My (Really!) True Haircut History - Pt 2 by BaldSurfer

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So I'd just shaved my head for the first time - and I really liked it. My friends couldn't understand why I'd shave a full head of hair but I didn't care. As the color started to even out, I liked it even more. And I noticed that I was starting to attract more attention from women in bars. I stood out in the crowd. I shaved it religiously every day - sometimes twice if I had a date that night - and stayed bald for about 3 months. But then I was getting ready to get a "real" job and thought that a shaved head might be too radical for interviews, so I grew it back out and maintained a #4 buzz. I got the job - and it was a pretty casual environment where all kinds of hair styles seemed acceptable. For awhile, I grew the top out to a messy inch long spiky look, with the sides buzzed. One day, I went to Dave, my barber, for a trim. Dave generally wore a buzz with a bumper, and when I walked in this time, his former dark brown hair was bleached nearly white. It looked really cool, and that look was a trend I'd noticed on quite a few guys at clubs. Needless to say, I walked out of the shop that day looking like a 90's version of Billy Idol.

With my hair that short, I had to get it re-bleached every few weeks or there's be more dark roots than bleached hair. After 2 or 3 months, this time consuming process was getting old, so I told Dave it was time to cut out the blonde and start over. After warning me that there wouldn't be much left, I told him to go for it. Just to be sure he got it all, Dave took me back down to a #1 buzz. People at work had been mildly shocked when I'd first shown up blonde, and they were surprised again when I showed up nearly skinned. They'd never seen my hair so short.

I let the top grow out a bit again, and this time actually had a plan. I wanted a buzz with a bumper. In the 2 months I let my hair grow out, Dave mysteriously left his job and nobody knew where he'd gone. I didn't like the other barber at his shop, so I decided to drive out to Davie where there was a shop called Carl's with something like 20 barbers and a great reputation for short cuts. I walked in on a busy day, and every chair was full, with most customers getting really short cuts. I had to wait nearly 30 minutes and got to watch some pretty radical transformations. I'd originally planned to get a #2 on top, with a bumper in the front, with the sides down to a #1. But so many guys seemed to be skinning their sides in this shop, and the barbers would run electric shavers over their back and sides and then finish them off with hot lather and straight razor. I HAD to try it, so when my time came, I got in the chair and asked the barber for a #2 with a bumper and said to skin the sides. "Like a #1?" he asked and I said no - I wanted it shaved all the way. Then he asked what I wanted to do with my sideburns (which extended just below my ear)! I laughed and said that I'd look pretty stupid if he was shaving the sides of my head but didn't remove the sideburns. I think it was his last test to make sure I knew what I was getting into. He proceeded to use a T-edger to make a notch around my head, and then used that edger to skin me about halfway up. Then he faded it up towards the top. After that, he grabbed clippers with a #2 blade and starting a few inches from the front of my head, buzzed down the top, and then used clippers over comb to blend the 3/4 inch bumper. Finally, out came the Norelco rotary shaver which he ran repeatedly over the skinned parts of the sides and back - and the echo of the razor motor and the grinding of the stubble rang through my head. Then he placed hot lather around the edges and over the former site of my sideburns, and finished me off with a straight razor. I walked out loving the look and feel. I thought I looked like a Marine - kind of a badass. It was a cool change of pace.

But it didn't last long. At a party the following night, my friends were merciless, teasing me and saying I looked like I chickened out in the middle of a mohawk. These were work buddies who never saw me when I was bald, though they'd seen blonde and buzzed. I was pretty drunk and said that if I'd wanted a mohawk, I'd have a mohawk. Haircuts don't scare me. A few shots of tequila and some trash talk, and suddenly I was on the patio, towel around my neck while my buddies clippered me down to a real mohawk, and then they even lathered and shaved the rest with a few disposable razors. Nobody could believe that I let them actually do it, but I just didn't care. And of course, I liked the attention, and loved having my buds doing the clipping and shaving.

I wore the mohawk through the rest of the weekend, but didn't want to go to work that way, so Sunday night, I buzzed off the strip, lathered and shaved my whole head and suddenly remembered how much I loved a bald shaved head. Of course I caught some comments at work, but after the novelty faded everyone got used to it, and I shaved it bald every day for nearly a year. Austin Powers was the big movie that year, and my Dr Evil costume was a big hit. With my sister's wedding a month away, my parents begged me to grow back some hair for it, and I reluctantly agreed. I had about a half inch of hair for the wedding photos, but I was already arranging an "event" for taking it off the following week...

To be continued...

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