My hair started to go south when I was 16.
I had beautiful head of long, blond hair, and one day after I ran my comb through my it, I looked and there was enough hair on my comb for me to make my own Chia Pet out of my lost hair.
By the age of 25 I was clearly balding. I hated it. I rejected wearing a hairpiece because it looked so, so phony.
What is it with guys who wear hairpieces? Do they all start to go blind when their hair falls out?
In the end, the late Frank Sinatra was the poster child for bad hairpieces. His hair piece was blue.
OK, let’s say when Sinatra hit 70, his eyes did start to go, but what about his friends? What about his family? Wasn’t there anyone who had the guts to say, “Frank, you have millions of dollars, yet you look like a dark blue rat died on your head. Your hairpiece—it doesn’t fit. It isn’t straight. You go to your right, your hair goes to the left.”
This wasn’t only a Sinatra problem. Rich guys wearing ill-fitting hairpieces drive me nuts. Is it sort of a reverse chic? You know, “I have all the money in the world and I drive a Rolls and live in a mansion and my hairpiece costs $49.95 at Bad Hairpieces ‘R’ Us.”
Then, thanks to vodka, I discovered the cure for my baldness.
About 30 years ago at an ad agency party, I had three or four or five vodkas, stood up, and informed everyone that I was going to join Telly Savalas and Yul Brynner and have my head shaved.
My wonderful partner Ron Travisano jumped up and offered a toast. “He’s finally snapped,” he declared. “The agency is mine.”
Well, he was wrong. The shaved head turned out to be great for my career. A bald man always looks older than his years. A man with a shaved head is ageless.
In advertising, if you have no hair on your head, you’re only as young as the color of your beard and/or mustache.
So about 10 years ago I decided that secretly I would slightly, ever-so-slightly, color my beard and mustache. Nothing dramatic; sort of salt-and-pepper.
This has been my wonderful little secret all these years until last week, when I went to the same barber who has been doing a great job for years. Something happened. Maybe my barber had something on his mind. Maybe he mixed the coloring agent with black shoe polish.
I walked out without even checking how the color had turned out. A mistake.
Back at the agency the first person I ran into was a long-time employee. She took one look at me and said, “WHAT DID YOU DO?”
What did I do? I quickly ran into a bathroom and checked myself in the mirror. Sure enough, I had a dark brown mustache and beard.
For the rest of the day, all my friends would start to talk to me, pause, look at my mustache and beard, and look away and change the subject. When I got home my wife, the beautiful Judy Licht, greeted me with: “WHAT DID YOU DO?”
It’s a disaster. My secret is out. Everyone knows I color my beard. I’m mortified. So if you see this guy with a dark beard and mustache looking like the killer in those old Charlie Chan movies (the killers in those movies all had dark mustaches and/or beards), say hello. It’s me.
If you wish to comment on “Jerry’s Ink,” send your message to [email protected].