randy_byers (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
randy_byers) wrote2008-06-28 09:58 am
randy_byers) wrote2008-06-28 09:58 am
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The History of My Hair
Well, I've wanted to do this for a long, long time, and now at last the scanner has enabled me.
Let us review. At nearly two I was tow-headed.
By the time I was 17, I had too much hair, as we saw in my high school graduation photo a couple of days ago. Here I am with my mom in Puerto Vallarta on spring break in 1978. This trip was a present from my parents for graduating from high school. Or for the prospect thereof. I'm pretty sure that the sign on the rock in the background is saying, "Dude is a playa." The sign, however, is wrong.
Five years later, in 1983, the hair was a little shorter, but still not much to write home about. That's my niece in my lap, and this was taken at my brother's wedding at my parents' house in Portland. It was![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
akirlu's reaction to this photo -- "My god, you look so straight!" -- that inspired me to finally take the bull by the horns and illustrate the evolution that came after (and briefly before). For that matter, by this point I had done a lot of acid already, so I wasn't that straight!
In January 1984, a few months after my brother's wedding, I moved to Seattle. Denys introduced me to his hair stylist, Craig, and I got a more stylish look. This photo of me and Denys with our other housemate at the time, paul, was taken at the 1984 V-Con -- a science fiction convention in Vancouver, BC. I really loved the skinny tie era in the '80s. That leather tie was given to me by Mary Beth Morehead, the first girl I ever kissed, and I still have it. Wore it as the Rev. Ramdu presiding over my niece's wedding last summer, in fact.
The 1984 V-con was fateful for a number of reasons, one of which was that I fell for Sharee again after we spent some time together after the convention. This photo of her with fellow Edmonton exile John D was taken around the same time, near the warehouse squat in Vancouver she had vacated just before V-con. I helped her pick up some of her stuff from the warehouse.
It seemed to me -- or maybe I just hoped -- that we had healed the rupture that I had caused between us when I freaked out after our first time together -- and my first time, period -- in the summer of 1981. However, just a few months later, at the 1984 Worldcon in LA over Labor Day weekend (my first Worldcon), she wouldn't have anything to do with me. And she had adopted a mohawk in the meantime. That'sathenais on the left, and this could well have been taken at the legendary founding-of-fwa party in Ted White's room at the Anaheim Hilton.
Clearly my only hope for regaining her favor was to become a punk myself. So I bought Denys' leather jacket from him and asked Craig to cut diamond-shaped lines in the side of my head. This photo was taken atjaneehawkins's chocolate party at the 1985 Norwescon -- an SF convention held over Easter weekend in Seattle. It doesn't show the diamond-shaped lines, but Denys sure is quite the sailor boy, eh? More great skinny tie action!
In September 1985, Denys and I threw a joint birthday party. By this point, Craig and I had conceived of a new idea of what to do with the diamond shapes. It was time for color! This picture was taken the morning after the party. You can see that I'm already starting to bald at age 25. That's a young Lenin (RIP) on my shoulder. Later I would try to look like him.
By the way, here's a studio portrait of the hair artist, Craig. He died in the first big wave of AIDS deaths in the gay community here. Bless you, Craig, I'll always remember you. We spent many hours together in the salon, while the tinted ladies watched him work his magic. He loved the opportunity to do something creative.
And of course Sharee wasn't my only inspiration. For example, here's the rather devilish look that Kirk sported at that 1985 birthday party. He was one of the Bellingham Kids who made contact with the science fiction community via Tilda, whose parents had strong connections to Seattle fandom at the time. I think the Bellingham Kids had just graduated from high school that year. I don't remember anybody in my high school looking like this!
