for POST Rochester Magazine
“Your father is waiting downstairs in the car to take you for a haircut. Don’t make him come back up.”
Those ominous words were spoken thoughtfully by my mother, with a tinge of sympathy. My father hated my long hair. HATED IT. He hated it so much in fact, that he was forcing me to get it cut. The only courtesy he extended to me was letting me walk downstairs myself, somehow letting me pretend it was my choice. It was senior year in high school by then, and he’d be damned if my senior portrait would feature me with half my face and my ears hidden under an unkempt-but-proud mop. It didn’t matter that I was a wonderful person—and a hit with the ladies (in my own imagination anyhow).
So, I went downstairs, got in the car and went to get a G.D. haircut. What my dad didn’t know was that I was a step ahead of him: I’d talked to my sister’s tenant/friend Gerry who happened to be a hairstylist. Gerry was cool. Gerry was hip. Gerry was a non-conformist. Gerry understood my plight, man, and he would know what to do. So, my dad, thinking Gerry was some kind of old-school barber, agreed to go to his place. Apparently, he never got a good look at Gerry.
“What do you want to do, man?” Gerry asked, as my dad drove grumpily off to do some errands after our awkward ride to the site of my supposed surrender to crew-cut conformity. He’d left thinking he’d won. He had—for the moment.
“Uh, can we spike it?” I heard myself blurt out, knowing what would happen if I went through with something so blatantly subversive.
“Sure,” Gerry said, like a guy who’d seen it all—and he had. But there was a slight smirk on his face. He knew.
And so, after it was done—just as long on the sides and sticking proudly the fuck up on top—I thought, “Holy shit, what the hell did I just do?”
And just then, my father pulled up outside. I braced myself and tried my best to give off a vibe of “nothing to see here,” as I slumped into the front seat. His disgusted look said it all. His exact words were worse: “I don’t like that fuckin’ haircut!”
He said it in his Mount Vernon accent, a slightly different inflection than a Yonkers accent, but it didn’t take a genius to know the man was intensely angry. I pressed myself against the inside of the car door and stared straight ahead.
He never swore like that, ever, but now he’d gone and dropped the big one. Yup, I’d really done it this time. In a display of wise-assed smuggery, I’d tweaked the nose of this WW2 veteran who I loved so much and wanted the approval of, but I just couldn’t bear to do what I was told, to knuckle under, to look like someone who wasn’t me. I had an image at school after all—my BRAND—though people back then weren’t obnoxious and throwing that word around so much.
We drove home in silence. Very apparent, very thick silence. Usually, my father drove with one hand. I remember those family drives, his hand draped casually over the wheel, letting it slide around back to center after a turn. Yet here he was, two hands firmly gripping the same wheel, tightly, like he was trying to strangle it. I was hoping they’d stay there. All I wanted as I rode home was for my hair to grow—fast. Shit.
When we got to the house, my mom was in the kitchen. She was always my biggest fan, even through the fog of old age and the intervening years. Her son couldn’t do anything wrong. Surely she’d stick up for me like she always did. She took one look.
“You look like an asshole!”
It wouldn’t be the last time.
My mom never talked to me like that and never did again, but she and my dad were thinking I had perpetrated an act of aggression on them. I slunk up to my room, the bits of my parents’ discussion whizzing around my head like angry bees, presumably about what they were going to do with me. I don’t remember what happened after that. I think the hair grew back. I’m sure of that actually.
But, I’d held my ground. I took a stand, man! It was my head after all. I’d have to live with it. My own decision. I thought it looked cool, and the kids at school started calling me “Sid” after Sid Vicious, the bass player of the notoriously snotty Sex Pistols. Mission accomplished. Besides, it took attention off my nose.
So, let it rip, get attention and be unique however you think you can. Set yourself apart from whatever you feel you need separating from: Your peers, your family, your market, your competition, your old self. I can be your Gerry, there to tell you to be yourself, be outrageous, and not to worry. If all our decisions were of such little consequence, we’d all be very lucky people—people who took more chances in life.
If someone thinks you’ve gone too far because you’re doing what’s really you, and you’re “too different,” I’ll be here to pat you on the back and say, “fuck it, well done.” Because those people secretly envy you and wish they could say “fuck it” too.
Or just because life is pitifully short, a blip against a limitless, indifferent universe, and you’re just a tiny, tiny part of it. Few decisions are as big as we think they are. And trust me, it’ll always grow back
John Cammarosano – Mod Communications
Graphic Design • Illustration • Brand Strategy • Copywriting
“The disgusting stink of a too-loud electric guitar. Now THAT’s my idea of a good time.” — Frank Zappa
