Bruce Willis

This is a short story that examines hereditary baldness at a young age.

It started with one or two wet strands coiled one and a half times around a finger or snaking across my palm. I would squint concernedly at them for a moment before plucking them with a sigh from where they had stuck themselves and washing them dismissively down the drain. It progressed slowly enough that I was able to ignore the implications when one or two strands became three or four, then five or six. Around the same time as small patches of my scalp began to gleam through my thinning strands of hair like some sort of mangy Dalmatian, I began to develop excuses. They started reasonable and rational enough: a bad reaction to my new shampoo, a bad diet or not enough exercise. As I shed more and more hair, however, the excuses got more and more farfetched: leprosy, radiation poisoning.

 

It crossed my mind far too late that that the most terrifying possibility of all was also, perhaps, the most realistic. My father had lost nearly all of his hair by his late thirties, and his father by his early forties. Rummaging through old photo albums for evidence, I found a few pictures of my extended family, many of whom I hadn’t seen since I was little. One was taken at a Christmas party when I was probably three or four. The ugly sweaters and the dog humping the couch in the background were no longer sufficiently distracting to hide the lineup of perfectly round, and perfectly bald heads. The women were the only ones spared, and even their hair looked thinner than it should have. If I had my mother’s capacity for precognition as all mothers seem to have, this would have suggested that, at best, I could hope to make it as long as my dad. The worst case scenario�"that I might lose my hair before I even made it to college�"seemed so unthinkably implausible.

 

A few weeks back, they started to notice. My parents, my sister, my friends, students in class, girls, people on the street; they all started to notice. My dad picked up the phrase like father, like son, which in any other regard I would not have minded. He thought he was being funny, I guess, or maybe consoling, but was failing miserably at both. My sister would poke the pale white spot growing larger every day over my left ear and twist her face like she had eaten something sour: “Ew. It’s so soft.”

“Then don’t touch it.”

“Yeah, but it’s still gross.”

Eye contact would inevitably become hair contact, which would inevitably end the conversation; the whispers would start, my neck would get hot, and my ears would burn.

 

“The Spot” as I branded the humiliating, hairless expanse, caused quite the collection of conciliatory compliments. “At least you look good in hats, dude. Like, a lot of people can’t wear hats because their heads are weird shapes. But your head is, like, the perfect shape for hats,” Sam told me as we were walking between U.S. History and Spanish.

“Thanks, Sam” I said, trying all at once to sound sincere, remember the last time I had worn a hat, and keep myself from punching him in the mouth. I was curious though, and Sam was usually pretty reliable with his advice. “What kind of hat do you think I should wear?”

“Well, I mean, I guess it depends on what you want to be.”

“Like an astronaut, or a lawyer, Sam? What kind of hat does an astronaut wear, Sam? I’d love to be an astronaut.”

“Alright a*****e, look, I’m trying to help.”

“Sorry. So, what now?”

 

So we went shopping. Sam and I went to just about every store in the mall, trying on hats, looking in the useless skinny mirrors, and taking pictures. We were just walking through the fragrance center of Macy’s when an older man in a brown suit and a green vest approached us.

“They told me you were coming.” He said in a voice much higher pitched than we had prepared ourselves for it to be, and we couldn’t help but let out a little snort; he looked used to it. He drew out his vowels in a way that reminded me of that caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. He seemed to me the poster child for every big and tall store that has ever been. He sported what I imagine he called a beard; thin sideburns and a dusting of hair over his upper lip. He was almost completely bald.

“Who told you?” We both said, a little creeped out by the man’s sudden appearance and apparent omniscience.

“Oh, sorry boys, the other retailers said that you might be stopping by.” With a tap on the gleaming crown of his head, “For obvious reasons, they suggested that I might know a thing or two about what you want, and more importantly, um,” with a glance at The Spot, “why you need it?”

His last comment made me cringe with something like fear, embarrassment, anger, and confusion all rolled together. Sam sensed my anger and frustration and thankfully spoke for me, “What do you think we should do?”

With a smile and a noiseless laugh, the man told us, “As far as I’m concerned, you have three options. You can learn to live with it as I have done. Let it take what course it may and work with what it leaves you. You can invest in expensive chemicals and treatments, fight it back for as long as your wallet or, um, maybe your parents’ wallets can take it,”

Interrupting him, I said, “Yeah, of course I’m going to fight it. Look at this, I can’t just go walking around like this.”

 Picking up on the thinly-veiled insult, the man blinked a few times then moistened his lips with a few flicks of his tongue. After a short pause: “Right. And when that doesn’t work, you’ll be right back here with your friend to shop for hats.”

I tried to cut him off again but Sam put his hand on my shoulder and shook his head before I could start. “Listen, guys, I know it’s not ideal. I’m sorry that it’s started so early for you,” the man continued, “that’s, well, it’s not great, is it? But there are better ways to integrate going bald into your lifestyle than wearing hats; that’s what everyone does. Cut your hair so it looks intentional, hell, shave it all off if you want to see what it’ll look like. But don’t wear a damn hat.”

“But if it works, then why not?”

“Why not? Because wearing a hat is admitting defeat. Wearing a hat says you are ashamed, you need to hide it. It says that it’s winning.”

I’m not certain where it came from, why it wasn’t filtered out somewhere between my brain, my tongue, and my teeth: “I am ashamed.”

“Yeah. I was, too, pal; I was, too.”

 

I had just about forgotten Sam was still behind me. He didn’t really have a reason to be there in the first place and during this conversation, if Sam and I had been in opposite positions, I’m not sure that I would have been able to resist wandering off to look at shoes. The bright white blur of his phone screen was thrust past my left ear. “Dude,” he screamed delightedly as I turned to face him, “Dude! Look!”

 

            I took Sam’s phone slowly, concerned about what might be on the screen, and cradled it in my hands. It was the A Good Day to Die Hard movie poster. He showed me about a half-dozen of them, both of us freaking out a little more each time. I understood what Sam was trying to do, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t working.