Songdog's Oct. 1997-1998 pics



Once upon a time, there was a man. He started with already shaggy hair, and then let it grow for almost six years. The hair became very shaggy and long, and made a ponytail that was about six handfulls long. (The hands measuring the handfulls were large ones, too.) The hair lasted through three relationships. There were people who had never seen this man without all that hair.

But there was a restlessness. A curiosity. And finally a UFO full of space aliens. And then there was no hair.

It started as a number 2 buzz cut in early October 1997. Two weeks later, the buzz cut disappeared and there was lots of skin that hadn't seen the light of day since the John F. Kennedy administration.

Over the next few months there were experiments. Skin and beard. Buzzed and just a moustache, which was very distressing and quickly became skin and no beard with a very short stop at mohawk first. Buzzcut and "buzzbeard". Slightly longer hair and vandyke, thus achieving what could be known as "the latter-day clone" look.

And finally, after one last shave-it-all day in May 1998, the end of the nonsense came, the aliens departed, and the hair started growing again. As of the end of March 2004 the ponytail was four handfulls long, seemingly stuck there (some people's hair just doesn't grow forever) but nicely shaggy, especially in silhouette.

There are the memories, though, of the nicely tactile sensations of the process and results of shaving and buzzing. Not to mention memories of a house with no hairballs in the corners. And finally, the comfort of knowing that if the hair eventually falls out on its own, what's left won't look so strange after all.