Dilbus
I had a mohawk when we first hit the road to Santa Cruz where, my friend Ori believed, his next big romance waited with open arms. We spent days winding slowly through the west Texas desert, stopping every fifteen minutes or so to make sure we read every single historical marker along the way. At night we threw open the tailgate on his aging Ford F150 pickup, filled the back with old brightly colored Mexican blankets, and slept under the stars.
Somewhere at the very start of the journey I decided it was time for a change and chopped my mohawk haircut down to a tiny sprout that sprung up like a leak from the top of my head. I had recently quit my job and so any weak remnants of constraint brought on by the corporate world were dropped with those locks into a bathroom trash can. The mohawk could still be left down to, in some ways, resemble normal hair. The sprout protruding from my barren dome left little doubt as to my general abnormality.
My plan for the new hair was to ultimately grow it into a kung fu-esqe braid, giving me a somewhat funky style and yet leaving me with hair that could easily be cut by my friends in the back yard. This would also forever free me from the oppressive hair stylist corporate machine, breaking the cycle of endless haircuts they used to keep me paying into their scheme. This was the plan, but the little braid I began to call a “dilbus” grew to be so much more…
Several years earlier I had experimented with purple hair. At first I styled it very normally, and even showed up at work in a three piece suit the first day. Two girls I didn’t know well were struggling visibly to contain themselves when they saw me. They finally let loose when a friend came into the room and immediately broke into laughter, thus making it OK. What could they have been thinking? That I was somehow taking myself seriously and would be offended that they were laughing at my bright purple hair?!
They proved to be the exception and I quickly learned the value of making a visible statement that I was, in effect, clowning and therefore ready and willing to be interacted with. People would chat with me on the street, or come up and ask me about it at clubs. As someone who loves people, but sometimes has trouble starting conversations, this was solid gold.
The dilbus followed much the same principle and I can’t be happier with the results. People remember me. Strangers come over to greet me on the street. Little kids go nuts when I dance and spin it around my head. It’s the ultimate conversation piece, and always leads to more interesting interaction. In one of my favorite and most extreme examples, I was buying a hard drive at a chain store. The experience was typically cold and lifeless until I got to the register, where the girl working it leapt up over the counter, gleefully tossled my hair and shouted, “wow no way what is this?!”
In keeping with the tradition of having friends be involved in the process, the dilbus has also become a canvas for artists. It’s been dozens of tiny braids, several forked braids, intricate weaves, the shape of a cube, a tree, and even a crazy glowing sculpture covered with dangling, glowing rings. It even once served as a gesture of truce when someone with whom I was experiencing a bit of tension and conflict offered to take a minute to rebraid it. That quiet moment between us conveyed so much that couldn’t be spoken at the time.
My bicycle helmet has a special hole through the top for the dilbus. It’s actually how a friend of mine recognized me when we first met formally. “Hey, you’re that guy that bikes through campus with the crazy braid!” Hats are a different story, though, and despite how much I like wearing them I don’t think I’ve ever done it without having at least one person have a nervous breakdown. “Where is it? I can’t see it! Did you cut it off?!” Maybe I need a little sign for my hats, “dilbus inside”.
For now I can’t foresee the day when it too will pass, but there are plenty of angry girlfriends with scissors between now and my ultimate demise. Until then when you ask me how it’s hangin’, I’ll always know what you mean.
RSS
thank you for the excellent display of my portfolio to the right (minus the last shot).
Ah, okay, so it’s not fake. Glad to clear that up.