My five-year mission: to explore strange new hairstyles, to seek out ways to keep locks neat and clean, to boldly go where no man has gone before with dreadlocks.
A year ago today, I was fretting over my hair. I'd made up my mind that I was going to lock it, but I wasn't sure if it was long enough yet. My patience being what it is, I didn't want to wait. I rationalized moving fast:
The main advantage of locking the hair when it's shorter is that it will take less time for my dreadful friends to help me. The backcombing process can take six hours for 18 inches of hair, and is painful and tiring.
One year later, I know I wrote those words, but oh, I did not understand the meaning of "painful and tiring" when I posted that passage. Nope, not by a long shot.
I daresay the locks have grown some.
My worries were for naught -- my locks have endured, despite the short hair we started with, and the controversial waxing, crocheting, and all the other hoo-hah that's been going into my nature-vs-nurture test.
And my hair has grown longer, too, but what I not sure 100% sure of is how much more they've locked in the past 50 weeks. Living with them day after day makes it harder to notice change, and I'm not really sure how to measure it.
My friend Amanda Catherine, who hadn't seen me in a couple of months, just told me that my locks are lookin' fine, so that was a nice boost. (I'll have her reason for dreadlocks posted here as soon as I can get her to hold still long enough to tell me about it.)
One thing I'm positive about is that I hate the length of my hair this April. To much volume for a hat, not enough length to tie it back. Of course, the milestone that everyone with locked hair looks forward to is being able to use a lock to tie back the rest of the hair. At the base of my neck, my longest locks are about three inches, so that's going to be awhile. Some people have told me that it's easier to shave the back of the neck than to get that hair to lock, but it's steady as she goes.
Today I have bits of hair sticking to a light sheen of wax on my fingertips. It means that every time I touch my nose I tickle it with some tiny hair, or fiber from my hat or sweater. There is just enough wax on them to make the surface slightly sticky, accumulated from palmrolling my day-old dreadlocks.
Step 1: section the hair
Yesterday, Earth Day, was a lot longer than I expected it to be, and completely exhausting. My good wife set to sectioning my hair at about 1 in the afternoon, and we finished the final step of blow-drying the newly-waxed locks after eight. We did have breaks for meals and such, but all told it was a solid six hours worth of work.
I expected it to take less time because my hair is on the short end of the range, but that actually made it take longer, for two reasons:
the learning curve was spread over more locks, and
there's a lot less hair to lock, so it takes more backcombing to get it together.
To expand, there's always a few "learning dreads" which aren't as tight as they could be, and have to be rebackcombed. This is already sounding technical, so here's less than two minutes of video on backcombing to explain it:
The example of the ideal dread is all fine and dandy, but keep in mind that the first inch or more of each lock is not tangled, and won't look like that; my locks are all about three inches long each so that gives you about two inches of learning per lock, and those are tough inches since the poof percentage is elevated by the percentage of root hair. We were three-quarters through my head when my wife said, "I think I'm starting to understand how this works," meaning that her tactile sensitivity to textiles was kicking in.
Agony above,
serenity below
One thing that was exactly as expected was the pain of having that done to every single square inch of my head. Oh. My. God. Maybe dreadlocks are like tattoos and childbirth (I've experienced the former and heard about the latter) in that you forget how agonizing the process is after you're through it and recall it through the hazy delirium of endorphins, but I don't think so.
The reason why is that I am going to have regular reminders of how much dreading sucked as they mature. I get to do the palmrolling, and the clockwise rubbing, and the squeezing them dry when they're wet. None of these things actually hurts much, but my brutalized scalp reacts to my touch the way Tina would to Ike's, and it all comes back to me again day after day.
Don't dread having a cat in your lap.
My friend Amanda Catherine told me that they'd by "spiky," and she wasn't kidding. When I first saw what they looked like, before I put in any wax, I thought that they were being supported by rubber bands at the bases, but such was not the case. Poofy, erect stalks covering my head, bringing forth images of electrocution caused by a game of "Truth or Dare" gone wrong.
The waxing took most of another episode to complete (we watched a couple each of "Buffy," "Xena," and "Jack and Bobby," and one of "Sliders" as well). After I warmed it and worked it in, Robin took the blow dryer to it so it would melt and really get in there. The heat was enough on my inflamed scalp to make me gnash my teeth and rend my clothing, which is why I'm glad I was wearing a high-quality sweater from L.L. Bean, for it was quite resistant to rending.
I tried only briefly to put my beloved took on over this new head of mine before giving up. The tam fit, but I put it on and removed it gingerly, since the locks are probably even more fragile that most new locks are. Today I stabilized my locks more, and to my amazement got the took on over my Styracosaurus self.
The stabilization started with putting rubber bands at the base of each lock, in addition to the ones at the tips. This compresses the base just enough that I can get some results from palmrolling, which is the same motion used to make a snake out of clay. With the wax in there, palmrolling compresses the lock and helps it stay that way as the locks tighten. My regimen for the next month is going to be daily palmrolling of each lock, and adding a little bit of wax to the locks that don't have any left in them. I think I already have a couple like that, but I'm paranoid about overwaxing so I'm going to wait a day.
As the sun sets on my hair's first dreadful day, I have a low-grade headache and feel like I'm wearing a constant state of surprise. I may venture out this evening and see where my hair takes me. Perhaps tomorrow I'll talk about the mental toll all that pain takes, unless I decide that I'm whining too much.
Even though I've made up my mind to dread, I'm still pondering if my hair is ready or not. In some ways it's readier than anyone's, but it may literally fall short, or come close.
Hair with texture, before shower
I've been washing my hair using a non-residue natural shampoo that I make at home, and instead of conditioner I use a vinegar rinse. I avoid putting a hat on when it's damp, but I've worn my took throughout this long, cold winter. When it got really goddamned cold, I put on hat on over it when I went out. I haven't brushed my hair since last summer . . . I'm going to say certainly August 2010, but probably sometime in July.
I think it's safe to say that my hair has texture, as evidenced by these before-and-after-shower pictures. In the first, I pulled my took off and simply photographed exactly what I saw in the mirror. The second picture is after I have towel-dried my hair.
Hair with texture, after shower
Where I may lack is in length. Most sources I find online suggest a 4-6 inch minimum for my hair, because while it has texture and definitely can dread, it lacks the kink factor which makes it possible to lock hair when it's as short as an eighth of an inch, so it's claimed.
When I was a young man, I had more than 18 inches of hair, and I pulled it back into a ponytail for about a week straight, discovering the natural method for locking hair. I never completed the process, but it tells me that I can probably get away with something closer to 4 inches, and I'm reasonably sure I've got at least 5 all around.
The main advantage of locking the hair when it's shorter is that it will take less time for my dreadful friends to help me. The backcombing process can take six hours for 18 inches of hair, and is painful and tiring.
On the other hand, it also means less time to practice, so there won't be any really mythic dreads.
On the other other hand, my hair is going to take more maintenance in the first months to get it to lock. Longer hair simply stays put better.
Ultimately I like shifting most of the work onto my own shoulders, since I will also reap most of the rewards, whatever they shall be.
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" as well). After I warmed it and worked it in, Robin took the blow dryer to it so it would melt and really get in there. The heat was enough on my inflamed scalp to make me gnash my teeth and rend my clothing, which is why I'm glad I was wearing a high-quality sweater from L.L. Bean, for it was quite resistant to rending.