As if the blunders of my first punk phase weren't enough, I went through a second punk phase in college, which came just as my perm was growing out. I always did have a tendency to swing from one extreme to the other throughout life — not just with looks, but with boys, jobs, everything. This time, instead of dying my hair — because now I was wise enough to realize that required a trip to the salon and mucho dinero — I decided to give myself a haircut worthy of praise from my newfound biker friends. Clearly, I was not wise enough at this point to realize that rocker pals don't really care what hairstyle you have.
Armed dangerously with a pair of cheap drugstore scissors and, even more dangerously, my ambition, I took to my hair like a hiker with a machete chopping his way through the thick Amazon jungle. First I trimmed my bangs absurdly short, as if I had a phobia of anything touching my forehead. Then I gave myself "layers," which technically were layers, but they were like the Wild West of layers. There was no rhyme, reason, or flow to the way they were cut. Some pieces in front were longer than the ones behind them; some extremely short strands lay next to really long ones. Basically, it warranted shaving my head, which I was very tempted to do — believe me.
But the beauty of hair is that it grows out, so I patiently waited for it to do so and headed to a salon to get a more professional punk cut. That may be somewhat of an oxymoron, but I didn't care. I just wanted to have a look that made sense again. These days, the only thing I cut myself is my bangs, and now I exercise a lot of restraint. I err so much on too long that my bangs are often just that — too long. But hey, at least that's better than having forehead stubble.
