The five stages of balding

Shey, a young man in his early thirties, confronts the reality that he may be balding.

Photo by Barik5ive: https://www.pexels.com/photo/serious-black-man-visiting-barber-shop-5282408/

Last week in my first blog post, I shared 25 random things about myself. One of those things was that I had started dabbling in fiction and nonfiction creative writing. In this blog post, I will like to share one of my pieces of fiction writing. It is a short story about a young man called Shey who suddenly realizes that he is balding and has to confront that uncomfortable reality. It may or may not be based on real events :-). Enjoy!

The five stages of balding

“Should I use some black?” Roger asked Shey as he finished carving the edges of his hairline. Shey was surprised by the question. This was the first time that Roger had ever asked him about using black on his hairline. Shey went quiet for a few seconds as he thought about how to respond.

When he was in primary school, his father would always bring him to Roger every other Saturday to get his hair cut.

The barbershop was about a ten-minute walk from their house. It was located on the ground floor of a small business complex sandwiched between a small convenience store and a pharmacy.

At the entrance to the gate leading to the business complex, sat a short dark-skinned overweight woman called Ma Constance. She often wore a warm and inviting gap-toothed smile on her face. In front of her was a tray containing small bundles of hard caramelized sugar and groundnut snacks. The individually coated sugar peanuts were wrapped in small plastic bags while the harder caramel groundnuts were sold in small blocks. Every time Shey and his father would pass by, they would stop there briefly to greet Ma Constance before continuing on their way. Shey’s father would exchange pleasantries with Ma Constance while Shey stood by his side admiring the mouth-watering snacks on the tray.

The delicious groundnut sweets were perhaps the only thing that got Shey excited about going to the barbershop. After every haircut, his father would buy two hundred francs worth of the delicious groundnut sweets for him.

“My boy which ones will you have today” Ma Constance would ask as Shey’s eyes perused the tray. He’d pick one plastic bag of the loose groundnut sweets and stuff it in his pocket and another block of the hardened snack.

“Thank you Ma” he’d say as he sunk his molars into the hard caramel groundnut snack. He’d place his cupped hand under his mouth to catch any of the sweet crumbs from falling and going to waste.

Loose groundnut sweets

Shey’s barber Roger was a short light-skinned man with a peculiar love for his job. Every time Shey’s father would bring him to Roger for a haircut, Roger would sit him down on a black leather chair in front of a mirror and place a long black cape on him. The mirror had a long crack that went diagonally from the top right-hand corner to the bottom left-hand corner. With his right foot, Roger would step on the lever at the bottom of the chair and give it a few pumps while examining Shey’s hair as though he had never seen it before.

“Young man, what style would you like today” Roger would ask.

“The usual Roger” Shey’s father would yell from the sofa in the waiting area without giving Shey a chance to respond. They did this every time. Shey wondered why they insisted on this charade. He knew his father would never let him pick the haircut styles that he really wanted.

He wished his father would let him get two lines traced on the side of his head like the cool kids at school did. He did not like to have his head shaved as low as his father insisted. The low buzz haircut made him look bald like his Uncle Pious who would often drop by the house unexpectedly drunk and reeking of cheap liquor. Plus, when his hair was that low, his friends insisted on slapping it at random moments during the long break at school. Sometimes the bigger boys would spit on their hands and land a slap on the top of his head, creating an unflattering sound and an equally unpleasant pain.

Shey had often wondered about the purpose of the numerous hair catalogs that hung on the walls of the barbershop. They showed many types of haircuts; clean afro styles, box fades, simple buzz cuts, buzz cuts with fancy designs, and the dreaded clean bald shaves. Some of the posters had celebrities like Kanye West, Akon, Will Smith, and Chris Brown as models. Shey wished he could have gotten the cool Chris Brown cut but that was out of the question with his father.

During his football phase, Shey had so badly wanted to shave his head like that of the famous Brazilian footballer Ronaldo who led Brazil to win the 2002 World Cup in Japan. As Ronaldo sped across the football pitch, the back of his head looked like a bald shave. However, from the front one could see a small patch of black hair that made it look like the barber had gotten bored in the middle of the haircut and given up on the task. Ronaldo’s haircut was iconic that year and was adopted by several of the cooler boys at school and in Shey’s neighborhood. Shey wished his father would allow him to get the Ronaldo.

A decade later in an interview, Ronaldo would apologize to all mothers whose boys had gotten the Ronaldo haircut. When Shey read this in an article online, he laughed at the idea that he had once wanted to get the Ronaldo and thanked his father for not letting him get the Ronaldo.

The iconic Ronaldo haircut: Source: https://www.90min.com/posts/ronaldo-apologises-all-mothers-2002-world-cup-haircut

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“Black? Why do I need black Roger?” Shey asked almost defensively when Roger had asked him if he could add some black to the edges of his head. He had just turned thirty and was getting a haircut in preparation for his best friend’s wedding. He was the best man.

