It's one of my abiding disappointments that I have to wash my hair every week. You'd think something so obviously negligible could be safely permanently ignored, like people who act on principle and not out of self-interest in Trinidad. But, no, that smattering of growth that still struggles to emanate from a small and ever-shrinking portion of my follicular endowment requires depressingly regular attention. Washing my hair every Saturday is like mowing the lawn every week in dry season: you can do it, but why would you go to all that trouble for so little effect? It's like a fat person drinking Diet Coke: dude, you're not fooling anybody. You can tell how deeply vanity runs in the human character when you consider I actually go through the motions of choosing a shampoo. Back in my youthful/hair-ful days, when I looked like a scarecrow without a hat (if I combed my hair), one friend, after contemplating my scruffy head for several moments, declared, "You know, when you've got bad hair, every day is going to be a bad hair day." In a past more distant than the one in which hotel rooms had actual keys and soca songs had actual melodies, my hair needed extra-strong products, and I might have had good reason to agonise between, say, the sweat-hiding advantages of Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific and the straw-softening abilities of L'Oreal Paris. Today, I'd be happy to find one called Gee, You Still Have Some Hair Left.
Even worse, that bizarre combination of mainly scalp and a countable number of see-through, wispy, whimsical protuberances therefrom must also be conditioned; with conditioner; which you have to buy in a separate bottle. It's just not fair. If my head was a private company or state enterprise, it would be difficult enough to persuade my responsible corporate officers to expend funds on the purchase of the shampoo; adding conditioner might precipitate a mutiny on the board of directors. The HSBC top brass could quicker explain laundering drug money than I could laundering my locks. Still, on the upside, a single travel-size bottle of shampoo can last me months. If I stay in a hotel twice in the first quarter, I can supply myself with the rest of the year's worth of haircare products. A little goes a long way, like the music in modern soca songs, where one note can carry for three verses and chorus, and one rhythm can carry a whole Carnival; especially if it's by Machel Montano. Now, if I had hair like Machel, I'd happily spend a fortune on it. I'd toss my head, offstage, with the same kind of abandon he does onstage, because I'd know it was having some effect other than whiplash. There would be something actually worth cutting on my head-but, then, I would miss the performance-anxiety-edge I've been having for the last five years or so, upon entering a barbershop. (Hairdressers look at my head like farmers at parking lots or Trini politicians at the Ministry of National Security portfolio: there's so little they can do with it, they worry about their reputations if they're dumb enough to accept the job, but their overreaching ambition just might mislead them down those dead and split ends.)
Again, on the upside, at least I can see there's no sense in wasting a small fortune on Just for Pointlessly Vain Men. If you ain't red, you dead, we say in Trinidad, but to a man of my colour-hair colour, that is, of course-it's more a case of, "If you ain't grey, firetruck away." And therein lies my own little victory, my own small redemption in matters of the locks: if I barely have enough hair to shampoo, I definitely don't have to attempt to dye it. It would be counterproductive, would draw even more attention to the swiftly vanishing breed, like West Indians who believe in the West Indies-the nation, not the cricket team; no one's believed in the cricket team for years, not even the cricket team (though you don't need a doctorate in political philosophy to know that the team will be great again if the nation ever manages to learn to move its feet). The countdown to Minister of Finance Larry "Slip Me an Extra Ten Mill and Watch Me Take It" Howai's first budget is on. And there will be many who will be agitating their grey matter over the unleashing of our potential as a nation through fiscal policy (or at least the price of regular gasoline) as much as I agitate my own grey don't-much-matter at shampoo time; and with as much effect.
Similarly, the army of competent columnists at Trinidad's service will write brilliant, varied analyses of the challenges facing the society, and many will offer sensible options, not mere criticism. (I'm not in that league: my gig is to highlight the lowlights, as it were; just like my hairdresser.) The countdown to yet another $50-billion budget will be foreshadowed, though, by the arrival of the 50th anniversary of our so-called independence and you'll see how deeply vanity runs in the human character if you pay attention to our Volkswagen Beetle-ful of clowns between now and then. People with a bit more sense and a lot more hair than me might suggest that T&T ought to use the remaining weeks before that magical half-century figure comes up to slow down and contemplate our position, and our next step forward. People with hairlines like mine, however, understand that there's no better time than now to throw your hats in the air and get on like you just don't care. Despite all our foolish vanities, and mine are more foolish than most, it remains important to let your hair and your expectations down, as much as mine lets me, or a stream of unearned and apparently unending income allows the country.
BC Pires is splitting hairs.
E-mail your tonsorial artistry to him at bc@caribsurf.com.
A different, much shorter version of this column appeared last year in Barbados
