The Fugue

Reports of me regrowing my hair have been greatly exaggerated. Fact is, I went about a week or maybe two and decided I really like being bald, and haven’t looked back since.

Not long after I really got the hang of using the HeadBlade, and shaving every day if I so choose isn’t a big deal. I sometimes skip a day or even two, but usually I shave every day.

If you’re getting started with the HeadBlade, or thinking about it, here’s some tips.

First, prep is important. I get my head wet with hot water when I first step into the shower, and keep it wet with an occasional splash while I do the whole washing thing. Then I lather up some shaving soap (rubbing it right on my pate) until it’s good and slick.

Using the HeadBlade is basically like they say in HeadBlade 101. I would just mention that if you have been shaving your face with a safety razor or a straight razor, “no pressure” is actually an overstatement. You need some pressure on the front—just enough to keep contact with the skin, no more—otherwise you don’t shave anything. Compared to how most guys shave, this really does feel like “no pressure.” If at any time you get razor burn or uncomfortable chafing, you probably used too much pressure. If you go over and over your head and nothing happens, you used too little.

The real key to the HeadBlade is not using the blades they sell for it. Because of the way the HeadBlade works, which is very similar to properly using a safety razor (it’s all about angle), the more blades you have the worse shave you get. Your head is bumpy, and to fit the curves you need a VW bug not a Cadillac. More blades will just make the shave rougher and less close. It’s also important to steer clear of those rubber things they put on most fancy cartridge blades because they act like brakes forcing you to use more pressure on the front.

They don’t make cartridges with just one blade, that I have been able to find, so you’ll have to use two blades. Fortunately the ones that work best are also the cheapest. There are two options: the Atra blades and the Sensor blades (not Sensor Excel). The Atra are cheaper (especially the knock-offs, like the Personna, which works fabulously) but they tend to clog easier (the back isn’t open) and the blades don’t flex like the Sensor blades do. But they work much better than the fancy rubber bumper triple blade cartridges. I’ve had good luck with the Sensor blades but my sensor adaptor broke and I have to order a new one, and the Personna Atra-compatible blades are so cheap I had to see how they worked. They give me an excellent close shave with little effort, just like the Sensor blades, and they’re cheaper.

So if you found the HeadBlade lacking, try another blade. Any Atra or Sensor compatible blade works (with the adaptors included in the HeadBlade package), and if you have a favorite for your face try it in the HeadBlade, but do try one with only 2 blades and no rubber bumper because I think you’ll be amazed.

Some of you may be experiencing baldness vicariously through me. I’m happy to be of service, but after two weeks I decided to abandon total baldness.

It’s not that I don’t like it—I do. It’s not even that Erin doesn’t like it—she likes it well enough much to her surprise. There is really only one reason, which I’ll give at the end. But while we’re at it let’s list all the pros and cons.

First the pros. Being bald is fun. Your hair doesn’t get messed up. Looks good.

The cons? It can be a little chilly. (Of course you can wear a hat or live somewhere mild like Las Cruces and then it doesn’t matter.) People look at you funny at first. All of a sudden some of your clothes aren’t tough enough. If you wear glasses, pencils don’t stay behind your ears anymore. Except when freshly shaved your head is like velcro, making putting on a T-shirt an interesting exercise.

Although the cons are more numerous, the pros outweigh them easily, I think. But this final con tipped the scaled just enough for me, at this time in my life.

If I’m going to be bald, I’m going to do it right. I had hoped I could get away
with shaving 1–2 times a week. But it quickly became apparent that I had to
shave every day to keep a smooth dome. That second day your head is like
sandpaper. After that things soften up a bit, but then you don’t look bald
anymore. So it’s either have sandpaper head 50% of the time or shave every day.

At first it took me half an hour at least to shave, but I was quickly getting
faster. Still, I didn’t want to go through the effort every day, so once the
novelty wore off I decided to let it grow in and just keep it buzzed. From time
to time when I get the whim I’ll probably shave it, maybe keep it that way for
a week or two, then let it grow back out. The funny thing is that you can go
from bald, which turns lots of heads, to not-bald, which flies under the radar
of all but the most conservative, in just 1 week. If you’ve been thinking of
going bald, give it a try!

