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Problem | Sep 16 2004

I recently decided, for reasons that would take an entire book to explain, to grow out my hair. I haven’t grown out my hair in fifteen years.

The problem with growing out my hair is that it looks poofy in the interim. Sometimes it looks more poofy than other times, but right now it looks particularly poofy.

I don’t want to care how poofy my hair looks, I don’t want to be that kind of person, but I do care and I am that kind of person.

I say to myself: There are serious problems in the world, but your hair is not one of them. I say this, and I believe this, but then I immediately wonder what’s going to happen when I meet a potential lady friend and she sees how poofy my hair is. I am going to have to find a way to tell her that my hair is not normally this poofy, I am going to have to find a way to weave this fact into the conversation, because trust me, any potential lady friend is going to take one look at my poofy hair and wonder what the hell my problem is.

I asked two friends what to do about my poofy hair, and one said to use gel, which I’ve never used nor even considered using, while the other said that gel would make me look like what she called a Euro Sleaze.

Both friends are straight women and I asked them specifically because I believe that straight women know about men’s hair.

Then three days ago I noticed again that my hair doesn’t look so poofy in the morning because, having not yet showered, I haven’t washed the natural grease out of it. The natural grease must serve as a natural gel, I thought.

That morning I didn’t wash my hair, although I did rinse it several times, and to my great surprise and delight, it stopped looking so poofy.

Like I say, that was three days ago. Then this morning, after three days of not washing my hair, I decided to wash it just a little bit, to put just a little bit of shampoo in it, because maybe it was getting just a tad too naturally greasy.

This is what I did, and now it’s more poofy than ever, a record amount of poofiness. I would take a photograph and show you how poofy it is, but I’m afraid that a small child somewhere, sitting at his mother’s computer, will randomly type the url of this website, see the photo of me and my poofy hair, and shout, “Look, Mommy, a man with poofy hair! I don’t know what the hell his problem is!”