So anyway the three-color diamond job was a big hit ... except at work, at Aetna Insurance, where my boss's boss said I could never do that again. I wrote her an angry letter of protest at this abuse of my civil liberties, and she finally agreed to let me bleach my hair, but not to color it. So we did a bleach checkerboard next. This photo is from the 1986 Norwescon, or at least that's my best guess. That's John D. Berry,jerrykaufman, and Neil Kvern in the middle, and that's probably Jessica Amanda Salmonson I'm talking to. Not sure about anybody else. Norwescon was the most important convention to me in those early days, but it has become completely meaningless to me since. I guess over time I've become too faanish for my own good.
After the bleach checkerboard, I bleached the top, with asymmetrical shaved sides. That's the style in the userpic on this post, taken in July 1987 on a visit to the Colma cemetery with Sharee and a couple other friends. Sharee was preparing to marry Ben at that point, so my whole strategy with her had been an abject failure. (Or at least it didn't pay off for nearly twenty years.)
However, the hair had attracted somebody else's attention, namely Robyn, who is seen here at my parents' house in Portland probably in late '87 or early '88, with me sporting the grown-out version of the hair style in the userpic. Robyn Sue/Sioux wasn't a punk, she said, she was an eclectic nonconformist. We both worked at Aetna, although she was on another floor, and she was curious enough about the man behind the hair to give me a flower in the elevator one day in 1986 and ask me if I wanted to go out sometime. Um, hell yeah? Her mother, on the other hand, took one look at me the first time we met on one of her visits from Montana and said, "You look like shit." She liked me anyway, I think. I had also grown a rat tail by this time, since that's what sensitive New Wave guys did in those days. Robyn may not have been a punk, but she liked to slamdance. We had some rockin' good times together in the era leading up to the grunge explosion.
As you can see, I was running out of hair to bleach at this point, so pretty soon I stopped doing it. I started playing around with facial hair instead, and soon adopted a Lenin look. Here's a family portrait from 1991. Nice tie!
As time passed and the hairline receded even further, I grew nostalgic for my cool hair days and wished I could do something striking again. So when the 1996 Worldcon in LA rolled around, I decided to shave my head. Again, actually. I had done it for my 10th high school reunion in 1988, but didn't like the smart aleck remarks I got on the street. (I still had my tail at that point, and one guy in Salem cracked, "Grasshopper!") This time nobody seemed to notice, and I've stuck with the shaved head since. Somebody else had to point out that I was actually doing it to hide my male pattern baldness.
Here's a shot with me andtamiam (who was of course my other great punk muse) in Coronado, a neighborhood in San Diego where we visited a friend after the '96 LACon. I loved that camo-tie-dye shirt, which I found at a Haight Street Fair when I went down to San Francisco to visit Nahid in 1989, riding a romantic whirlwind that would carry me to Berlin later that year. The shirt finally gave up the ghost on Yap in 2002, on a scuba dive. I swear to god, in blacklight you could see the Shroud of Turin in it.
Since I started shaving my head, the only thing that's changed is the facial hair. Most of the time, it's been the Lenin look. Here's one ofbohemiancoast applying the orgasmaiotron at Corflatch in 2000. It felt startlingly good, although I suppressed all sign of it, typically enough.
Last year I decided I wanted to see how grey I was getting, so I grew a full beard. Here's a photo with Eileen Gunn and her awesome Sense of Gender Award, taken at the Hugo-fondling party at our house last fall. Not much grey, but definitely some salt in the pepper. Eileen is a force for good, one way or the other, and whatever your gender or hairstyle. She gave me a lot of encouragement as a writer early on, and that was a big boost to my confidence. She was obviously also a big influence on my fashion sense!
I've since shaved the full beard off and am in the process of restoring the Lenin look. Probably the ideal version was the one I sported on the trip with Sharee to the UK for the Glasgow Worldcon in 2005. She took this shot at the pre-convention pubmeet at Walkers in London. That'sdmw and dalmeny, who were on their GUFF trip, and of course the great Fanglord himself. I have friends all over the world now, although as far as I know my hair actually has nothing to do with it, or with anything else for that matter. Yes, I'm afraid I've been deliberately wasting your time. Sorry!
