And When You See My Toupee, You'll Know I'm An Asshole

Me: Once you start thinning up top, you’ve got to cut the hair short immediately.
Friend: That’s what you’d do?
Me: Sure, first I’d cut it short, then eventually shave it off and grow the goatee thicker.
Friend: Really?
Me: Oh, you have to. Without the goatee, people would think I’d contracted cancer.
Friend: Never liked the goatee. You can’t smile with one. If you do, it detracts from the bad-ass look.
Me: Yeah but the comb-over is disastrous. Bald with goatee is the only alternative.
Friend: (long pause) Eh, I think I’d go toupee.
Me: (alarmed) Toupee! Really! You wouldn’t buzz it short?
Friend: (nodding) Nah, I’d definitely go toupee.

The gentleman in the above conversation is educated. Yet he speaks of toupees with great enthusiasm, the kind generally reserved for extolling Prometheus’ gift of fire, the marvel of the wheel, or the delight in watching apes use tools. Tell us, o sage, why any Gen X’er would voluntarily staple, glue, or snap a raccoon hide to his dome without the slightest tinge of hipster irony. It’s less a matter of whether the rodent is half-dead or wounded while it lies atop your skull – sniffing the air while fruitlessly attempting escape – but more an indiscretion of the coif not seen since Phil Spector stuck his licked finger in an electrical socket. Said differently, nothing moves an army of PETA hippies from a cockfight protest to your front stoop faster than a cranial refitting at the taxidermist.

I know what you’re thinking. No one skins a beaver for carpet when they can purchase a synthetic rug, or pave their dome with the real stuff (i.e. a functional weave harvested from the very un-functional fur on one’s ass). But unless you’re attempting coitus in the bathrooms of Atlantic City casino busses, befouling a variety of blue-haired menopausal women who think you’re the second coming of an uber-sexed Tom Jones, anything plugged or stapled to that crown should be shed as quickly as Michael Bolton’s old ponytail. Ranked in the proud company of leisure suits, dickeys, and the Gibb Brothers, the toupee has been passé since the Schlitz-fueled Disco Sucks riots at Comiskey Park. Put simply, the man favoring a faux Blagojevich pelt is the man diddling himself in your supermarket produce aisle. And the man diddling himself is most likely on a sex offender registry somewhere, revving his engine outside schoolyards with a trunk-load of Pez dispensers. To avoid this fate, The Bastard recommends an electric clipper set as an alternative to the child molestation van (the one with the single teardrop window) that you’ll be forced to buy after succumbing to the headstrong fashion sins of 1975.

Of course, toupee amnesty is granted for those at the upper end of the baby boomer spectrum, not to mention the incontinent senior population and those suffering from dementia. If grandpa wants to use the extra Poligrip to fasten a strip of fleece over his head, then he’s climbed enough mountains to have earned that privilege. But you, if you’re watching raccoons scamper across the driveway and thinking “luxuriant wig” instead of “cover the garbage can,” I recommend psychiatric analysis. Or full residency in the casino bus bathroom.