nails it.

Some things, like "get a haircut" being considered a slur I had never thought of.If I look back at many of the incidents that he brings up and count the number of times they happened to me, then it would seem that people have been pretty rotten to me.I can't seem to get mad about it though.It's interesting to read about.I can relate to the stories.But it doesn't make me seethe.I'm old enough and have heard it all.The comments just roll right off my back now.I don't blame anybody for the position I'm in, or not in.(But I do have my eye on you, Mr."The Man."You are never to be trusted under any circumstances.)But sometimes, it just feels good to rant.