Nature vs nurture dreadlock test

This is a better name than the "half-headed challenge," but sometimes it takes awhile for my brain to catch up with itself.

As I gear up for the nature vs nurture dreadlock test, I'm winding down on my residue-free shampoo.  This probably isn't a bad thing, because I'm finding it's harder and harder to rinse it out on the first try. As wholesome as it is, I'm going to move to a baking-soda based shampoo once that stuff is gone, and use it on both sides.  I'll post the recipe for it and the vinegar rinse at some point.

Half a plan for the new year

Right now my locks are pretty fun:  they're still short enough that they can stick just about everywhere when I want them to, but long enough that they'll point more or less down when I ask really nicely.

They're about half-locked, so there's more to go to make this locky thing happen.  Of course, how to take the next steps is going to be important, particularly if I want to do explore the options in anything approaching a systematic fashion.

stop trying to fix them. the more you work on them the longer it will take for them to get really tight..after a year or two you can blunt your tips if they dont do it on their own

That's what Cherubim666999 said on my six-month dreadlock update video.  It's an argument I've heard before.  Messing with them, including the usage of products like wax, slows down the process.  I'd be better off letting time, and the compression of many nights of sleep, do the work.  Naturally, they will lock on their own if I just let things be.

An after-and-before shot.

Ignorance is bliss

I didn't know any of this when I started my locks.  All I knew was how a metal comb could put the locks in, and how using wax to keep them compressed (frequently at first but reducing in the number of applications over time) helps accelerate the process, leading to the tight, stray-hair-free locks I was looking for more quickly.  I knew that there was an alternative; I had considered and discarded a full neglect method as an option.  The only thing I didn't know about at first was the controversy.

Wanted: Doctorate of Dreadlocks

So I started waxy, then I gave wax up.  By October I wanted my wax back, because my hair felt like it was falling apart.  That could also be a sign that wax is bad news in the first place, but I didn't have enough evidence either way.  People swearing up and down that wax is good or bad is terribly interesting, but what I really wanted was some actual research on dreadlock techniques and their effectiveness.

So that's my plan for the new year:  I'm going to go back to using wax on half my head, and leave the other half be.  I'll still wash the whole head as always, but the right side will go back to an alternating cycle of one week of wax, one week of palmrolling, futzing with the crochet hook, and generally screwing around in the hopes that I can make the locks tighten up faster.

It won't be exactly scientific, but at least it will be systematic.  In another six months or so I should have some idea of which method works better.

Still debating: how natural is natural?

Seven months in, another month without wax, another month feeling like it's taking a lot longer to lock my hair without it.

Of course, it could just be the locking my hair takes longer than I want it to, wax or no wax.

Sooner or later I am sure I will find out, either way.  Time will tell.

Lice ain't nice

I had a scare over the summer . . . a lice scare.

I didn't want to talk about it - in public, anyway - until I knew if it was just a scare or not.

I think I'm safe now.

Friends of mine, parent and child, stopped in to see me one day.  I had my trusty little hat on (I've been spelling it "took," but I'm told it's actually spelled "tuque," which looks silly to me).  The child, a boy of about ten or eleven, took (ah, that explains the spelling) the tuque off my head and put it on his own, and then returned it.  I thought nothing of it.

Three days later, I learned that there was a bit of lice problem in that household.

Lice like dreadlocks.  There's plenty of room from them to do their thing, a thing that involves laying eggs (nits) on hair follicles and making scalps itch as they eat skin cells (hopefully dead ones).  Normal lice shampoo can't be used safely on locked hair, because the stuff would have to stay on the head a lot longer and its toxic nature could harm the host.

So if you want to rid a head of locks of its lice, you're going to have to cut them, or spend a lot of hours with your head wrapped in plastic bags while various substances (like vinegar) kills the buggers.  And, since the nits are so tough, you'll have to do it again in a week to ten days after they hatch.

Lice removal is no fun when you've got dreadlocks.

I spent a lot of time peering closely at my hair, looking for the nits which are tiny little black specks, white once they hatch.  I worried every time I had an itch.  I have read a lot of information about what to do if I had them, and pondered if I wouldn't just give up and cut them off to avoid the hard work of preserving the locks while destroying the unwanted guests.

It was a . . . . lousy thing to have on my mind, but I'm over it.  I didn't get them.  But yikes, what a psychological smack it was to have to consider it.

State of the Locks

We got a little excited with the stuffing . . .

What with an unexpected snow storm followed immediately by Halloween, I remembered to wear a costume but I forgot that my locks had a milestone - six months!  Election Day (and being a "dreaded Republican" candidate myself) has also slowed down my writing, but it's time for a state of the locks address.

My hair is definitely longer than it was at the end of April.  Some days it's also a helluva lot fluffier.  It's still short enough that I find myself with the occasional stick-straight-out-from-my-scalp lock when I wake up in the morning . . . but that's assuming that this will actually happen less often as they get longer.  That assumption is only based on what I've seen on other heads.

Longer and fluffier locks!

What my locks all have is a portion that's tight, and doesn't need any help to stay that way.  There's a certain amount of looseness near the base of all of them, and a good amount of the tips are giving me problems, but I don't have a single lock that is completely in shambles.

I haven't been using any products in at least a couple of months . . . no rubber bands, no wax, nothing designed to make them tangle faster or hold together while they do it.  As I mentioned before, I may go back to using some wax.  My wife thinks that some of the locks need to be rebackcombed, but that goes against everything I have researched and I'm resistant to the idea . . . pending an experienced source that agrees with her and a sudden desire to feel that pain again.

