Gimme it down to there

About seven weeks ago, I did something that I would not advise for even a healthy dude or dudette in their 30s, much less for a guy who will qualify for Medicare in about eight weeks. I had two pretty major surgical procedures in the space of three days. I know, not a super bright move.

The idea was to double up on recovery time so I could get back to normal life as quickly as possible. What I didn’t take into account is how much it would torch me physically in terms of stamina for the better part of a month. This is all an intro to the fact that I have spent way too much time in the past few weeks binge-watching “Game of Thrones,” a series I missed when it was the hip and cool thing to watch because we didn’t have HBO back in 2011.

So, the other day, I looked in the mirror and my first thought was, “Oh my God, dude. You look like Walder Frey.” For those who missed the series, suffice it to say that in a universe populated with many odious characters, Frey was one of the worst.

It’s all about my hair. Now, like Frey, it hangs on each side of my head in thin, gray and stringy strands instead of the healthy curls of my youth. Yeah, it’s an age thing, but hair has been an ongoing issue in my life since I was a teenager.

I’ve outed myself in the past as having been raised Mormon, which came with some specific coif tension. It was the mid-to-late 1970s and as my friends had long, flowing locks or huge Afros, I was somehow one of just a handful of guys in my high school with a “missionary” cut. When I got to be about 17 and was earning money and paying for my own haircuts, I thought I would finally be able to join the hip hair crowd. But no matter how much I told sister Petty to trim as little as possible, I got the same “off the ears, off the collar” cut.

I suspected my mom was behind it and confronted her and asked if she was telling her friend how to cut my hair, which she swore she was not doing. I later asked Mrs. Petty and she admitted that, while it was technically true that my mom did not dictate the style, per se, she would just call and say “You know.” And that was just as good.

When I came home from serving a mission in the south of Chile in ‘81, I finally started to do the Mormon lite version of letting my freak flag fly when I first grew a beard. I remember being at church and a member of the bishopric gave me grief about it and I told him that it was “the Brigham Young look.” He shut up, but only after a look that could only mean that he thought I was going to the LDS version of Hell.

I wore my hair “shoulder length and longer” from that point forward with a couple of short-term exceptions. When I was about 35, I cut it and my wife hated it. I will never forget her telling me, “I married the rock star, not the cop.” I grew it back out.

Issues really got going about a decade later after I had gastric bypass and lost 12o pounds. A side effect of having my internal plumbing shortened by a third was that my hair got very fine. Plus, I was starting to lose it. I remember seeing a photo my wife took of me when I was training for my scuba certification and being shocked that I had a bald spot. I despised it, so I joked about it. There was a song by a great “super” band that only ever made one record called Little Village that featured John Hiatt, Nick Lowe, Ry Cooder and Jim Keltner with the title “Solar Sex Panel.” It was a band joke about losing their hair and that they did not have bald spots. Those were solar panels for a sex machine. I adopted that one, for sure.

As that panel continued to grow, I started to wear hats. For a time, I was known for a Greek sea captain’s cap. I was never a ball cap kinda guy and have a real issue with older guys wearing backwards ball caps. It looks ridiculous. And I can’t wear cowboy hats. I just can’t pull that look off. I have a good-size collection of fedoras and a couple of hats that match my gigging pimp suits.

But it had been a while since I had done real gigs and when I went to get my clothes together for the one back in November, I couldn’t find the hat box that I kept those particular head decorations in. I have another gig coming up this Saturday and still can’t figure out where the hat box is.

We shot a bunch of video at the last gig and without the matching hat for my electric blue, calf-length suit, I look like… Walder Frey in a pimp suit holding a guitar.

As part of my longtime former life as an editor of publications associated with the music biz, up until the plague years of 2021-2022, I made an annual trek to a huge musical instrument and associated gear trade show in Anaheim called NAMM every January. From 1989-2020, I never missed one. There is a certain kind of dude at NAMM. Older, wearing leather pants and a vest with no shirt and with hair so thin that there are just wisps across the top of the skull that become an anemic and very gray ponytail. I fear I have become one of them sans the leather pants and vest.

I know it is time to cut it. But it is kinda part of who I am at this point. And it was one thing to cut it shorter when I still had healthy, dark hair on the top of my head. But now? I am honestly scared. I mean, the last time I got even a trim of any kind was in spring of 2021. I could tell myself that trimming it could mean it would grow back healthier, but, really, who do I think I’m fooling?

So, to cut or not to cut. That is the question. Do I give in to Time the Conqueror or do I continue to let my freak flag fly, tattered as it is? I’m still trying to figure that part out.