Nice Hair

I was leaning against the bar in the Sunset Room sipping a green apple martini when I saw something flash in the corner of my eye. Red and blue light beams whipped around the darkened dance floor, and my eyes were drawn to yet another reflective object. What were all these glowing orbs bouncing up and down on the crowded dance floor?

Well, you may not believe this, but men's heads.

No fewer than five men in one bar on one night had bleached their hair blond and spiked it up with gel. What was this about? I just had to know.

I bided my time, and when the dance floor got really hot and sweaty, I waited for one to break and head for refueling at the bar. Sheer shirt guy was the first one to arrive.

"Jagermeister," he shouted to the black bedecked bartender. "Howya doin?" he looked at me and smiled.

Here was the chance I had been waiting for, "Nice hair, who does it?"

He mumbled something that sounded very expensive, and I struggled to keep the conversation alive, "Come here often?" Oh, did I really say that.

Either he ignored me or couldn't hear me. I choose to believe the latter. At any rate, he did his shot and left.

I ordered a cosmopolitan this time and stiffened my resolve. "I won't let the next one get away. I must get to the bottom of this," I vowed.

Just then, leather boy arrived right in front of me, "Can I slip in here and order a drink?"

"Of course," and I stepped aside.

"So come here often?" he asked (much to my relief).

"Not very."

"Nice hair," he said. Ah-ha, the perfect opening.

"I really like yours. So tell me, why are so many guys doing their hair like that."

Now I don't know if this guy was tired or drunk or what, but he gave me an answer I truly did not expect…

"I do it to fit in," he stated simply.

"Really?" I said. "I thought doing your hair like that, like tattoos and piercings, was to make yourself stand out. Be different."

"Nope. People say that 'cause it seems like the right thing to say, the cool thing to say. But really, each group, each generation kinda finds a style, and people wanna be cool, so they latch on to that style. Tattoos aren't about being different. They're about being the same."

By that time the bartender had brought him his Corona. "Oh yeah," he said, "and bleached hair looks really cool at clubs and raves. You know, in the black light." Then, just as suddenly as he emerged, he slipped back into the crowd.

"Hmmm," I thought, "in Walden, Thoreau told us to follow the beat of our own drummer, but here in the Sunset Room or at a rave with the trance music so loud I guess it's hard to hear anything but the beat of that one pounding drum."

March 2001