So that concludes the history of my hair. Next up: the history of my gut! (Note: It hasn't receded. I blame beer.)
Let us review. At nearly two I was tow-headed.
By the time I was 17, I had too much hair, as we saw in my high school graduation photo a couple of days ago. Here I am with my mom in Puerto Vallarta on spring break in 1978. This trip was a present from my parents for graduating from high school. Or for the prospect thereof. I'm pretty sure that the sign on the rock in the background is saying, "Dude is a playa." The sign, however, is wrong.
Five years later, in 1983, the hair was a little shorter, but still not much to write home about. That's my niece in my lap, and this was taken at my brother's wedding at my parents' house in Portland. It was
akirlu's reaction to this photo -- "My god, you look so straight!" -- that inspired me to finally take the bull by the horns and illustrate the evolution that came after (and briefly before). For that matter, by this point I had done a lot of acid already, so I wasn't that straight!In January 1984, a few months after my brother's wedding, I moved to Seattle. Denys introduced me to his hair stylist, Craig, and I got a more stylish look. This photo of me and Denys with our other housemate at the time, paul, was taken at the 1984 V-Con -- a science fiction convention in Vancouver, BC. I really loved the skinny tie era in the '80s. That leather tie was given to me by Mary Beth Morehead, the first girl I ever kissed, and I still have it. Wore it as the Rev. Ramdu presiding over my niece's wedding last summer, in fact.
The 1984 V-con was fateful for a number of reasons, one of which was that I fell for Sharee again after we spent some time together after the convention. This photo of her with fellow Edmonton exile John D was taken around the same time, near the warehouse squat in Vancouver she had vacated just before V-con. I helped her pick up some of her stuff from the warehouse.
It seemed to me -- or maybe I just hoped -- that we had healed the rupture that I had caused between us when I freaked out after our first time together -- and my first time, period -- in the summer of 1981. However, just a few months later, at the 1984 Worldcon in LA over Labor Day weekend (my first Worldcon), she wouldn't have anything to do with me. And she had adopted a mohawk in the meantime. That's
athenais on the left, and this could well have been taken at the legendary founding-of-fwa party in Ted White's room at the Anaheim Hilton.Clearly my only hope for regaining her favor was to become a punk myself. So I bought Denys' leather jacket from him and asked Craig to cut diamond-shaped lines in the side of my head. This photo was taken at
janeehawkins's chocolate party at the 1985 Norwescon -- an SF convention held over Easter weekend in Seattle. It doesn't show the diamond-shaped lines, but Denys sure is quite the sailor boy, eh? More great skinny tie action!In September 1985, Denys and I threw a joint birthday party. By this point, Craig and I had conceived of a new idea of what to do with the diamond shapes. It was time for color! This picture was taken the morning after the party. You can see that I'm already starting to bald at age 25. That's a young Lenin (RIP) on my shoulder. Later I would try to look like him.
By the way, here's a studio portrait of the hair artist, Craig. He died in the first big wave of AIDS deaths in the gay community here. Bless you, Craig, I'll always remember you. We spent many hours together in the salon, while the tinted ladies watched him work his magic. He loved the opportunity to do something creative.
And of course Sharee wasn't my only inspiration. For example, here's the rather devilish look that Kirk sported at that 1985 birthday party. He was one of the Bellingham Kids who made contact with the science fiction community via Tilda, whose parents had strong connections to Seattle fandom at the time. I think the Bellingham Kids had just graduated from high school that year. I don't remember anybody in my high school looking like this!