Some of my locks are only a third locked, with such a long tail that I can't just pull the loose hairs in and let it go with that.  A few of them still have rubber bands in them; I can feel them inside and I don't know how much they're doing to help maintain lock integrity.  A few of them are solid from stem to stern.

It's still about patience, I get that.  We (my wife and I) pull loose hairs in, and some of them fall back out.  The fluffy pieces need to be palmrolled regularly, something that I believe (based on the progress with and without) would be more effective with wax.  My hair seems to benefit from its judicious use.  In locked form the hair is still much too short to be pulled back, and so keeping it looking somewhat neat can be out of reach on some days.

It's all about patience, and some days I'm just not very patient.  I want to know what these things will look like once there's no more corona of flyaway hair, once I don't have any locks I can shove a finger through, once the hairs have gotten used to living in colonies instead of as individuals.

I've survived my first summer.  The heat wasn't that bad and the locks weren't that long, so it probably wasn't much of a test.  I don't know what this winter will bring, but the challenge of drying my hair properly will shift into a different gear for sure over the next six months.

I don't think that locks are terrible, and I know that mine are more appealing to the eye than many I've seen.  I still want the process to speed up, and I still know that you can't always get what you want.

Reconsidering wax

Last night a business associate whom I hadn't seen in a couple of months asked me if I had given up on the dreads.  I knew that some of them were feeling a bit loose, but it was a bit of a shock to have some think they were on the way out!

I have had a couple of changes in my maintenance routine of late.  I have

• stopped using wax
• not added new rubber bands to replace the old
• aggressively latch-hooked many tips with limited success
• stopped asking my wife to work on them
• run out of Lock Peppa

One or more of these changes have led to my locks loosening instead of tightening.  I don't think it's the rubber bands on their own, but they certainly keep the tips together while they're trying to lock.  It's not the latch-hook; that just pulls hair in, so either it's going to stay there or it's not.

I got frustrated with how much of a big deal it is to have someone else work on my hair - it's more like a hair appointment than just doing something together, and the other person isn't going to have my pain response to regulate the routine.  I know my wife is willing, but guys aren't built with any serious pain tolerance.  However, even though it's easier with someone else's eyes on my head, I don't think I am missing as much as I was back in April.  It takes me more time and it would be good to get the help, but I don't think it really is making my locks fail.

Is wax the best or worst thing for my dreadlocks?

The two products might be the variable to revisit.  The wax, in particular, gave me a set routine:  wax and palmroll one week, pull in loose hair the next, and alternate.  Once the hair is pulled in, the wax keeps it still for awhile, training it to stay there.  As the wax dissipates it has a chance to lock in and tighten.

It could be that the locking process will continue without wax, but much slower.  It could also be that my hair needs the extra help to lock up, and it's just going to get looser without it.

I understand better why wax is so controversial - it's difficult to tell if it's an impediment or an accelerant for the locking process. It's easy to understand how too much wax can lead to mildew and rot, but it's harder to determine if a moderate amount is the right choice.  I think it may have a lot more to do with the quality of one's hair than any other factor.

So I'm thinking of going back to wax, if nothing else.  I want to see this process through, and my months without wax just haven't seen the same progress as the waxen beginnings of the locky journey.

Reason #12: kittens

Okay, this is not a reason for everybody.  Kittens like things that dangle, they like things that they can sink their claws into, they like stuff that they can climb.

I should point out that, as adorable as Dawn (pictured) and her brother Dusk are, having a couple of pounds of fluff hanging from one's hair by needle-sharp claws is not everybody's idea of a good time.

Luckily for my kitties, I'm a slightly crazier cat person than some.  So, I can report that having a kitten attack my locks is less painful than having one attack a dangling earring (that was a long time ago, but I still remember it) or jump onto your lap when you're not wearing heavy pants.

Want to make friends with a kitten?  I have a backcomb you can borrow.

A dream first

Do my locks really look that bad?

I had my first bad-hair dream ever last night.  I was in a high school cafeteria filled with other adults eating.  A woman at the next table turned around to say to me, "Don't you think you should so something about your messy hair?

Dreaming about hair shortcomings tells me that I'm thinking a lot about my hair.  Over the past couple of weeks I've been playing more with the latch hook, trying to pull in loose ends and feathery tips.  The result?  A lot of random loops and ends sticking out of odd places.

What a weird effect.  This is definitely not a "low maintenance" hair style . . . for me, anyway.  I guess I just have too much obsessiveness to leave the little locks alone, giving me yet another opportunity to learn patience.

There are times

There are times when I just want to run a comb through my hair.

There are times when I want to be able to roll out of bed and go out in public without looking like a nest of snakes is poised on my scalp to strike at any passerby.

There are times when I wonder if I can ever stick with a single hairstyle for five years.

Metathought ramble about dreadlocks

File under slow feedback:  a friend told me this week that my locks look much better than when I started them.  "They looked horrible," she said.

That is the tricky thing about perception in the early 21st century.  Nobody-but-nobody was afraid to treat blacks poorly when Black Like Me was being written, but now we're much more subtle about how we treat people.  We can't judge a book by its cover . . . or admit to it, anyway.

You can get a little paranoid about this stuff.  You look for non-verbal cues that suggest they're distracted by the hair, but it's harder to find clues that someone is negatively impacted by it.

What I don't want to do is get sucked up into a thoughtcrime cycle - some of the most egregious examples of racism are (over)reactions to a perceived racist threat from whites.  Can't they see that they're inciting this, I rant as I'm following the news.

Well, maybe they can't.

