E-Mail This Article to a Friend Hair today, gone tomorrow As my bald spot grows, the stages of grief set in BY ALAN OLIFSON

The first time I really noticed, I was on a lunch break, so there was no time for blow-drying. Plus, I didn’t want to go back to the office with the disaster of a post-salon ’do this hairdresser usually fashions — with a blinding flurry of gels, pinching fingers, and unnecessary blow-dryer attachments, she somehow always manages to create a style that is simultaneously sticky, pointy, and feathered. So I politely waved off the incoming hair-product assault. Always the professional, though, she insisted on putting me through the final flourish, the universal signal that your haircut experience is complete: the chair spin. Placing her small, inexplicably puka-shell-lined mirror in my left hand, she gave the chair a dramatic push from the wrist, revealing —

Holy crap!

Going bald, like death, comes in stages. This haircut marked the official end of my Denial. There, framed in puka shells, was the unmistakable beginning of the classic Friar Tuck bald spot.

I was only 27, yet all my dreams of sleeping with a supermodel vanished in that instant. "This is it," I thought. "Time to settle down before it’s too late." In reality, I had started losing my hair a few years earlier, when I was around 25, but I’d just refused to notice. Instead, I spent those intervening two years wondering why all the pictures of me seemed to be taken in such bad lighting — which often turned out to be the sun.

Back in college I had thick, wavy brown hair that tumbled all the way down to my shoulders, where it would curl up and rest on the flowered vest I threw on over my vintage concert T-shirt. It was the late ’80s and I haven’t the space or perspective to defend my fashion sense — let’s stay focused on the hair. I have wondered, though, usually while waiting in line at the Gap, if my hair is falling out because I now wear blank, solid-color Ts. Is it possible that hair follows fashion sense? That, for every thrift-store bowling shirt I replace with a sensible, solid-color oxford, I lose volume? That anytime I buy something you could describe as "slacks," my widow’s peak rises?

Okay, fine, maturation of the fashion sense probably doesn’t cause balding. But as I continued to lose hair, I couldn’t help but feel as if every day I was losing a little bit more of my youth. And then, every few weeks, I had to pull big, sticky clumps of my youth out of the shower drain, which, let me tell you something, is no way to see your youth.

As you can well imagine, it wasn’t long before Anger set in. For me, anger originally manifested itself as an unhealthy obsession with other men’s hair. A simple walk to buy coffee left me feeling trapped in some horrible romantic-comedy montage of men and their hair. Everywhere I looked: guys frolicking with their hair blowing in the wind; guys carelessly brushing hair away from their faces as they threw back their heads in laughter; guys shampooing their hair — okay, I didn’t actually see a lot of shampooing, but it was definitely implied by the amount of sheen. I also went through a month-long period where nothing upset me more than the sight of a man with a full head of thick hair and a bad haircut. It was as if he were mocking me, like a fat man throwing out half a ham sandwich in front of a homeless shelter.

I decided to take action: action involving bleach. Since college — along with toning down my wardrobe and Natural Light intake — I had mellowed my haircut, opting for a shorter, bed-head kind of affair. I thought moderating the color contrast between my scalp and my hair would somehow make everything okay.

Bargaining had begun.

Not ready to admit I was bleaching my hair to cover up baldness, I convinced myself this new look would be edgy and hip. Well, as any man who has ever bleached his hair can attest, there is nothing edgy or hip about sitting in a salon for four hours under a big grandma-style hairdryer reading Cosmo. Especially when you fail the "Know Your Man" quiz.

Predictably, Depression followed the dye job. I mean, who was I kidding? A 30-year old man with bleached hair? Why not just get DESPERATELY CLINGING TO YOUTH tattooed around my biceps?

Back in high school, when I pictured myself as an adult, I imagined myriad occupations: astronomer, comedian, high-flying advertising executive (I had a staggeringly naive misunderstanding of what being an advertising executive actually entailed). But regardless of what I saw myself doing, I was always doing it with a full head of hair. And while none of those teenage dreams has exactly panned out, letting go of my hair has proven the most difficult. After all, my other dreams haven’t really died, they’ve just been put off. "When I’m 40." "When I’m 50." Soon retirement will become the repository for all my unfulfilled adolescent fantasies (high-flying advertising exec not withstanding). But no amount of patience, hard work, or Keeping Your Hair for Dummies books will ever bring back my thick, curly mane. I have no choice but to Accept it.

Now I just remember to close my eyes during the final chair spin.

The follicle-challenged Alan Olifson can be reached at alan@olifson.com