I heard a voice say, "now keep your eyes closed so I can trim your eyebrows."

The voice was Sherry's, spoken between pillars at Salon nirvana. Like a seductive Delilah, she was poised to steal my Samson Chi.

Clip it, snip it, steal it, keep it.

Half-Berlinian, half-Dublinian guys like me don't have a lot of body hair. Sure, after years of rain and wars and living in forests and on cold meadows we've evolved into pale-skinned arm-wrestlers, but we've never had the DNA for GQ beards and sideburns.

And substantial eyebrows in our gene pool are seen about as often as Paul McCartney is seen in the weight room wearing a muscle shirt.

I've never had them either, but lately things have changed. Now there are some stray loners, like you'd see sticking out of a mole on the chin of a gnarly old witch.

Pull it, tweeze it, tug it, toss it

Wild and unwelcome, anti-Darwinian un-survivors of the fittest. Crazy and curling and discolored, like the fingernails of some old Indian yogi that haven't been cut for thirty years.

These are new settlers on the Germano-Irish landscape. Once populated by freckles and peach fuzz and Coppertone, it's now a dangerous alley with suspicious strangers and escapees from the nearby sanitarium.

What happened here? It seemed so impossible a few short years ago.

Wet it, comb it, part it, clip it

My mother always used to warn us not to stand in front of the Radar-Range when we were kids. Now I know why. It was a peach fuzz zapper.

Innocence long since zapped, now I have this strange hair.

Hair like my dad used to have (and still does) - his arms looking like that of an Icelandic Yeti monster. I remember staring at his arms in church when I was bored, thinking "how can someone's arm hair get that long?

God, if you're trying to pay me back for a lifetime of condescending feelings like that - of hair superiority and infallibility and permanence - congratulations.

In places where only baby-fine strands could be seen in the summer sun at Memorial Park Pool, I can now cut it with a scissors.

Not cool.

Pinch it, squeeze it, twist it, pluck it

In my ears, curling and bothersome. On my ears, which feels like a constant stirring of insects, which are only quieted when I get the tweezers and start plucking.

Hair like my grandpa had.

It's a freakish distraction for me and others. On a Southwest flight recently, a three year old boy wanted to "play" with my arm hair. His mother said, "Now JJ, don't do that, it's rude." I told her I didn't mind, so he spent the flight with his fingers on my arms, brushing it this way and that, bunching it up in his fingers and pulling.

But where is the good hair, the cool hair?

I can't grow a beard (thanks again you know who). When I don't shave I don't look like an off duty fireman playing hockey, I just look shabby - not even Bohemian. It's sort of like a splotchy faux acne made of red, white, brown and bronze whiskers. Well, maybe not whiskers in the macho Derek Jeter sense of the word - more like just hair.

So I wait. I know I won't have real eyebrows or a cool beard.

I've decided the next best hope for me is a pre-mature graying, where at least I can get to cool in a wise academic sort of way.

I'm waiting.

And thinking of Broadway.

Flow it, show it, long as God can grow it

I want it long, straight, curly, fuzzy, snaggy, shaggy, ratty, matty

Oily, greasy, fleecy, shining, gleaming, streaming
Flaxen, waxen

Knotted, polka-dotted
Twisted, beaded, braided

Powdered, flowered, and confetti-ed

Bangled, tangled, spangled, and spaghetti-ed

There ain't no words
For the beauty, the splendor, the wonder
Of my...
Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair

Oh say can you see
My eyes if you can
Then my hair's too short
Down to here
Down to there
I want hair
Down to where
It stops by itself
They'll be ga ga at the go go

When they see me in my toga
My toga made of blond
Brilliantine Biblical hair
My hair like Jesus wore it
Hallelujah I adore it

#identity

The Painting of Me

Hair