Long Hair and the Slow Long Haul

I used to wear my hair long; I guess it was a defiance of some sort. Youth likes to disobey, to rebel, to stray from home, to refuse conformity, to avoid compliance. I avoided every variety of compliance I knew of for a few decades, breaking minor laws, offending mores, breaking some (not all) commandments. So what? If I'd done all that without letting my hair grow long and without wearing all those hippie beads, I would have been a great deal less conspicuous, but I'd have been the same kind of trouble—I knew some people like that, who never could quite land in a place where they truly belonged or where "bad names" they might be called ever stuck to them. They drank or smoked or doped while many of the people in their life never never of it! I don't mean that they were necessarily uncomfortable anywhere, but just that they fit in with so many groups that their persona always seemed a little indefinite in either one. Of course, all this ignores all the straight kids who didn't have time to fuck with shit like that because they were busy with cool things like school and frat parties and keg parties and piano practice and pantie raids. At events like Eeyore's Birthday Party in Estes Park, all the people in Austin or elsewhere seemed to merge momentarily into a bunch of goofs and gooses just having a good time, but those times didn't last long. I don't think George Bush was there, but it's not impossible. Before that time and after that, I never felt like I belonged in any group, and looking back, I agree that was mostly correct. I looked like I belonged, but I couldn't join the new and I couldn't cling to the old. I used to hitch-hike, too, and with my long hair (not even very long yet) would get yelled at from passing pickup trucks, "Hey hippie!", and other mutterings less intelligible. In any case, I'd mostly hope to God they didn't turn around and come back to press the point. I had my own speculations about who they were or what they were like, but I didn't want to find out too much about it. Some of Them may have been some of You, if you're old enough. And me, when you're on the road like I was then, both acts of hostility or acts of kindness seem very rare and yet very large indeed to a solitary traveller. My contact with the police of various states and municipalities were pretty negative, although there were some California Highway Patrolmen who, AFTER they gave me a ticket for just being there, kindly gave me a ride to get me out of their jurisdiction. It was better than a beating. I don't remember how long I kept that ticket, but I certainly never paid it. A thousand emergencies, large and small, intervened. Some of this shit ain't worth remembering... They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom For trying to change the system from within..." First We Take Manhattan, by Leonard Cohen After that I spent 20 years in the workforce, and, though I got about as anonymous as anyone else, I never did fit in. At my very best, when I had the greatest amount of responsibility or regard from coworkers, I still didn't fit. I didn't like where I was and nobody really needed me there. My hair got short, then long, then short again—I could never be nailed down. No one could quite predict me, and I found myself unpredictable, as well. Sometimes I strictly did the right things, and other times I played for the other side. Either way, I couldn't win. I merely maintained. Now I'm out of it, it would seem. Life is something else these past five years since I got diabetes and other ills. My stroke this year compounded everything that was already bad, adding a $40,000 medical debt to what I already couldn't stand. If I live to be a hundred, I'll still be in debt. Now I don't much think about it all, and I can't much care what happens. Paying bills has become a joke to me. Maybe I'd feel better if locked up in prison, except that I'd lose my current access to the Internet. Nothing is perfect, except our distress or the pain in our backs. I am, or should be, at perfect liberty to grow my hair down to my shoulder blades or even down to my ass, but the Care And Feeding Of Hair is just too much work these days—I can't do it. In fact, I keep cutting my hair shorter and shorter until the next step would have to be shaving my head! But that, too, would be too much work.