As for the actual shaving, I first tried the safety razor. It worked well enough on the front and sides, but it took a long time. On the back, I didn’t feel I knew my head well enough and switched to a cartridge blade. A week in I picked up a HeadBlade at Walgreens (on sale) and gave that a try. It worked alright but not as well as I hoped. After practicing with each method the safety razor was the best and fastest method, with the HeadBlade a close second. For a “velcro” shave the headblade is the fastest, but at least with the cartridge that came with it, it wasn’t exceptionally close. For a close shave the safety razor was the best, and once I figured out the curvature not very slow. I noticed that my head is much less sensitive than my face and can take a bit more aggressive shave, as long as I respect the curves. Which reminds me, the HeadBlade people say you need to not push down. That’s probably true for normal people, but for people used to shaving with a safety razor, you *do* need to push down more than you’re used to. If you use the same light touch you use with your safety razor it won’t cut a thing.

In the end I was doing a quick with-the-grain pass with the headblade, then using the safety razor to do an against-the-grain pass on the top, and across-the-grain on the sides and back. I rarely got the back close enough to do an against-the-grain pass with anything, though I could probably achieve it with practice. The HeadBlade was particularly useless against the grain in the back, due to a ridge at the base of my skull.

Would I recommend a HeadBlade for a full-time baldy? Definitely. If nothing else for those days when you’re in a rush and just need to get an OK shave real quick. But really, at $10 it’s hard to not give it a try. Might make a good suggestive stocking stuffer for the not-yet-bald in your life.

Will I go bald again? Definitely. Unless my hair happens to fall out uniformly across the top in a nice Picard look. I can’t abide the combover or the little patch of hair at the front. Total baldness is a great alternative.

Well, the time finally came and so my hair went. Involuntarily, this time.

Now, these pictures aren’t very high resolution so you may not be able to tell, but this first shave isn’t particularly close. Even then it took awhile to do. I’m going to shave it every day until I get a reasonably close shave (I’m thinking tomorrow I should get pretty close), then I’ll take some higher-resolution pictures and wear something more tough-looking, so you can all feel properly intimidated.

I mostly used a 2-blade cartridge razor, but I was getting annoyed with it doing basically nothing and tried switching to the safety razor a few times. This worked well on the parts I could see in the mirror, but it would take some practice to be able to shave the back with a safety razor because you have to get the angle right and some foresight on the upcoming curves helps a lot.

The HeadBlade seems to be popular for getting a good and quick shave. It’s only $13 and my local WalGreens has it, so if I decide to stick with it I may not be able to resist trying it out (it’s called Brush/Soap/Razor Acquisition Disorder). The downside would of course be that it uses expensive cartridges and there’s something like 3x as much hair on your pate as your face. DE blades are much cheaper in the long haul. I wonder if there is a HeadBlade DE adapter…

Here we are at the final step before total shine, 1/8 inch, a.k.a. a #1 guard (and a couple days growth). Note the goatee which is the same length as the pate hair.

These pictures are actually a few days late—it’s a quarter inch and about 5 days growth. So probably somewhere between a quarter inch and 3/8 inch. It was a number 2 guard. In a few days we’ll go to 1/8 inch!

So here’s my hair buzzed to 1/2 inch:

How low can he go?

So I decided to cut my hair progressively shorter and take pictures for the benefit of DIY hairstylists everywhere. These pictures are with a number 8 clipper guard (one inch).

More pictures here.

This style could work pretty well, actually, with the sides and back shorter. But
tomorrow (or soon), we’ll go shorter.

Coincidentally, less than an hour after I cut my hair to one inch all around because of androgenic alopecia, a link to this article came up in my feed reader this morning. Apparently they have found the genetics that cause it. As I understand the article, there are two genetic variants (which they just discovered) on chromosome 20, which when combined with the one they already knew about on the X chromosome (which you get from your mother), increases your chances of going bald sevenfold.

If you have both the risk variants we discovered on chromosome 20 and the unrelated known variant on the X chromosome, your risk of becoming bald increases sevenfold.”

Does this mean you have to get genes from both parents to be bald? What if you don’t have the one on the X chromosome but you get the ones on chromosome 20 from your dad? Well, as you can see this report of the findings isn’t very enlightening, but it does tell us that yes if your mom’s dad and brothers are bald you have increased “risk” (so no, contrary to what you might have read (but probably haven’t), it’s not a myth), but just because your mom’s dad isn’t bald doesn’t mean you might not be.

My hair on top has thinned to the point that my old standby hairstyle is now dysfunctional. So now I have to decide what to do. Should I shave it? Buzz it? Grow it long? Short but not quite buzzed? If you have any idea (as if anyone cares) now is the time to weigh in.

Pictures of the situation are here.