If I allow myself to think about it (which is pretty much when I'm blogging, but rarely else), I can definitely see the difference in how people treat me.  The friend who said, "People won't take you seriously," meant, "I won't take you seriously."  The man who suggested I don't hide them during my political campaign is treating them more like a scandal to be managed than a personal style choice.  The friend who just told me how bad she thought they looked felt that way for months, and probably still does.

Or does she?

When I don't plug my hair into the analysis, I find that I remain as I always was - sometimes puzzled by how people act.  It makes us feel safer if we know what motivates other people.  Since we can never be sure, it's much easier to just ascribe a motivation of our choice.  If the one you pick doesn't feel very sensible, give it time:  you'll find plenty of evidence of your theory once you're thinking about it.

Thing is, I can walk around expecting people to treat me differently because I have dreadlocks, or not.  Whether I do or not, some number is going to discriminate in some way because of my hair.  Others will not.  At the end of the day, I can be all pissed off about how I was treated, or I can not even remember it.

If I go looking for a fight, I'm sure to find it.  If I don't, one might find me anyway.  The former keeps me stress-free and positive, but the latter will probably give me more to write about.

I will never possess sufficient curiosity to write a convincing fight scene.

It's the little things

You wouldn't think that hair washing could be exciting, but I had a moment.

Ever since the first time I washed my locks, my technique has been to get really down into the scalp for a scrub, and squish the shampoo carefully through the locks before wringing them out.  I was originally concerned about ripping the new locks apart. and then fell into a habit.

Well I don't wear a stocking my head anymore (even if I wanted to, there's just no way it would fit now), and I don't squish my hair like it's a delicate flower, either.  I tried going back to washing my hair like it's, well, hair.  Flopping it around.  Getting it messy.

The locks held up fine.  And it felt great.

That is all. 

Tightening the base of my locks

I've continued to replace and use rubber bands on the bases of most of my locks.  It helps keep the looser parts together, and makes it easier to grab one for clockwise rubbing, which is supposed to be encouraging the new hairs to get caught up in the lock rather than making their own way in the world.

My friend AnnMarie, the same one who turned her dreadlocks into a hat before lending them to me for the awesome banner design of this blog, gave me another tip.  This one involves taking the band off (or moving it out of the way) and splitting the lock at the base so you can take its own tip and shove it right through.  Twists the whole base section up, and (as I discovered) if you twist it the wrong way the lock will try like hell to point that direction, so keep that in mind.

So there's all sorts of ways to twist and rub and train those hairs to lock up and behave.  And there's also claims that at some point, all this will just start taking care of itself, and I needn't be concerned.  Being a bit impatient, maybe I will never get to that point.  Since my locks are just under four months old, I'm probably not quite ready to let them go yet, but in a couple of years I should take the plunge and see if it's true.

One proud lock

I had to laugh when I saw the one lock sticking up on my head this morning.

Patience

Well, I need more patience for my locks.  As this picture proves, they're not completely mature yet - I'm still losing a few hairs in the shower.

So I am enjoying shed-free showers yet.  I wonder how much longer it will take?

In the wilds

I spent a few days camping last week, which gave me a chance to see how this "low maintenance" hair style handles the great outdoors, and to make a vlog about it.

I also met two lovely women, each of whom had locks which were six or seven years old.  One had hair similar to mine, and told me that she'd used backcombing to start them.  The other had classic African-style kinky hair, and she's had hers put in professionally.

What interested me most about the latter woman was that she told me that she continues to twist them to make sure the new hair locks in properly.  Sometimes I get the impression that locks will need eternal upkeep, but then some "experts" tell me that this will sometimes not be the case.

Time will tell.

Hats beyond hats!

Watch the my newest vlog to find out, as I did, that hats don't just cover dreadlocks.

Stay tuned to find out what cool thing I have planned for those locks and this blog!

Reason #11: intimacy

This reason only works when people stay within each others' hygiene tolerance range, which for me requires clean hair that's free of odors and . . . stuff.

My wife enjoys things like cuddling a bit more than I do.  She's also really, really good at working on my locks.  Not only is she just flat-out better with fiber work than I am, she can actually see what's going on up there, which is a pain for me.

Evenings in front of the television with my head in her lap certainly can't be bad for a marriage.

Do I smell a contest?

Comment to leave name suggestions.  If there's enough response I'll put up a poll or run a contest or something.  Sorry, I have well over four years left before I can decide to cut them off (if I even do!) so I can't promise locks as a prize anytime soon.

Waning waxing

So I'm coming to the end of my dread wax supply, and I don't have any plans to buy more.  I think the stuff has been helping, but there's no way to be sure if I keep using it.  As it is, my wax-on-wax-off alternating weeks has been reduced to waxing it every other Friday.  After yesterday's application, the first since my dreadful mess, I only have about half of what it takes to do my whole head, and that seems like the right time to move on.

State of the locks: three months and one week

I've already started using homemade dreadlocks products, starting with a replacement for Locking Accelerator.  What's great about that product is that its makers offer a homemade substitute on their site.  Mine includes a bit of lemon juice, but I used less salt so I'm going to up my ratio a bit next time I make it.

Some products don't seem to have a homemade replacement, like the Lock Peppa.  I just don't have a convenient supply of bentonite around town, and that stuff really works.  I'll probably be buying more of that at some point, but I'm not out of it yet.

The wax is another story.  There's good arguments explaining how it helps by compressing knots once they've been tightened, but when you hear that the wax instead inhibits locking by preventing the scales on the hairs from catching on one another, it also sounds reasonable.  Most of my backcombed locks are tightening nicely, but I have a handful that have resisted, and I've backcombed them again (a couple twice by mistake, I think), with little improvement.  Maybe not using wax will help them, maybe not, but I don't see how it could hurt them any.

Particularly since my dreadlocks survived a chlorine pool.

