My youth was spent amidst the mullet farms of Snohomish, Washington. The “business-in-the-front, party-in-the-back” hairstyle defined Snohomish. And in my hometown, almost every mullet was paired with aggression, small-mindedness and Republicanism. This was a hairstyle that showed you off as an unabashed loudmouth, a likely bigot, and most likely, a raging Van Halen fan.
In order to help me overcome, or at least understand these judgments I held from my youth, I decided I would endure life with a mullet to learn about myself and those I grew up making fun of.
I enlisted the help of a local barber to craft the right mullet. Not the fancy-pants mullet of the Cha Cha, this had to be your classic mechanic or NASCAR mullet to cull a "true" reaction. After deep deliberation, mullet perfection was perched on my skull… and I was ready to try it out.
Outside I immediately felt a wave of power, like I owned the street. As much as I despised the mullet, it came with an overwhelming freedom—a freedom born out of an “I don’t fuckin’ care” attitude. With my new confidence I was, for the first time in my life, tough.
I needed to take a detour to the cheap record store nearby to pick up some music for an event I was DJing. Entering the record store, I made a beeline to a Motley Crue record. Why? Some mysterious force had driven me to this album. And this force took charge as I flipped through the records. By the time I finished shopping, I was the new owner of David Lee Roth, Electric Light Orchestra and the soundtrack to “Rocky IV.” I was ready to rock.
On my walk home a friend of mine was sitting at her window and caught me approaching. I saw her eyeing the back of my head nervously, I was ready for the worst but when I asked for her verdict she responded with, “You look totally butch.” This mullet, a style so hated for most of my life, had given me confidence. It had made me rock, and now it had made me butch. What was happening? What I thought would be brief experiment in torture had been steadily improving my life. I was a new man.
The first negative comment came from the person I’m dating. Upon seeing the “Kentucky Waterfall” on my head, his eyes widened as he said, “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh. My. God. Oh my God. Get out of my house.”
Out at the gay bars the mullet received mixed reviews, but down at Cowgirls, Inc., I was treated with genuine kindness by the girls dancing on the bar in miniskirts. I didn’t feel self-conscious around the cowboys celebrating 21st birthdays. Oddly enough, the place that should have clashed with me the harshest was the place that welcomed me without question.
Thinking back, this disappoints me. I lived through evidence that it is basically our style that separates us. I think I may be keeping the mullet for a while. I want to live as proof that that guy wearing the laughable mullet, the one buying the Van Halen album or the one staring at the sorority girls riding the mechanical bull, just might be some gay dude doing his best to mess up our perceptions on how we judge other people… and their hairstyles.
.
Freddy Molitch, AKA DJ Freddy King of Pants and the Unicorn Girl, is a local playwright and actor. He will be performing as “The Bad Seed”’s Rhoda Penmark in the San Francisco Bay area this fall.
|
