Once upon a time in Mexico...er..Mahon

My hair has become a minor celebrity.

Specifically, where I work alongside the other red shirted, tortured souls in a non specific cinema in Cork. I'd like to think my managers will spot this and give out to me for my blog, so I'm going to be very vague in order to frustrate their amateur attempts at intrusive censorship.

But to business. I'm generally known as the guy with the longest hair now, though this was not always so. The other lads at work seem to think that being presentable and neat will somehow either (a) get them laid more often or (b) that a passing recruitment agent for their dream job will like the cut of their jib and give them an obscenely well paid job being the office IT monkey.

Stoically shouldering the burden of being the last one in possession of a mane, I pressed on growing it. It got longer. Recently, I've rather tired of it nearly blinding me at inopportune moments and generally looking shit after breaking a sweat, I've started tying it back. The Samurai Jack top knot was quickly deemed a no-go.

I was absolutely terrified of doing so in public, because when you try something new in front of your fellow sarcastic males, you'll get a severe ribbing at best. This is nothing compared to the quietly mocking eyes of the women I work with. The spectre of their disdain has put me off doing it for a while now, but there's only so much being half blinded while working and generally looking like Chewbacca's stoner brother I could stand.

My faithful cohort Tom was the first to witness it. I selected Tom for two reasons. Firstly, he's honest, but would spare my feelings as much as possible while telling me if I resembled a horrifying vision of a Wookie lady-boy. Secondly, being a man, I can hit him without feeling bad if he didn't spare my feelings.

People at work, while initially laughing heartily and making me very close to fleeing the scene and abandoning it altogether, actually became fascinated. Tom even went to so far as to say I was rocking the ponytail.

After I had bruised his arm sufficiently, there came the unexpected compliments. Also, one person telling me I looked totally different, but in a fairly good way. Confidence peeked out from behind the bunker I'd constructed out of feeble justifications and Fuck You's.

The guys, never wanting to miss a good slagging opportunity, and far be it from me to deny them, instantly started speculating which celebrity I looked most like.

My worst nightmare was amongst them.

"You look like Johnny Logan."

"...What?"

"You know, the Eurovision guy! What's Another Year and all that."

Sweet Jesus.

This was easily (and hurriedly) fixed by wrangling wayward strands back from whence they came.

It gets better!

One of the lads, shit eating grin in tow informed me that he and the cabal of five or six guys that make up the "This is your nickname" clique had decided on someone infinitely classier, but no less stomach churning... That's right.

Ron Jeremy.

After I'd fought off the urge to vomit, I ceded I do wear a red shirt at work....

The last one came from the female quarter, who decided I looked somewhat Iberian, and to be fair my colouring suggests a lost soldier from the Spanish Armada stumbled into the gene pool at some point.

With cries of Olé! they dubbed me Antonio Banderas.

I admit it- I was more than a little chuffed as I thought to myself-

"Now that's more fucking like it!"

The people whose opinions I was dreading most, turned out the most favourable.
Stick that in your freakishly sized pipe and smoke it, Ron.