The experiment continues!

Reason #10: dreadlocks are the stuff of legend

Locked hair is deeply rooted in in myth and legend.  Did you know that . . .

• . . . the sacred river Ganges flows through Shiva's locks, so that they might regulate it?  The goddess Ganga brings her flow to earth through Shiva's tangled masses of hair, which can also be seen as its flow down the forested slopes of the Himalayas.
• . . . Samson, the Israelite who slew a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, derived his immense strength from his seven locks of hair?  The Nazirite vow 

Based on how they were depicted, it's reasonable to argue that Kokopelli, Isis, and Medusa wore their hair in locks, as well, which is pretty much what I suspected.  There's even some speculation that Jesus couldn't have wandered in the desert for three years without conditioner and without knotting up.  Clearly they have been respected for their power and mystery for thousands of years, and I can do worse than to carry that kind of tradition on my shoulders.

Poolside manner

Hot day, high humidity, recent swim in pool

The heat skyrocketed this past weekend, so I decided to throw caution to the winds and test my locks in a chlorinated pool.  I'd been warned off by two experienced lockists (one of whom told me that the chlorine would actually unlock my hair), so it took hundred-degree temperatures for me to risk it.  I finally realized in my delirium that the worst that could happen is that my experiment would be prematurely ended; I half hoped to see my hair all floating away just to have something really interesting to report.

So into the breach I went, to the local pool, and I immersed myself in the cooling 97-degree water (yes, it really was that hot).  I swam for the better part of an hour, got out, dried off, went home, and then returned in the early evening to do it again.  It felt wonderful.

My hair seemed none the worse for wear.  The first picture was a day after the pool event, and the second is from this morning, a couple of days after that.  The difference in craziness I can attribute to the fact that it was cool enough for me to fall asleep with my took on last night.  That hat does wonders for keeping my hair under control.  Probably the best lock-control mechanism I've found yet.

The fact that I spend so much time trying to keep these low-maintenance masses under control makes it clear that I'm doing this wrong.  Anyone who seriously will have their lives impacted by a thick lock of hair sticking out from the scalp at a sharp angle probably isn't going to have a low-key time with dreadlocks.

Merely hot day, low humidity, took training

So I guess I do have something to report:  this hair is forcing me to work a lot harder on a decent appearance than I ever have before, and is a whole lot less forgiving than a short haircut or shaven head would be.

Some days I just don't have the luxury to allow my head to look completely insane, so I'm finding myself coming up with shortcuts to save the day when the hair is bad.  Like washing it hard and putting it away wet.  A good, hot shower or bath will get my hair down where I want it, so if I'm in a pinch I'll wring them out and then shove them under the took for awhile.  It works even better if there's some wax in the locks, softened by the water.  (The "tame" picture here was achieved without any wax, though).  When I do that, I still need to get the hat off and allow the locks to dry so something horrible doesn't happen in there.  Did I mention that mildew is a deal-breaker?

Maybe at some point down the line I'll be able to just let the hair do whatever the hell it wants, and see how that feels.  This year, though, I'm just going to have to fight with it sometimes.

Reason #9: dreadlocks teach approachability

Dreadlocks, without a doubt, make me more approachable.

Say what?

It's true, but it's counter-intuitive.  At first glance, they're messy, disheveled, and unkempt, particularly when they're first getting started, so I wasn't prepared for them opening doors.

But what I've discovered is that people will talk to me about my locks; they act like a kind of ambassador, allowing people who have some experience with them to start up a conversation.  I don't think it helps me talk to people who have no experience with locks, but that's why I want to keep them neat and professional anyway.

• People who used to have them, like the village board member I ran into one day who told me about how her life was very different back then.
• Or people who are just starting out kinda small and subtle, like the mom I know who put one (just one) in behind her ear.
• Then there's folks I've been introduced to specifically because I have dreadlocks, like the local Republican who had them for twenty years.

I wouldn't have known that any of these people have, or have had, locks had I not had them myself.  (Yep, I used that word five times in one form or another.)  I call that approachable.

Open source for tangled hair

According to the stats for this blog, 11% of its readers use a Linux operating system.  Rock on, brothers.

Sorry I'm late, I was doing my hair

Self-portrait experiment number 37

The myth that dreadlocks are low-maintenance has been debunked in my mind.  Well, it's probably safer to say that dreadlocks are like political campaigns:  you can put into them as much time and energy as you want to.

The other night I was late for a party because, for the first time in my life, I was held up doing my hair.

Are you kidding me?

I had a collision of priorities, namely:

1. Wash my hair
2. Wax my hair

It may seem simple enough to do both, but it can be screwed up.  I'd put off waxing for an extra week so my wife could focus more on blunting the tips (she felt she had the technique down, but wanted more time to have it on lockdown), so wax was on my mind.  Moreso it was hot and humid and a good waxing makes for a more party-ready appearance.

The washing, like the waxing, could have been put off a day without it being disastrous.  I'm more likely to err on the side of caution when it comes to hygiene, though, particularly since this is my first summer with matted coils of hair on my head.

So I showered, and washed my hair, and only then did I realize that I didn't have the time to let the locks air-dry.  I got busy blow-drying the hell out of them, but this was no time to be forced to master patience!  I hadn't budgeted for that extra time.

After wringing, toweling, shaking, and hot-air drying for longer than I wanted to I gave up with the locks damp, and set to waxing.  I'd have to blow-dry them again anyway.

Waxing dry locks isn't just a good idea - it's damned near the law of physics.  The wax slid off moist hair until I mashed on far more than is good for them, and my next round of blow drying was difficult because the wet hair held the heat, and burned the hell out of scalp whenever I pointed the dryer at any spot for more than about three seconds.

