Magical Thinking - Augusten Burroughs [23]
I continued watching, and this compelling montage of mens’ foreheads turned out to be an infomercial for a doctor specializing in “hairline-rejuvenation surgery.” This phrase was repeated over and over, in every possible context. “Many of our patients resume their active lifestyles just two days after hairline-rejuvenation surgery,” and “even during intimate moments, Dr. Sisal’s hairlinerejuvenation surgery is completely undetectable.” I figured the reason they kept using this phrase was to distance this procedure from the dreaded “hair transplant,” which everybody knows results in a head that looks as though it belongs on a doll.
Just as I was about to change the channel, having satiated my unexpected need to gorge on men’s foreheads, they showed a series of before-and-after images.
These were truly remarkable. I put the remote control down, fluffed the pillows, and leaned back on the bed. Men who were once balder than me were now standing before a mirror and running a comb through their thick hair, smiling confidently at their own reflections. One man was shown blow-drying his hair and using a round vent brush.
I nearly wept. I used to own a vent brush! I owned three different-sized vent brushes!
This was the “get on all fours and get banged like a bitch!” porn equivalent for bald guys.
The perfectly named Dr. Sisal explained that he used a magnifying glass during the procedure. I could relate to this. I used a magnifying glass myself at least once a month to monitor my Rogaine progress. The doctor then explained that the patient is given a local anesthetic, and “donor” hair is taken from the back of the head and placed in “micro grafts” to the front of the head. These micro grafts were the secret, Dr. Sisal said. Instead of transplanting clumps of hair to the front, creating an obvious rug, by implanting hairs individually he was able to achieve a “natural appearance that gives you the confidence to participate in any activity you wish.”
The idea was thrilling, because the activity I wished to participate in was standing in front of the mirror and applying large gobs of hair gel.
While I’d wasted my life writing misleading ads for potatoes and engineered butter substitutes, people with graduate degrees had cured baldness!
I ordered the video: $9.95 plus shipping and handling. When it arrived a week later, I watched it immediately. And I was crushed. Unlike the infomercial, which featured upbeat, synthesized music and lots of shots of hairy-chested men leaping out of pools, the video had a more somber, homemade feel. It was an assembly of interviews between Dr. Sisal and some of his former “clients.”
Here, there was no fancy, professional lighting, no music track, no busty blonde eager to run her fingers through any man’s hair.
These men sat at their own kitchen tables, beneath overhead fluorescent lights. On the wall behind one guy was a red plastic clock shaped like a cat. The eyes moved from side to side with the seconds. The men spoke in monotone of their experience at Dr. Sisal’s clinic and how “happy, yeah, really positive” they felt now, with full heads of hair.
But the persuasion was gone.
In this video, all the clients looked like what they were: middleaged bald guys who had chunks of hair cut out from the back of