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 I sat mostly still for something like six to eight hours as my wife yanked a metal comb through my hair over and over and over again. Getting ready I was excitedly picking movie selections, and in summary the day looked more or less like this:
. . . which doesn't even remotely begin to capture how horrible it felt, but I really needed to grin and bear it.
One year later I have locks that stay put, and are older than some of the things in my life.
It's obvious that my video skills are still not even close to as cool as my wife's.
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.
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.
Three weeks, three days in, and there are a couple of things that I've backpedaled on.
Waxing. I had been thinking about cutting out the wax in my locks, but I changed my mind. There were a few factors that swayed me.
I started a program, so I should follow through. The wax controversy gave me pause, but my hair's making progress.
I'm getting feedback suggesting that it's locking up fast, so apparently I'm doing something right.
I spoke to a local business owner who used to have locks, and he used wax as well.
Outing. I was consider giving a talk to my business networking group which would tie together my writing and my hair, but I didn't think my locks were quite ready for prime time, and I opted to talk about poison ivy instead. When I make the shift in their consciousness from "the business writer who always wears a hat" to "that guy with dreads," I don't want them to take away ideas like messy, wacky, or disheveled. It's important that I project a professional appearance with dreadlocks, so I want to let them settle in a bit.
I think these are acceptable shifts in strategy. What's wonderful is that I can always change gears again . . . my hair's not going anywhere, and the process is slow enough that I can mold my coif like a bonsai kitten. My hair is locking up fast enough that I have abandoned my stocking shower cap; although I've got plenty of loose hairs and a couple of locks which are kinda meh, there is definitely improvement every day. The progress is enough to keep me on the program, but not so fast that I want to start dangling them in every face I encounter.
Of course, I live in a small, strange town. I now know of not one, but two elected officials who have put a single lock into their hair. The lock acceptance rate in the rest of the world may vary.
No pictures today. Instead I will close with a fun little montage video of the day of backcombing. Have fun!