I moved the dryer around a lot, softening but not melting the wax.  My wife noticed, and forced me back into the bathroom where she all but held me down and gave me a stern drying so that I wouldn't look like I was wearing candles on my head.

I think the blisters should be healed any day now.

Homemade products

I started locking my hair using a specific system and set of products, but now I think I know enough to start thinking about homemade alternatives.  Here are some of my half-formed ideas about a home locking kit:

• Dread wax - made of beeswax and paraffin with hemp seed oil, vitamin E, and fragrance, this should be replaceable with beeswax alone mixed with a bit of E and some hemp seed oil, if I can find that oil anywhere.  I've only used two-thirds of the three-and-a-half-ounce container in over two months.



Latch hook and crochet hook are good locking tools.

• Locking accelerator - Purified or natural spring water, some lemon juice, and a dash of non-iodized sea salt.
• Lock peppa - not a clue how to replace this stuff at home, and it works well.
• Dread comb - any good metal comb is fine, but the price for this one is comparable, and it has a ruler on it, which is helpful for sectioning.
• Loose hair tool - crochet and latch hooks are perfectly fine to replace any of these specialty tools.
• Shampoo - got to have something residue-free for washing locks.  I have a recipe that uses water, baking soda, and a drop or two of tea tree oil.  I am not sure if the tea tree oil is too much residue or not, but paired with a vinegar rinse I think it should be okay.
• Rubber bands - any small rubber bands, like the ones used on braces, should work; it's just a question of price because they don't last either way.

Professional engagement

Summer has driven me to take the risk that I knew it would - I abandoned my favorite hat the other night.  I had work to do in public, but it was time.  It's a well-made knit cap, and it's not made for hot weather.  I tried getting a hair net, but no matter what you make a hair net out of, it's still a hair net.

My tour of duty was a planning board meeting where I am known, and no one remarked on my hair.  I doubt they're breathless readers of my blog here.  I watched during the meeting and afterwards, when I asked some follow-up questions for my article, for any non-verbal cures, things like

• eyes drifting upwards to look at the hair, or
• a faint nasal twang to suggest not breathing through the nose, or
• a closed body posture, arms folded and turned away.

I saw no reaction from planning board members, applicants, or other journalists.  Well okay, the one applicant kept looking at me, but I couldn't tell if it was the hair or my journalist pad.  I get the latter anyway.

The following day I spoke to a number of local officials including the county executive, and attended a political committee meeting where I participated in candidate interviews.  My appearance doesn't seem to impact people who expect me to work in a professional manner.

Not sure what it means, but it's interesting.

Reason #8: the wind in my hair

Once you convince a bunch of strands of hair to cooperate as a single lock, having your hair screwed with by the wind is a thing of the past.  Locks are much heavier than strands, and they just resist those pesky breezes.

Of course, that doesn't mean you can't get epic bed head.  But it's one variable which I can declare eliminated from my coiffed experience.

So what's natural again?

From what I can tell, dreadlock wearers have different opinions about what it takes to have "natural" locks.  Here's the spectrum that I've seen:

• The neglect method:  just leave your hair to its own devices.
• Hands on:  it's okay to braid, backcomb, twist, and rip, but don't put any products in.
• Nature is as nature does:  use of completely natural products (locking agents made from non-iodized sea salt, for example) is okay.
• Nothing nasty:  commercial products are okay if they're not clearly toxic.

What's left that everybody can agree isn't natural?  The dread perm.

Reason #7: longer, healthier hair

I've never had my hair grow as long as it has since I started my dreadlocks.  Putting them in made the hair a lot shorter, but withing a month it was clear that there was growth, which was not at all what I expected.  Locking and tightening, yes, but lengthening?  Not even.

Seems that all the clockwise rubbing, palmrolling, and waxing has been stimulating my scalp something fierce.  Even my hairwashing is a lot more scalp-intensive, because I kinda scrub between the locks before I wash them.

I guess all this talk about brushing your hair to make it grow has some merit.

Low maintenance hair?

Maybe if my commitment had been to leave my hair completely to its own devices for five years and see what happens, I would have ended up with low maintenance hair, kind of like how letting a field return to forestland is low maintenance.

But alas, my commitment is more like training bonsai than letting land lie fallow.  And, like bonsai, it takes as much work as patience.

So how low-maintenance is this mass of hair?

• For starters, I'm using a blow dryer.  I've done that maybe three times in my life up until I started this experiment, but now I use it to melt wax, as well as to dry my hair if I'm going to wear a hat or it's just really humid out.
• Then, there's loose hair management and blunting the tips.  These are both activities that take teamwork to do somewhat easily, and they also both often have to be repeated.
• Yesterday I rebackcombed a couple of stubbornly loose locks.  I wasn't expecting to have to do that again, ever, but for at least one of the two it definitely helped tighten it up.
• Every day I take a few minutes to palmroll, and days without wax I also do some clockwise rubbing to create new knots.

Here's a video about blunting those tips:

I'll talk a bit about specialty products in an upcoming post.

So no, I'm not finding this to be an experiment in low maintenance.  It's actually one of the longest-term, highest-time-investment commitments I've ever made.

Water, water everywhere, especially in my locks

Humidity brings the Medusa look.

So I've discovered that humidity has as much power over locked hair as it does any other.

I did have a friend (who keeps his hair no longer than half an inch) tell me that dreadlocks repel water much like an Afro does.  That had not been my experience, but I tend not to correct people in public until I just can't stand to keep my mouth shut.

