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[Merritt Robinson/The Daily Pennsylvanian]

Would I get a haircut? I thought about it all day. I don't take haircuts lightly. My hair is like a disobedient child, beaten into submission with regular violence: Oh, it'll behave now, but it's got a short fuse.

It's plotting revenge and pouring over a list of grievances: dye, gel, hairspray, blow-drying. My hair is a thick, wavy, Jewish monster -- a golem. If left to its own devices, it curls into two devil horns at the front, and piles at the top like a mountain. If I don't suppress its wiles, I'd end up looking like a demonic illustration from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

So my hair routine isn't vain, really -- it's anti-Nazi. And in the process of fighting anti-Semitism, there's no reason why I can't make myself look pretty hot. I go through cyclical hair phases, but I usually blow-dry the front up in the air. When done correctly, I look like a character from the Archie comics -- just my style. In its extreme, it looks like a tiara. When fudged, it looks like a coif. When fudged really bad, it looks like a weeping willow -- no longer short enough to defy gravity, it droops forward and to the sides in wisps -- lopsided, crunchy, damaged, twisted wisps.

That's why I was pondering the haircut -- the golem had grown shaggy, so I'd been wearing my bandanna for a week. Now I needed to air out my scalp. But the only people who ever know what to do with my hair charge around $30 -- which seems absurd when I've spent most of my life paying $10 at a regular barber. The fancy salons suck away much-needed CD money, and with Napster gone, I won't be tempted by the shampoo boy.

Regular barbers usually make me feel crazy, playing confusedly with my hair, trying to understand its physics. Once, a guy handed me a hairbrush and went, "You do it!"

Then there are the two Chinese ladies. They work at the Leisure World Retirement Community salon, cutting men's hair at barber prices in the back room. They cut very well, but their jovial conversation is maddening. Endearing too, but mostly maddening. Every time, without fail: "Where you go to school? College?! You look too young for college! What you want to do? Writing?! You should learn computers! Big money in computers! Hard, though, very hard."

But I was right there, at the Leisure World shopping center. I had time. Whatever, I figured. I'd go in, sing songs in my head, and get a trim.

But I picked a bad song for the occasion: I am not a pretty girl, I don't really want to be a pretty girl, I want to be more than a pretty girl...

So when the lady was about done, and said, "How's that?" I said, "Um, could we take off a little more?" She was happy to oblige.

Five minutes and two song rotations later, "How's that?" "More." Then, "How's that?" "More." "Just how short do you want it?" I showed her with my fingers. She took out the real bulldozer clippers with two hands and started shearing away.

It wasn't a buzz cut, or a crew cut, or whatever you call it. It was a little longer than that. But it was different -- my hair hasn't been this short since I was born. I stared at my reflection in shop windows, in my car mirror -- I felt electric.

It was distinctly unattractive, but also distinctly cool. For the first time, I felt good-looking and ugly at the same time. I was free from upkeep! Free from constant hair-shape anxiety! For once, I had no control over my appearance: THIS was my head! The End: misshapen, vertical, fuzzy. I had defied beauty, and I was alive to smile about it!

So I drove home, and rushed to show my parents. "Look!" I'd say, "I've defied beauty! I'm not pretty, but I'm still cool! I'm not attractive, but who cares?! I don't have to do my hair anymore! I don't have burn away my roots with a hairdryer! I don't have to worry about looking like a demon! I've conquered the golem! I've conquered the golem!"

But my mom took one look and almost cried. "You look like you're from Auschwitz."

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