Hair of the Dave

Inevitably when I hang out at cons, especially with John Scalzi in earshot, eventually the conversation comes around to my choice of haircut. It’s … eccentric for a dude who is no longer in, and among former Marines it can be seen as some kind of unhealthy attachment to one’s former service. Most, after all, can’t wait to grow it out, at least a little bit, and here I’m still getting the same haircut I was in 1999 when I got out of boot camp.

Well, here’s why:

That halo of dark hair around my head is about four-six weeks’ growth (the beard is much longer, incidentally–I call it my “layoff beard” which is only funny to hockey fans) and really, it doesn’t get any better than that. (ETA: I realize now this makes it sound like I’m currently laid off, etc. but that’s not the case–this was back in January of ’10, just before these pictures were taken.) It just kind of keeps growing out for months. After maybe two months, the very top will start to lay down on its own, but the sides will continue to stick out to the side, and I have these crazy cowlicks at the back of my head and the very front, making for a an odd sort of bowl-shaped depression on top of my head, when I really let it grow out.

I tried, when I got back from Iraq in 2004, to grow it out to a more normal/historical length. Here it is (for John’s benefit) exactly 12 years ago, when I graduated from college, just before shipping out to boot camp:

I would not have minded going back to that, which was the shortest my hair had gotten voluntarily before the Marines. I had only three drill weekends left in my commitment to the Marines, and I could hack the bullshit I would have taken from other Marines for three weekends if my hair was just that long. But it never really got there. Five months after getting home from Iraq, I was still pouring goop into my hair, trying to get it lay down somewhat uniformly, but it just wasn’t happening.

So… maybe, some day, when I achieve that dream of being a full-time writer, and don’t have to worry about looking like some kind of social misfit (in other words, dropping my clever disguise) for a year while I let it get long enough to be able to cut decently. But then, John Scalzi (and most of my friends these days, to be honest) might not recognize me since this is how almost all of them know me.

Mirrored from Bum Scoop.