I’m not entirely happy with my hair. I didn’t really want to get to this age still doing the long hair thing. Didn’t want to be a cliché, a longhaired writer, albeit a failed writer. I’m starting to go silver around the temples, like Reed Richards, leader of the Fantastic Four, and when that happens, this long haired business has to stop.
For me, the next couple of years, as the countdown to forty begins, are essentially about finding a more sensible hairstyle to carry me through the next decade.
A decade hopefully that will maybe see me stop temping, stay longer than six months in rented accommodation and you know, maybe have kids. But I don’t want to have my kids seeing me with this ridiculous hairstyle. If I was in a band, this hairstyle would be acceptable. But I’m not. Instead, I spend much of my time filing and photocopying, and this hair doesn’t really lend itself well to those mundane office tasks.
I don’t want my kids looking at my hair and thinking daddy does something far more exciting than he really does. I’ve spent so much of my life lying, I’m aware that I am more than capable of lying to my own kids. Before I know it, I’d be at the breakfast table tying my hair back, telling my kids I’m off on tour with my band when I am in fact going to my latest dull Public Sector job.
Anyway, I raised this hair thing with the girlfriend and to her credit she understands where I’m coming from. Which also leads me to believe she too may have been thinking that I need to embrace middle age and stop going round with a leonine hairstyle more befitting a twenty something.
But the girlfriend thinks I’ve got a very large head and having seen pictures of me with a shaved head, she’s concerned I may try and revive that look. I probably would if I wasn’t with her. In fact, when I worry about losing her, I often console myself that if I do, I’d at least be able to shave my head again. And then the next girlfriend would only know me with a shaven head. She wouldn’t know I’m more suited to these other longer hairstyles.
I think the girlfriend though now understands that I’m only keeping my hair this length for her rather than myself and that me doing this for her rather than myself, isn’t good. She how accepts that it’s probably best for me to be happy with how I look but she’s asked that if I do go short again, just to give her advance warning, a call or a text, perhaps an email with a link to a picture of a celeb with a similar shorter hairdo. Something, anything, that will help her prepare for the moment when she has to set eyes on it. And I think that’s good of her. I can work with that.