WordSmith: My cap, the cat, and a caricature

In this week's WordSmith, Gerard tussles with his love/hate relationship with his hair and what a caricaturist revealed...

It was a bright and breezy evening and I was out the back of the house pottering around. I paused and looked at the cat sitting on the wall, when a gust of wind blew my cap off. The cat stared at me: jumped up, arched its back, hissed aggressively – then scarpered. The cat had never seen me without the cap, and the frightened creature fled at the sight of a follicly challenged intruder.

The cap, I do take it off – when I go to bed. I know people talk about the cap, I’ve heard curious cap-related chit-chat on the grapevine. To clarify, the cap isn’t used to hide my hair-loss, it’s not vanity. No, it’s more: habit, familiarity, a comfort kind of thing. I was never comfortable with my hair, we had a rocky relationship.

In my youth I was defined by my hair. It was a fuzzy-unfashionable-nest I had no affection for; I’d often attack it with brush and hairdryer. One summer I was visiting my sister Maria, and she watched me struggle to make my head-rug resemble something like the hair I wanted: “Come on Gerard, I’ll take you to Manchester and treat you to a good hairdressers, see if they can do something with it?”

She took me to a top notch salon; seeing all the beautiful people with glossy hair made me extra self-conscious about my whin-bush and I pulled Maria’s arm, “Come on, it don’t matter,” I said. She grabbed me back, and before I knew it a woman was washing my head-hay; after towel drying she smothered it in a buttery type gunk, then put me sitting under one of those heater things that old ladies sat under – I was mortified.

Afterwards, she cut my hair while giving me a pep-talk, “You’re at war with your hair Gerard, stop fighting it and embrace your curls.” To finish, she put some kind of potion on my barnet, which turned my dried up fuzz into curls that had a gloss to them. I left that salon attracted to my hair, slightly.

Back in Cavan I was eager to show off the hair. I decided Blessings Bar would be the venue to debut the new-do. Two friends were at the bar and as I approached one said, “You got a perm you vain bo***cks!” I was quick to put him right, “No I haven’t, it’s natural.” The other friend laughed, “As natural as my granny’s.” Not the reaction I was looking for.

Throughout college in Dublin, I got to know the curls. I discovered they didn’t like being washed. When introduced to shampoo they became all flouncy and fluffy. They looked best when bound by dirt and grease. I stopped washing my hair and adopted a grungy-look like the lead singer from Dexys Midnight Runners; a look I liked.

The 1990s arrived and with them came a product that revolutionised my hair, a jewel on my crown: Frizz-Eaze. This was timely, as I was now a young Ad-Executive and smelly hair would not do the business in the boardroom. Frizz-Eaze allowed me wash the curls while curtailing the fluffy flounce. It was the mid-90s when I saw the curls departing. I was blissfully unaware of them leaving me, I noticed in an unusual way. A caricaturist was hired for a work event; when he revealed his rendering of me, I was aghast, “I thought I had more hair than that,” I said.

He ignored me and moved onto his next subject. The curls were now flimsy-furls; a barber suggested shearing them off to create a George Michael Caesar cut. That worked, and it got me to the noughties with a semblance of hair.

By the mid noughties my hair and I finally parted, it had literally fallen out with me and left. I was resigned to it, we’d had a tumultuous life together, it was time to part.

I write this column with a humorous heart; but for many men losing their hair is no laughing matter. This much I know, going bald was the hard part. Being bald is easy, I’m finally fine with it.

Where once my hair defined me, now it’s the cap. But with the cap I have an advantage; for the incident with the cat showed me that if I want to go incognito, I simply take my cap off and no one knows who I am.

WordSmith: My very own superhero on superhero-street