Now that the moistness of the air has shot up for the summer, I'm feeling like I understand how Medusa must have felt.  Never has my hair looked more snakelike  . . . the Gorgons must have had some kind of water snakes for hair.  More on Medusa in a future post

There are ways to keep them tame, but these fierce serpents definitely like to perk up with very little provocation.

• Wax, especially wax that has been softened by a hot shower or bath, makes them malleable.  Even if you believe that wax does not help hair lock, it definitely can help shape it.
• Hats can  also keep hair down, particularly ones like my favorite took, pictured here.  If I want to use this hat to tame my locks for uncovered display, water can again be ally as well as enemy.  Even unwaxed hair, when crammed underneath the old brown-and-tan when partially dry, will yield to the demands of fashion.

No telling what's hiding under here

So water can cure what is causes, but I have to do so cautiously.  First and foremost, my locks need to be allowed to dry thoroughly or I'm setting myself up for mildew, and I cannot to begin to imagine how disgusting that would be.  If I don't ever get a chance to write about mildewed locks, I'll consider myself blessed.

I hadn't thought about how the power of weather can control your hair, locked or not.  This is new, interesting, and from a maintenance perspective, pretty damned annoying.  There are times when it's okay to look wild, but humidity doesn't compromise all the easily.

I wonder what winter will bring to this mane of mine?

Say goodbye to bobbi pins

Dreadlocks can be sensible and fashionable

Maybe I should file this as one of my reasons for dreadlocks . . . or just under silly hair tricks.

I like wearing my hat to bed on cool nights - it's an old Boy Scout trick to keep warm.  It's nowhere near the bitter cold of even three or four months ago, but even as June turns to July it's cool enough that I won't wear shorts after the sun sets, and I definitely prefer a blanket.  I don't like how my hat falls off in the middle of the night, leaving me to cast about bleary-eyed for my security took in the morning
Guess I solved that problem.

I can't say I have a clue how easy it's going to be to take it off again once the sun comes up.  This could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship, or a terrible idea that I'll laugh about  . . . once I forget how much it sucked.

Time will tell.

Reason #6: accountability

I had someone offer me a hit off a blunt one day, and I declined.

"Let me get this straight," he said to me.  "You get dreadlocks and you don't smoke weed?"

I've been told that dreadlocks can increase offers of drugs.  It's something that's just expected of people with locks.

I can't afford that, because sometimes I'm not the most mindful driver in the world.  If I get pulled over with a natty head, I'm pretty sure that the cop is going to find probable cause to search my vehicle if I can.

That's why dreadlocks make me accountable.

• I need to understand and exercise my rights.
• I need to practice one crime at a time - and realize that having dreadlocks might count at that crime.
• I must be prepared to go the extra mile to appear clean and neat, because the people who think I'm not may have influence over my life.

So please don't be surprised if I don't take a hit off your blunt.  I need to rise above and be something which people don't expect.

I'm accountable to myself.

Getting testy

It's been over two months now, and I don't know if I'm going to get any serious crap about my hair or not.

The challenge is trying to test reactions, without creating them.  For example, I've gotten comments suggesting that my police encounter really wasn't influenced by my hair.  I could have pushed the issue, and escalated it into a confrontation, but I don't think that would have shown anything about the officer's perception being altered by my locks.  My only reason to speculate was independent musings, plus a desire to attribute his rude behavior to some external factor, rather than presume that he treats everybody like that.

It's hard enough to pinpoint cases of racial profiling and other forms of discrimination; you can suspect, but it's not easy to know.  In order to do a solid job testing this hypothesis, I need to understand what has - and has not - worked while studying racism.  There's a professor of African American studies that I might look up to ask about that.

More questions than answers.  That's actually a good thing, even though it's frustrating.

But officer, I said . . .

I had a police encounter recently that I believe was negatively impacted by my locks.

First, a few words about my relationship with, and opinion of, police in general.  I like knowing that there are people who are willing to do very dangerous things to keep other people safe from crime.  It's an important role of government:  protecting the minority (in this case, potential crime victims) from the predations of others.  I have a rapport with a number of local officers, and I respect the work they do.  When it's possible, I enjoy watching their operations because I don't have any training in police procedure, and I find it pretty interesting.

On the other hand, police are trained to push the envelope, encouraging people to give up their rights.  It's legal, and many people out of ignorance do so on a regular basis.  Another reason I like to observe the police is because I want to understand better how, and how often, they get people to yield their rights to things like silence and protection from search and seizure.

So I observe police activity when it's convenient, both for my personal curiosity and because I'm a journalist.  I know people who observe and record police activity in the hope of catching cops doing something wrong, and there are people who contrive to create situations to make police look bad.  I don't have an agenda, other than to observe what's going on.

So in this particular case I had noticed an extremely intoxicated young man stumbling around the bar district of my town.  Not too long after that, he found himself passed out against a dumpster, covered in his own vomit.  Someone had the good sense to call 911; the man was probably in very real danger at that point.

When I came upon the scene, two rescue vehicles and two police officers had already responded.  There was ample room for their vehicles, as the man had passed out in the corner of a parking lot.  Most spots were filled, but the emergency responders parked in the aisles, as they are wont to do in such cases.

I maintained myself some twenty feet from the action, taking care not to get into the line of sight between the victim and any of the rescue vehicles.  I don't interfere with police and emergency activity.  I wasn't able to see the victim, but I was more interested in the police, so this didn't trouble me.

Not being able to see much, I was texting a friend from my extremely dumb phone while observing.  The way I held my phone piqued the interest of an officer, who broke away from the scene to approach me.

"He doesn't need to be embarrassed more than he is," he began, "and doesn't need to be recorded.  Why don't you step over there," he said, gesturing to a spot some 30 feet farther away.

