Happy holidays, friends. The Small Bow is taking it easy this week. We hope you are, too. The essay below, one of my personal favorites, was written by A.J.; it first ran on March 23, 2021. —TSB Editor

My father began to go bald when he was 16. He found this out in the cafeteria lunch line when the jerk classmate standing behind him said he could see his scalp. After that, he was mortified and ashamed, but despite all his daily prayers, his hair was completely thinned-out by his senior year, and by 22, he was completely bald. So at age 28, newly divorced and deeply insecure, he began wearing a toupee, but he called it a “hairpiece” to make it sound like it wasn’t just a wig.

Growing up, I rarely saw him without it, and he barely spoke about it, even with my mother. He got up from the table one Thanksgiving when one of my uncles asked if it was waterproof. (It was not. When it got wet, it lost its shine and poofiness. He always kept an older one around that he called a “swimmer,” which was purposely ratty-looking. That way, when he wore it to the beach or pool parties, it almost resembled wet human hair.) 

He had this styrofoam head in his bathroom next to the sink where he’d put it at night when he went to sleep. When I was a boy, I’d kick it around like a soccer ball while he was at work, and it made a fantastic echo when it hit the wall. I forgot to put it back next to the sink, and our dog took an apple-bite size chunk out of it. When my dad got home from work, he was furious that I’d been playing with it. “DON’T TOUCH THIS!” His voice was so loud and embarrassed. He returned the damaged head to the bathroom and gently set it down as if it were a Ming vase. 

I never found his hairpiece too distracting, but I knew how uncomfortable he was without it, so to see him bald was extremely rare. He only didn’t wear it when he slept at night. I’d hear the ripping sound of double-sided tape coming from his bathroom; weirdly enough, it calmed me.

My mother didn’t mind his baldness and encouraged him to ditch it several times. Still, he’d get agitated whenever she bought it up. The thought of officially being bald, even in his mid-40s, was terrifying. He’d hid behind it (beneath it?) for so long that it was tough to imagine him not being buried in it.

Sometimes when he was half-drunk and home late, my dad would forget to put it on the styrofoam head and accidentally leave it in the sink. My mom would find it the following day and yell at him while he was still nursing his hangover in bed. 

“Albert, I thought it was a dead crow!”

But brief moments of levity aside, his hairpiece was nothing to joke about. Sometimes things got tense when we watched TV, and some hacky bald joke on Taxi or Soap would cause the Live Studio Audience to explode with laughter. We, however, did not laugh at all. I felt my father’s cold embarrassment fill up the room. That memory still makes me squirm

*****

In 1980, my father was a newly promoted regional manager of some desolate cluster of Ford Motorcraft dealerships in South Jersey. As a reward, he was required to mingle with hundreds of other regional managers and their significant others at a company outing in Acapulco. (This was when Acapulco was considered a glamorous vacation destination.) At his boss’s request, he was appointed the official master of ceremonies throughout the entire four-day conference. 

Even though it was only a bunch of sparkplug salesmen, he was nervous about the trip because of the added responsibility. These work trips were usually bottomless happy hours on the company’s dime. Now this one suddenly became very important for his career. 

My father had his hairpiece blown out and freshened up for the event, the same routine I’d seen him do for weddings and other black-tie affairs. Since it was a short trip, he left his extra one and the swimmer at home. What could possibly go wrong?

And on his very first day at the beach, the enormity of that miscalculation came to fruition. 

The surf in that part of the Pacific was more unpredictable and punishing, and as my dad waded in a little past his knees, a wave pounced on him and knocked him over. Then an even more crushing wave completely submerged him underwater. Dazed and gasping for air, he popped back up, but his hair did not. Panicking, he went back down after it. He continued to go back down repeatedly in desperate search of his hairpiece, but the ocean took it away.

My mother, a few of his co-workers, and their wives witnessed the whole thing. My mother quickly rushed into the ocean with a towel. She wrapped it around my father’s head so tightly that onlookers probably assumed he’d suffered a severe injury. To my dad, this was much worse.

Neither one of my parents knew what to do. He’d already met many conference attendees, and they’d be very surprised to see him come up to the dais later that night completely bald. My mother suggested he maybe get a cowboy hat, but unless he wore one with a very tight chin strap, that could also fall off if he wasn’t careful. The only option was to pretend he was deathly ill and return home. 

But then, just as he’d begun to accept his fate, an angel from the deep in a skimpy banana hammock walked over to my mother and presented her with what appeared to be a clump of black seaweed. “It hit me in the foot,” the angel said. 

*****

Part of the insanity of having a hairpiece is how much maintenance is required to keep it as human-looking as possible. Even though my father’s Cousin Johnny was a hairdresser who specialized in styling men’s wigs, it would still cost several thousand dollars annually, even with a significant family discount. Plus, they had to be constantly updated every five years or so to whatever contemporary style was in. But my father mostly modeled his look to whatever Burt Reynolds had on his head at the time.

The death knell for my father’s hairpiece came around 1997 when George Clooney’s angular Caeser cut became the dominant men’s hairstyle. Cousin Johnny did his best approximation for him, but it was a total disaster. My father taped it on, took one look in the mirror, and realized it was finally time to let this part of his identity go. He was 55 years old. 

The decision didn’t come easy, though. It took a few months to build the courage, but my dad finally set a date.

Every spring, he took a golf trip with several friends to Mexico, where it would happen. He would be very drunk, secluded, and around his closest friends.

Once he arrived, he threw away his hairpiece, drank a few B & B’s, and went to the local equivalent of Supercuts. “Take it all off!” And off it went. He was now no longer bald—he’d shaved his head.

*****

After he returned from Mexico, I got my father a card with a tiny note inside congratulating him on his milestone. I told him what he did was very brave and inspiring. 

When I asked my father several years later if he wished he’d done it sooner, he didn’t hesitate to answer yes. “My life would have been so much easier if I’d never put it on.”  

Sobriety has, among many other things, helped me avoid many terrible ordeals, but it’s also forced me to figure out who the hell I am. I have so many new insecurities, or rather, ancient ones, that I can no longer snuff out with drugs and ego and other pretend muscles. I have let go of many things but often wonder what fears remain. What do I hold on to for protection that is actually imprisoning me? There must be more; there’s always more. And when I want to free myself, where should I go? Where is my Mexico?

Even before he died last year, my mother would intermittently send boxes of old photographs, many featuring my father and his hairpiece. My favorite one is from Christmas 1974. I was about nine months old, and he was 32. I look exactly like my youngest son, but my father looks like someone I barely knew—so happy and at ease. 

And his hair: shaggy sideburns, parted a little to the right, framing his face perfectly. Well, it looks amazing. 

If you don't feel comfortable calling yourself an “alcoholic,” that’s fine. If you have issues with sex, food, drugs, codependency, love, loneliness, and/or depression, come on in. Newcomers are especially welcome.

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