We were once all lean, mean, young and hung. Okay, so maybe the hung part is a stretch. But for most of us, our youth was an exciting time when we gnawed on the world like it was a piece of meat. It was when glass-cutting erections were the only alarm clock we ever needed, and going to the gym wasn’t necessary seeing as we already had all the upper body strength we could ever want from constantly having to piss upside down. Some of you handsome bastards were nothing less than rock-solid specimens back in your heyday, the kind of dudes that could walk into a bar alone and leave with either the girl, two girls or a burning, itching sensation when you peed. Ah, yes, we’re talking about those glory days here, fellas. A long since evaporated period of our infancy when we looked more like the cover of a romance novel than an advertisement for boner drugs.
For some guys, it can be challenging to pinpoint precisely where their lives took a massive dump, leaving them in a shithouse scenario where they are three-times divorced, up to their ears in child support payments and unable to see their dicks over a massive beer gut. But I am under no illusion when things really started to go bad for me. It was when I noticed I was going bald.
As much as I hate to admit it, but once that thick, flowing mane that used to sit on top of my ugly mug decided to abandon ship, I felt doomed to live out the rest of my days in the lonesome social sector known as Club Unfuckable. I remember thinking, “well, that’s it, I’ll never get laid again.” What made it worse is that I was only in my early twenties. Oh, the humanity!
What someone failed to tell me early on was that nearly two-thirds of the male population starts to lose those stylish coiffures by the time they hit the age of 35. And if a dude survives things like binge drinking, STDs and all the nasty devil plagues floating around and lives to see the age of 50, that number jumps to around 85 percent. But unless you just have stellar genetics and were not bred, like most of us, by two drunken lunatics in the backseat of a car or in a bathroom stall, chances are you are going to experience male pattern baldness at some point in your life.
Somewhere around 50 million men start balding as a direct result of the DNA inherited from their mom. So please don’t feel bad for skimping on her Mother’s Day present this year. She did this to you.
No matter what age a man starts losing his hair, it is only natural for him to panic. I only know this because that’s exactly what I did – panicked like a nation buying up all the toilet paper in the land to make sure their buttholes are squeaky clean enough to properly social distance. Seriously, every time I showered, my hair just kept dropping out of my skull as if a nuclear bomb had gone off somewhere in the vicinity. There were no signs of a slowdown, either. No sir, with each passing day, I looked more like a young Corey Feldman in that scene from Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter where he shaves his head all patchy like before hacking apart Jason’s face and screaming “Die. Die. Die.” I’m telling you, man, it wasn’t a good look. That’s the point when I launched into full-blown freak out mode, spending all of my hard-earned beer money on all sorts of expensive supplements, shampoos, creams, salves, anything that suggested it could restore my hair back to normal. But all I had to do is stare into the great abyss that was my shower drain to see, clearly, none of that voodoo medicine was ever going to bring my mop back from the grave. And then it occurred to me. Maybe the reason the hair growth products failed me was because I was dying. Like, perhaps I had the mange, or even something worse. I thought my prostate might have been out of whack or that I was just days away from dropping dead of a heart attack. All of these doom scenarios were certainly possible. All except the mange, I suppose. But, like I said before, I was flipping my shit, and not taking any chances.
Within a week, I was standing in front of some healthcare professional, asking him to fix me and fix me fast. It was like, “Yo man! I don’t even really care if I’m dying, just get my hair to grow again.” Much to my disappointment, however, all Doctor Donothing could tell me is to buckle up for more hair loss in the coming years, because that shit wasn’t going to get any better. That was that – I was ruined.
Some men in this position would have just settled into their new life as a balding, washed up stain on the universe. I wasn’t sure what to do. All I knew was I didn’t want to walk around for the rest of my life looking like Larry David or some weird, little dude who combs over patches of long, straggly hair to try and convince people that it’s all still there. That life was not for me. Oh, sure, I sported the thinning look for a minute, but then something snapped inside my brain, compelling me to go bald. Bald like a badass. One morning, I walked into the bathroom, grabbed my hair clippers and just buzzed the rest of that shit right off. It felt good, and by the time it was all said and done, I looked like one of those poor schlubs they slap on those donation buckets in convenience stores. Please Help Our Friend, Mike. He Was Fine, Now He’s Not.
You have to stop and consider that this was long before going bald was the trendy thing to do. At the time, actors like Bruce Willis and Jason Statham still had thinning manes and, quite honestly, they looked like complete dipshits. But shaved heads eventually caught on, and sometime around season two or three of the AMC series Breaking Bad we started seeing more men skinning-it-on-back once they realize they have that mutant DNA coursing through their veins.
And man, let me tell you, all of us bald boys really dodged a bullet, too. Because this chrome dome style was once the kind of thing that could completely sabotage a man’s chances with the ladies. But that’s no longer the case. In fact, studies have shown that the female population actually finds bald men more attractive than those pretty boys with a full head of hair. They see them as more dominant, intelligent and masculine. It means that, while there isn’t any research to prove it, more women are letting bald men see them naked in this day and age. And hey, razors and shaving cream are a heck of a lot cheaper than most modern day hair treatments. All I’m saying is if you find yourself struggling with the devastation that comes from hair loss, perhaps it’s not such a terrible idea to just go full on badass and get rid of it altogether. Listen, America is shaving everything these days: Heads, chests, backs and even pubes. It’s a wild world. But saddle up, motherfuckers. We may have found a way to conquer the battle of baldness, but rest assured it will be the ferocious tenacity of ear hair that gets us in the end. I mean, come on, what gives?