"But officer," I began, wishing to explain that I wasn't recording.

"Sir, I asked you nicely," he said in a tone which was anything but.  "Please step over there."

I knew that I wasn't breaking any laws.  I knew that he was implying that he would find one to claim I was breaking from his bearing and tone, should I disobey.  I didn't have an ax to grind, so I obeyed.  But I knew full well that my rights had been violated.

Recently waxed, wild dreadlocks

I later confirmed that, despite my being somewhat well-known in my community, the incident was not driven by personality.  He didn't know who I was, and I didn't choose to push the issue by flashing my press ID or otherwise escalating.

I have found no credible evidence, before or since, that local police target recording of their activities and discourage it.  Some anecdotes, but nothing I can verify.  That being the case, I have a very strong suspicion that my locks altered the officer's perception, and put me on the "cop radar" as a possible problem when he may have otherwise not reached that conclusion.

The hypothesis that dreadlocks impact police encounters in a negative fashion seems a lot more valid to me now.  I had expected that I wouldn't discover anything about this question unless and until I made an error in driving (which, frankly, is bound to happen; I'm not an angel behind the wheel).  To have such an encounter while merely texting near police activity caught me entirely off-guard, but was nevertheless very instructive.

State of the locks

A brief report on how these locks of mine are maturing.

Rounding out two months or so, about two-thirds of my locks are definitely tightening up and becoming solid.  The remainder are in varying states of "mushy," and are mostly being held together by the base and tip bands alone.

As to the tips, we started to blunt some of them yesterday.

We tried it out on a handful, with some success . . . I put bands back on one or two but I'm pretty sure te others we tried will tighten up sweetly.

The loose hairs being fed into the locks seems to be an endless chore.  I've gotten pretty good at making dread balls, but I can't for the life of me get them into the lock without help.  I have a halo of hairs above my head, and little by little I hope to see them all go where they belong.

Trickier is going to be the flyaway stuff on the surface of the tighter locks.  Time and good advice should help me figure out if there's anything I need to be doing about them.

So far, so good.  I don't think wax is slowing my locking down, and my haberdasher bears that out.  Maureen is African-American, has had locks for twenty years, and recommends the use of wax in them.

A tangled web

Dreadfully dapper.

Running for office has forced me to step up my look.  My original premise, that writers are largely immune to judgments based on their appearance, is completely the opposite of politics, where votes can be won or lost based on looks alone.

When I attended the Ulster County Republican Convention, one gentleman, upon seeing me wearing my tam, asked if I were perhaps Jamaican.  Now that I've worn the thing, I have to agree that they look a bit ridiculous . . . very poofy and visually distracting.

So I'm stepping up my game.  I've taken off my Groucho glasses, so to speak, by shaving the mustache and replacing the glasses with contacts.  I stepped into Blue Byrd's Haberdashery to get advice on a better hat and, together with a thoughtful customer who told me that the cocoanut weave fedora brings out my eyes, we found one that I think works quite well.

This political game isn't what I had in mind when I began to lock my hair, but I don't doubt that it will draw out the positive and negative perceptions about the style.  I've had no less than three people suggest that I should get rid of them if I'm serious about running for office, but I have a prior commitment to my hair:  five years unless I run into some kind of icky hygiene issue.  I'm willing to serve, but I'm first and foremost a student of life, and I'm going to learn about campaigning in the context of learning about dreadlocks, and I'm just going to have to find ways to convince people to focus on my ideas, rather than my hair.

There's absolutely nothing to be lost by maintaining a professional and classy appearance, though.

Reason #5: human nature

It's part of the human condition to want to manipulate and control the world around us.  The Protestant work ethic and British sense of tidiness focus this desire on working hard to make the beauty of nature into tidy and manageable bits.  Think about Victorian England and all it wrought around the world, such as the tidiness of vast, green lawns.

In the United States those values mix with an instant-gratification ethic, so now we want all the beauty of nature in tidy rows, and we want it now.


Unfortunately nature isn't terribly tidy, and mature natural landscapes can't be replicated (except maybe on a movie set) by engineers.

I didn't like dreadlocks the first time I saw them, because of that inherent messiness.  I do think that mature locks are pretty damned impressive.  Trying to get there is a great way to get over it.

Notes from a Dreaded Republican

I started this blog to chronicle my journey to understanding about dreadlocks:  why people get them, why they keep them, their advantages and disadvantages.  I named it "Dread Like Me" in the spirit of Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin's groundbreaking book about how a white man learned what it was like to be black in the South in the 1950s.  I expected that people would start to look at me differently (or want to take pictures of the back of my head).

People are looking at me differently - but not at all in the way I'd expect.

In my little village, we've got hippies, musicians, academics, activists, environmentalists; overall it's a very engaged community which has shifted in the last twenty years from a Republican stronghold to a Democratic bastion. I've been one of the few Republicans for several years, holding to the belief that the truly core Republican principles (personal responsibility, fiscal responsibility, a nation governed by laws) can exist without hatred, bigotry, and cruelty.

Posing with the plane my father worked on.

If anything, I expected that my dreadlocks would lead me to be completely dismissed by the party faithful, but instead, they asked me to run for Ulster County Legislature.

I can now see the wisdom of their choice.  It's been a long time since trust-buster Teddy Roosevelt created the first national park, and a lot of intelligent people dismiss the idea that a Republican can actually care about real people anymore.  Wearing my locks, I send a clear message:  think again. Because I look so very different, closed minds open up a little bit, and I can actually share my ideas.

Ideas like taking the green-collar economy seriously for a change.  Better-paying jobs with an environmental focus can reduce the 7.7% unemployment rate in the county, even while preserving the pristine beauty which drives tourism.