So anyway the three-color diamond job was a big hit ... except at work, at Aetna Insurance, where my boss's boss said I could never do that again. I wrote her an angry letter of protest at this abuse of my civil liberties, and she finally agreed to let me bleach my hair, but not to color it. So we did a bleach checkerboard next. This photo is from the 1986 Norwescon, or at least that's my best guess. That's John D. Berry,
jerrykaufman, and Neil Kvern in the middle, and that's probably Jessica Amanda Salmonson I'm talking to. Not sure about anybody else. Norwescon was the most important convention to me in those early days, but it has become completely meaningless to me since. I guess over time I've become too faanish for my own good.After the bleach checkerboard, I bleached the top, with asymmetrical shaved sides. That's the style in the userpic on this post, taken in July 1987 on a visit to the Colma cemetery with Sharee and a couple other friends. Sharee was preparing to marry Ben at that point, so my whole strategy with her had been an abject failure. (Or at least it didn't pay off for nearly twenty years.)
However, the hair had attracted somebody else's attention, namely Robyn, who is seen here at my parents' house in Portland probably in late '87 or early '88, with me sporting the grown-out version of the hair style in the userpic. Robyn Sue/Sioux wasn't a punk, she said, she was an eclectic nonconformist. We both worked at Aetna, although she was on another floor, and she was curious enough about the man behind the hair to give me a flower in the elevator one day in 1986 and ask me if I wanted to go out sometime. Um, hell yeah? Her mother, on the other hand, took one look at me the first time we met on one of her visits from Montana and said, "You look like shit." She liked me anyway, I think. I had also grown a rat tail by this time, since that's what sensitive New Wave guys did in those days. Robyn may not have been a punk, but she liked to slamdance. We had some rockin' good times together in the era leading up to the grunge explosion.
As you can see, I was running out of hair to bleach at this point, so pretty soon I stopped doing it. I started playing around with facial hair instead, and soon adopted a Lenin look. Here's a family portrait from 1991. Nice tie!
As time passed and the hairline receded even further, I grew nostalgic for my cool hair days and wished I could do something striking again. So when the 1996 Worldcon in LA rolled around, I decided to shave my head. Again, actually. I had done it for my 10th high school reunion in 1988, but didn't like the smart aleck remarks I got on the street. (I still had my tail at that point, and one guy in Salem cracked, "Grasshopper!") This time nobody seemed to notice, and I've stuck with the shaved head since. Somebody else had to point out that I was actually doing it to hide my male pattern baldness.
Here's a shot with me and
tamiam (who was of course my other great punk muse) in Coronado, a neighborhood in San Diego where we visited a friend after the '96 LACon. I loved that camo-tie-dye shirt, which I found at a Haight Street Fair when I went down to San Francisco to visit Nahid in 1989, riding a romantic whirlwind that would carry me to Berlin later that year. The shirt finally gave up the ghost on Yap in 2002, on a scuba dive. I swear to god, in blacklight you could see the Shroud of Turin in it.Since I started shaving my head, the only thing that's changed is the facial hair. Most of the time, it's been the Lenin look. Here's one of
bohemiancoast applying the orgasmaiotron at Corflatch in 2000. It felt startlingly good, although I suppressed all sign of it, typically enough.Last year I decided I wanted to see how grey I was getting, so I grew a full beard. Here's a photo with Eileen Gunn and her awesome Sense of Gender Award, taken at the Hugo-fondling party at our house last fall. Not much grey, but definitely some salt in the pepper. Eileen is a force for good, one way or the other, and whatever your gender or hairstyle. She gave me a lot of encouragement as a writer early on, and that was a big boost to my confidence. She was obviously also a big influence on my fashion sense!
I've since shaved the full beard off and am in the process of restoring the Lenin look. Probably the ideal version was the one I sported on the trip with Sharee to the UK for the Glasgow Worldcon in 2005. She took this shot at the pre-convention pubmeet at Walkers in London. That's
dmw and dalmeny, who were on their GUFF trip, and of course the great Fanglord himself. I have friends all over the world now, although as far as I know my hair actually has nothing to do with it, or with anything else for that matter. Yes, I'm afraid I've been deliberately wasting your time. Sorry!So that concludes the history of my hair. Next up: the history of my gut! (Note: It hasn't receded. I blame beer.)