“Just small in the corners here sir” Roger responded as he pointed to the top corners of Shey’s shaved head with the tip of his comb.

“Alright, but don’t put too much please” Shey hesitantly consented.

He watched in the cracked mirror as Roger took a black spray can from the shelf. Roger then picked a small blackened cardboard paper from the same shelf and held it up to the corner of Shey’s head to align with his front hairline. He grabbed the can and sprayed some liquid on the edges of Shey’s headline. The liquid felt cold as the droplets hit the top of his head.

As he sat there while Roger sprayed the cold black fluid on the other side of his head, he wondered why he had gotten so defensive when Roger had asked about adding black to his hair. This was not the first time that Shey had been asked about adding black to his head. He had refused the first time the offer was made to him months earlier by a barber who cut his hair while he was on a business trip.

That night when he returned to his hotel room, he went straight to the bathroom to examine the haircut.

'Why would he ask me if want black?' Shey thought as he looked at his reflection in the mirror. For the first time, he noticed that his hairline had subtly started to recede from the front of his head. His face looked longer than he remembered. He moved closer to the mirror and tilted his head to get a better look. He rubbed the corners of his hairline with his thumbs as though checking to see if his sight was deceiving him. But all his thumbs felt was smooth skin where there used to be hair.

“Well, it has always been like this,” he said to himself.

He imagined that his hairline had always been a bit further behind and that nothing had changed. He told himself there was nothing to worry about, before washing his face with cold sink water and going to bed. As he walked away from the mirror, he looked at his reflection in the mirror, smiled, and winked. His reflection winked back at him and he walked away with a smile on his face.

The next morning after taking his shower, he stood in front of the same bathroom mirror with a white towel wrapped around his waste. As he brushed his mouth, he stared at his reflection in the mirror. The person looking back at him did not look like the handsome confident man who had winked him goodnight the night before. The person staring at him had a hairline that was further receded. His hairline looked to him like it had moved to the middle of his head.

“Had it moved back while I was sleeping?”, Shey thought as he lowered his head to spit into the sink. How could this be? Could it be that like a thief his hairline had decided to march backward in the middle of the night while he slept? As these thoughts wandered in his mind, he tilted his head to observe closely. He did not want to let the idea that he was balding cross his mind.

He thought about his Uncle Pious who seemed to be drunk more often than he was sober. When he was younger, Uncle Pious would come to the house, sit on a plastic chair on the veranda and entertain Shey with his wartime stories. Shey enjoyed listening to Uncle Pious's stories but disliked the stench of alcohol that came with the stories. He had always assumed that Uncle Pious drank incessantly because of his PTSD but as he stood in front of the bathroom mirror looking more and more like his uncle, he wondered if Uncle Pious’ baldness had contributed to his love for cheap Kitoko whisky.

After brushing his mouth, Shey picked up the brown hair brush from the bathroom shelf and began brushing his hair, starting from the back and working his way to the back. He liked the feel of the brush fibers on his head.

He remembered those days when his father would take him to Roger for his haircut. He had never seen his father get a haircut but his hair was always neat. Shey’s father had thick black curly hair that often glistened in the sunlight from the shea butter that he applied to it every morning before combing it.

As he stared at himself in the mirror, he felt he did not resemble his father. He felt both jealousy and anger begin to form in his heart. He was jealous of his father’s thick black hair and wondered why he had not been blessed with such gorgeous hair. Even in his seventies, his father’s hair had shown no signs of lessening in volume or even graying. Shey wished he had inherited his father’s hair genes.

Instead, he was sure the same genes that had caused his mother’s younger brother, Uncle Pious, to lose his hair in his twenties had begun to manifest in his own DNA. He was angry that the gene responsible for millions of men walking around like cue balls was inherited from their mothers, the same mothers they would lose their lives for.

He was angry at the Big Hat Industry that profiteered off this wicked reality. They claimed they dealt in fashion but their primary market were bald insecure men.

“What purpose does this gene serve anyways”, he wondered. He was now sitting on the hotel bed trying to wear his shoes. “Why had God created this gene? What purpose does it serve in the evolutionary process?” he thought as he prevented himself from directing his anger at God. It seemed to him that according to the evolutionary theory, bald men would have gone extinct thousands of years ago because beautiful women wear often not attracted to them. Perhaps the only reason the bald gene had survived was that it was inherited from the woman and not the man. He hated the bald gene.

With this thought, he grabbed his suitcase and walked out the door. He did not think about baldness again until Roger asked him about adding black to his head.

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“Roger, will people be able to see the black?” Shey asked as he took out his wallet to pay Roger for the haircut.

“Ah see for yourself my guy” Roger replied as he held a hand mirror up to Shey’s face.

Shey looked into the mirror, tilting his head to one side and then the other. He was happy with the results. He smiled.

“Thank you, Roger, you never disappoint my man,” he said as he handed Roger one thousand francs as payment.

As he walked out the gate, he stopped by Ma Constance’s stall and bought some groundnut sweets. “Everything will be okay” he convinced himself as he walked away.