It all started 2 years ago, in June 2012 - I remember it well. I'd just finished my IB exams and was impatiently awaiting my results as exam markers all across the world were deciding my fate. My family and I were on holiday in Cyprus at the time, capitalising on the intense heat and beautiful sunshine. They were the best of times.
Until, one day, with an unprecedented smugness, I was presented with something when looking in the mirror. There, before my burnt mug, was an unfathomably small, but nonetheless present, crack in my hairline. I started to panic; my hands started sweating as I frantically began to run them through my hair. "I've got thick hair, ain't I mumma?" I asked, a distinct desperation in my voice and intonation. "Yeah yeah, of course," my mother replied vaguely, clearly otherwise engaged and unwilling to pay mind to this infantile paranoia. "Yeah... yeah, nice and thick..." I told myself and tried to ironically put it out my head.
Image from www.doctorfox.co.uk
However, as the weeks went on, I caught myself inspecting my hairline more and more. I would take inordinate amounts of toilet trips wherever I went in a vain attempt to convince myself that what I saw in front of me was a trick of the light, a figment of my aesthetically anxious and arrogant imagination. I mean, surely an 18 year old renowned for his indie haircut couldn't be going bald, right?! Wrong. Slowly but surely, my forehead was beginning to expand, along with my crown, revealing a stark fontanelle which sat looming beneath my depleting thatch.
That was that. As an 18 year old boy, about to go off to university, I was faced with a hairline that wanted to grow up quicker than I did. Diddums. Then again, what was I to expect? My dad has long been bald since he was in his late 20s and now sports a majestic egg. He is one of the lucky ones in that it totally suits him, so any bald based mockery it attracts wilts in the formidable shimmering that gleams from his dome head. Who was I to arrogantly assume that I could outrun my genes with a flick of my then voluptuous and undulating fringe?
Since facing up to my reality, I have gone through everything from anger to upset to denial. I have begrudgingly shaved my head a few times to get a pre-emptive glimpse at what is surely to come. I have thought that my romantic life would completely grind to a halt and I would be this weird, be-speckled bald guy in his mid-20s who just won't shut up about Wes Anderson and why the Russian genitive case is an absolute bitch in the plural. What a catch, right?
I have also realised that all of this worry is totally absurd and fatuous. Sure, no one wants to be losing their hair at such an early juncture as this. Sure, I do sometimes look languorously and enviously at men with hair so thick they could pose for L'Oréal, but at the end of the day who the hell cares? Certainly no one worth bothering with. At nearly 21 I've still got enough hair to keep me going for a bit, but when the time comes and the gloves are off, I will not fight it or nor mourn it. I'll go straight for the sheep shearers and embrace the bald. Besides, the chances are that if you're a bloke who's reading this, I'll be seeing you further down the line anyway. Muhahahaha!