Ideas like taking care of veterans, senior citizens, and kids, because it's the right thing to do. My father was a veteran, and he was ashamed at how poorly his combat brethren were treated.  Aging is the universal equalizer, and sidelining people once their bodies and minds begin to fail isn't a value I embrace.  Children are literally our future, and we relegate them to the crumbs after we pay for other programs.

Not all Republicans are scary, but some of them are definitely dreaded.

Picture this

Top-down self pic, dreadlocks at seven weeks

Getting pictures of my locks is a bit of a pain in the rear.  There are really only two options for getting pictures of oneself, of course:  pointing a camera at your own face, or having someone else them for you.  Pretty simple, I suppose.

Except . . . when I ask someone to take a picture of me, that tend to focus on the back of my head. Call me strange, but I think the front is more my speed.  I understand, there's some interesting stuff going on back there, but I happen to think that endless pics of the back of me 'ead is a bit boring.

Even though I'm locking my hair, the focus of my life (or this blog) isn't having dreaded hair.  Instead, it's about how the dreadlocks impact my life, how they change me and how people see me.

My other alternative, taking them myself, is limiting.  The length of my arm is the biggest factor, because I can't change that.  Clever use of mirrors and better aim definitely help.

Any pics can show you things you can't always see about yourself.  For example, I just found out by looking at this post's image that I have a part in my hair, which I think is pretty funny.

So rather than tell my friends what to take pictures of, I've got a plan that should get me in front of more cameras in general.  Update coming soon.

Reason #4: learning by doing

I'm a writer, and I write to learn.  Sometimes research into a topic isn't enough; you need to experience it to speak with authority.  I want to know how people with dreadlocks are perceived, and explore why I think those perceptions are attractive.  I still don't know if I will like being That Dreadlocks Guy, but that's what learning is all about.

Countdown to zero

I've worked out a large-scale plan for these locks of mine, still in their infancy.

Still so young . . . what will five years bring?

• I'm keeping them for five years, barring a serious hygiene crisis.  I think that should be enough time for me to understand the non-spiritual reasons for dreadlocks, as well as the challenges and detriments.
• I won't buy more dread wax after this container is finished.  Sure, it's deductible (when you're a professional writer, stuff you buy to write about is), but it's not intended for permanent use.  Besides, plenty of people vehemently oppose waxing dreads, and I want to see what difference I notice.
• Likewise, I will phase out the rest of my dreadlocks products as they run out.  I haven't seen any occasion to use locking accelerator since day one, so if anyone wants a premixed bottle, 90% full, hit me up.

Having a deadline allows me to decide if I have fallen in love with my locks, or if I want to test the theory that they can be unlocked without just cutting them off.  Honestly, that claim is intriguing to me, so I might have to divest myself just to see how well that works.  Check out my dreadlock countdown clock.

After all, it's just hair, right?

Tips for tips

The advice keeps coming, and I'm really appreciative.  If nothing else, it's validating my experimentation.

Tame locks are happy locks

One tip I got after lamenting my epic bed head was something I had tried with remarkably good results:  soaking in a hot tub.  It got those bad boys to settle down, and stay settled for days.  I don't think I will need to use wax for cosmetic reasons if a half hour of glorious immersion will do the same thing.

That same friend of mine, who tells me that she studied locking techniques for a year before she began her first set, also suggested aloe for conditioning/taming, spoke highly of tea tree oil, and suggested a semiannual vinegar rinse as well.

This is really good news to me, because my long-term plan is to divest myself of commercial products.  The shampoo I was using prior to locking is just baking soda and water with a little bit of tea tree oil, and the rinse is apple cider vinegar with a drop of vanilla and a cinnamon stick.  I still need to find out if that drop of vanilla in the formula will cause problems, but I think it's only for scent, so I'm fine with dropping it from the recipe.

One of my local locked friends, Amanda Catherine, has really amazing blunt tips on her locks.  She explained that they come from a technique which she'd been taught, but for which she did not have a name:

1. Take a lock near the base and put it between the second and third fingers of your non-dominant hand.  Your palm should be facing away from your scalp.
2. With the fingers of your other hand, grab the lock, leaving less than an inch between the two hands.
3. Use clockwise rubbing against the non-dominant hand, slowly moving that hand away from the scalp, along the length of the lock.
4. Hold the tip between thumb and forefinger, and rub your palm clockwise over it to encourage locking and blunting.

I might try using the Lock Peppa with that technique, since that's what it's for.

Lock maintenance party!

I was also fortunate enough to get an offer of working on my locks, by one master locker and one apprentice.  It's always more uncomfortable to have other people yanking and tugging at your hair, but I gratefully accepted.  It wasn't nearly as agonizing as the six hours of backcombing.

Crisp and clean, and no caffeine

I got a few more compliments on my wife's backcombing skills, and we were able to identify which locks are slower to tighten and which ones are coming along really quickly.  I am really excited about using the latch hook my wife brought home to tighten them all the more.  She didn't think we needed a lock-specific tool; it's great to have a skilled fiber artist in the house if you don't happen to live with someone who is already experienced with dreadlocks.

I also got feedback from some of my friends who hadn't seem me since this adventure began, and I was pleasantly surprised by the positive reactions of these largely traditional, professional people.  I think the fact that I didn't look like my head was exploding had something to do with it . . . I just can't imagine anyone who isn't living on the road thinking I looked remotely decent that day.

Next up:  I've worked out a timeline for what in the hell I'm doing with this hair of mine.  If you fail to plan, you plan to fail, and all that, so I'm planning on not planning to fail by failing to plan to plan.