(Not Quite) Out to Pasture: Hair Apparent

A COLUMN BY: CURTIS COMER

"Look at this!" exclaimed Tim, outrage on his face.

The tiny item grasped between his forefinger and thumb was nearly invisible to the naked eye, but was so offensive it might as well have been a poisonous viper.

Another gray hair.

For a while now, offending gray hairs have been creeping into Tim’s hairline and causing him great distress. I, too, have noticed that, for at least the last two years, gray hairs have invaded my temples like marauding hordes from the Far East. Worse, now I’m forced to shave every morning because of the gray hairs that have sprouted up among the naturally brown hair on my chin. Where I once would have skipped a day "just because" now I’m forced to shave every morning or risk looking like some sort of parody of a depression- era hobo.

There are commercials currently playing ad nauseum on television, pandering to the poor souls like Tim and me. In one, a teenage girl implores her graying father to "finally do something" about his gray hair and telling him that he "is too young to be gray." Cut to the end of the commercial where the father, freshly dyed (and shaved and apparently, Botoxed, too) and announces that he "got the job." Apparently, the box of dye took away his laziness or worked as a good luck charm, that part isn’t clear. Anyway, the teenage daughter eyes her younger looking father in a creepy, suggestive way that shouldn’t be allowed on television, end of spot. But, as silly as I find the commercial, it says a lot about society. Don’t get old, it says, and if you do, cover it up or risk unemployment and a sad, lonely life in a musty old house full of cats.

The latest assault of gray has targeted my chest hairs and I stubbornly spend time plucking out the invaders, a task made difficult by the brown hairs, who get in the way. Usually, I pull out as many brown hairs as gray ones. I wonder to myself how old my dad was when he started to go gray, but can’t remember him talking about it. Since I was probably busy manipulating my Big Jim and GI Joe action figures into some sexual position (and frustrated that neither was anatomically correct) it’s no surprise that I don’t remember. Then again, if Dad didn’t go gray until I was in high school I was probably too busy trying to muster up the courage to ask Joey if he wanted to go to a movie with me to have noticed.

I remember my mom dyeing her hair, a lot, but that was something mothers did, gray or no gray. Besides, being a female, the topic of hair on the chest was something Mom wouldn’t have been able to shed any light on. The upper lip maybe, but not the chest.

I call and ask my dad when his chest first went gray and he claims not to remember. But, on the subject of plucking, he laughs.

"You know," he says. I can tell by the long pause that he’s waiting to offer a bit of wry, folk wisdom on the subject.

"For every gray hair you pull out two more will come back."

"That’s not true," I object.

All I know is that my swimming pool days are over. I mean, gray hairs at the temple I can deal with in a mature, distinguished writer kind of way. But gray hairs on my chest seem a little too much, especially at the still young age of forty-three. It makes me feel like I have leprosy or amoebic dysentery and I try to think of things I can do to cover it up. The easiest course of action would be to shave my chest but, since my stomach, arms and legs are hairy, too, I realize how proportionally incorrect such a move would be. Face it, I say to myself, you’d look like a Yeti who had just had open heart surgery. Besides, I’ve always liked my hairy body; hairy in all the right places without going overboard like some sort of grizzly bear. To shave all of that off not only seems wrong but, well, wrong in a creepy kind of way.

The other option, of course, was using the dreaded hair dye.

But on my chest?

Suddenly I recalled a co-worker from a job I held while going to college. The co-worker, probably in his late forties or early fifties, obviously dyed his hair a dark, Elvis Presley shade of shoe polish black. The fact that this man was horribly pale made his choice of color questionable but the worst part was when he got nervous. Nervous attacks caused him to sweat, and dark river lets would flow from his temples giving him the appearance of having just stepped off of an oil rig.

I pictured myself, my chest freshly dyed, stepping into a public swimming pool, confident with my newly regained youthful appearance. All eyes are upon me, they want to know me, to seek my counsel.

"What a dashing young man!" a woman whispers to her friend. "Too bad he’s gay!"

The commercials were right, I say to myself. This is better than looking old!

As I swim, however, the water around me becomes quickly clouded by the dark dye. In the wake of the Gay Exxon Valdez, the other bathers hastily exit the pool like threatened sea birds.

"Mommy," shouts an imaginary, pointing kid, "that gay man is leaking!"

Humiliated, I climb from the pool, my cheeks darkened by the dye, too, like a male elephant in heat.

No, I think I’ll continue tweezing the offending hairs until they have completely taken over. Until then I’ll stand my ground. The hair dye thing just seems a little too risky, a little too desperate to me. At least, I tell myself, the gray hasn’t yet gone south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

For his part, Tim has begun to refer to his gray hairs as "platinum."

"Look," he says like a kid who’s found a quarter, "another platinum hair!"

I just smile at him apologetically, knowing all too well what he’s going through. If this little ruse works for him, then good for him; who am I to tell the emperor that he’s not wearing any clothes?

As usual, my friend, Kris, can’t resist a little ribbing on the subject.

"I think I see a new platinum hair," she says, smiling wickedly at Tim.

"Where?" he demands, quickly disappearing in search of a mirror.

"You are so mean," I whisper once he has gone.

Still, you have to laugh. Sure, I may be no Anderson Cooper, but I’ve decided to wear my gray like a badge of honor. And I’m going to let it happen…without the dye.

You can e-mail Curtis at Greenwitchsf@aol.com