Facts About Bald Men
Bald men flare like matchsticks, lighting up the caves around them.
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When they sit down to eat, their baldness sits with them. They chew so vigorously their temples pulse.
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They buy fancy hats to cover their baldness, but they doff their hats and bow to show it off.
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When bald men put their heads together, they are like a dozen eggs cracking against each other. Occasionally bald men discover a curl of hair growing from their thoughts. They shave off a little scalp to remove the stubble.
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Bald heads shine like chrome hubcaps, like Spanish onions, like scoops of vanilla ice cream, like icebergs riding high on the water, their crests melting.
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Bald men renounce Samson as their forefather, because he was tricked into baldness. They trace their lineage to Leviathan, who had scales, but no hair, and ruled the primordial seas.
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Bald men are mirrors for other bald men, moons in a dark sky — pools of grief glistening with tiny fish.
Up On the Roof
Baldy’s up on the roof again. He climbed the fire escape to get away from the world, and now he’s alone with his baldness. I’m tired of seeing him up there, waving his shiny discontentedness. I’m tempted to lock the windows and let him stew all night, humming a selection of songs from his teenage years. When he’s up there, the house is free of baldness. I can listen to my own music for once. I can dance around the room to the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” or “Pictures of You” without his saying “turn that off and let’s listen to The Byrds’ ‘Eight Miles High.'” Sometimes I pull out old pictures of Baldy when he had so much hair it was almost terrifying. He was sexier, and feral, but clearing his fluff out of the drains after he had taken a shower was a nightmare. I listen hard as Baldy’s humming becomes hooting for the past. When I climb the fire escape to bring him down, he resembles a Snowy Owl as he stands overlooking the city, his wing feathers damaged.
The Bald Man and His Twin
The bald man has a twin he rarely talks about. He recalls their birth, how they entered the world clumsily, the twin gripping his heel, landing on him, how he felt a warm hand on his soft, bald head. How the two of them lay on opposite sides of their mother, barely able to see each other, like twin shadows. He’s always been angry at his twin without knowing why, angry at the face that mirrors his own, the voice that sounds like his. He and his twin, now middle-aged, would still be identical except the twin has fine strands of hair combed across his pate carefully to conceal his growing baldness. The bald man laughs at his efforts and no longer considers him a twin. Though embarrassed by his own baldness, he flaunts it anyway, lifting his flecked dome high in the air — like the squishy bruised bottom of a fat ripe pear.
Return of the Kleptomaniac
I stole the last hair from a bald man. The blackish-gray hair was surprisingly long, maybe three feet in length, and had wrapped around his head several times and dangled down his back. When I filched it from his head without any hesitation and unwound it, he seemed shocked as if a hawk had snatched a memory from his brain. For a moment, we looked at each other like old ex-lovers, and maybe we were. Then I began running, thinking that the rope of hair was silky, and felt good in my hand. As he chased me up the block, shouting for me to give him back his one hair, I ran into a rabbi, who was bending over to pick up his yarmulke, so I leaned down while still running and grabbed that too. Now the rabbi and the bald guy were both chasing me and for the first time in a long time, I remembered my favorite Motown song, “Stop, in the Name of Love” and I began to cry with joy.
Prayer for Hair
He had prayed for months to get his hair back, and when he did, he was sorry. It resembled Alaskan tundra, dry and crinkly in patches, growing fast. His bald head had been noticeable, but not in a bad way; his was robust like a perfect pumpkin.. His wife, who at first seemed upset by it, had become so fond of it she thought of it as her child. Now he had hair, but not beautiful like a malamute’s or a husky’s, not beautiful like a man ten years before he’s going to go bald, but like a frozen plot of ground, in which his wife’s treasure is buried. In the middle of the night he would hear his wife crying like a wolf, and wondered if she was remembering his lost beauty. He prayed to lose his hair again, but nothing happened. What kind of cruel trick is this? he wondered. He remembered how much she had loved to massage his baldness until his skin felt warm as if there were a sun beneath it. How their marriage had finally become full and round, as if it were made for his head.