theoretically.

(part 1)

At the end of part 1,  it was 2003 and I had started to become more self-conscious and discerning about the image I projected to the world.  Apparently this meant dying my hair to match my clothes. Way to go.

Then one night I got drunk on a quart of butterscotch schnapps. I woke up at 8:30 the next morning and frantically made an appointment to get my hair chopped off. Only one of these things was a good idea. Hint: jesus christ don’t drink a whole bottle of butterscotch anything ever in your life, trust me.

pointy

My hair hadn’t been this short since like 1992. Importantly, I had bangs for the first time. A real life-changer. Mostly because the bouncers at Myron’s suddenly didn’t recognize me anymore and quizzed me about my birthday all the time. *cries in shame*

I took this haircut and owned it in lots of different ways. With this haircut I was a tough talking hardcore kid,  a thoughtful academic, a dirty hitch-hiker traveling to see bands, and a beer guzzling crazy person.

MONTAGE

staged photo demonstrating how early it was to be drunk

stretched ears forever

god close your mouth

click on “more” for MORE

And then of course I avoided ever getting my hair cut again for years, because I am a) lazy and b) cheap and c) scared of commitment to anything, especially picking what to look like.  I liked looking sharp and cool and kind of tough, but the urge to be a scruffbag is apparently way stronger. This kind of stuff started happening:

why am i in the meat section

^ That’s 2004. I’m way crazier, more hardline in all of my political beliefs, and spending a lot of time smoking in bar bathrooms while  ranting and raving about LIFE, MAN.  Shit, I lost that hoodie and I still think about it weekly. My needlework on that patch was sublime; that sentence might tell you all you need to know about this time period.  As far as my hair goes, it’s growing forever and no crazy hair cuts are going to stop it. I don’t even give any fucks, man.

five empty pitchers on the table

When I wasn’t running away to Halifax to sleep on floors and never shower, things like the above were happening. This is a hell of a photo.  I thought my black hair looked great with red, so for some terrible reason I paired that red sweater with a red bandanna. Give my head a shake. However, my style is pretty unflinching, even in the face of the Myron’s dancefloor. No compromises.   Maybe that’s partially the moral of the story I’m going for here–having a strong and confident sense of your self-image looks good on anybody. According to the photographic evidence, I went to Myrons trivia dressed like this all the time. What a misfit.

where is your FACE

2005: Eventually I evolved into this mop of a thing. Oooh, so mysterious. There are so many saucy photos of myself with two-thirds of my face covered by my bushy head of hair. Sometimes it looked pretty cool, but most of the time I don’t think I could actually see anything.  My hair was really accessorizing this weird Russian Spy look I had imagined for myself in those days. Like in a Bond movie except I was also wearing a sweater with giant elbow holes and hadn’t brushed my hair in five days.

.... faxe

That probably explains a lot of my choices.

I’m going to stop here so I don’t break the internet. Next part will feature less booze and less hair. There might be some sort of correlation there, now that I think about it. I’ll also try to wrap this up and get back to my original thesis instead of talking about my awesome sweaters. No promises.