let’s talk hair: black boy hair

This is a cry for help — in a way.

Somehow, in the middle of the chaos that is my academic schedule at the moment, I have decided to write this piece about my hair even though I have a Geometry in Calculus midterm tomorrow and I am tired of studying but not confident enough in my knowledge to stop studying. But you know, creativity is like a boner, popping out of nowhere unprovoked — sometimes.

Before we talk about hair, I have a confession I must make. And no, it’s not something sinister like farting and not owning up to it, but I have rather a nervous condition, trichotillomania. When I get nervous like while I am studying for this calculus, or when I will be writing the midterm itself, I twist my hair up into knots, tangling them, and then I try to untangle them but pulling the hair forcefully until it pulls out of the root, and there’s hair all over my laptop and exam sheet. It’s something I thought I successfully defeated since September 2020 when I took a gap year and was at peace, but this September, old habits just grew back because of the pressure.

Anybody with black hair — racially, not hair colour — is welcome to give me advice, to get into this conversation on hair, but I want to describe my hair because, of all the black hair types I know, I believe mine is the most undocumented, or one of the most. There is no research, there are no youtube videos, there is nothing. Or have you seen youtube videos of 18-year-old Nigerian boys growing their hair out for the first time? I haven’t. At most, this is low porosity and feels like 4D curls if something like that existed and has refused to grow more than 5 centimetres when stretched and 1.3 centimetres when curled. I come from a generation of men who have only spoken about hair with a blade. My father gets a haircut weekly to keep hair off his head and that’s all I have ever known about hair. It is not as long as my sister’s. She has had hair on her head all of her life, and even though she has also had major chops at some points, she is still conversant with it — I think — but then there is me. I have never had hair on my head for more than three months without getting a haircut, and when I say haircut, I mean taking the hair off. Not bald, of course, but I am trying to grow my hair out right now.

I also don’t have the best hair genetics. I have a willow’s peak and not the best front hair at the sides, but here’s what I have learnt in the last seven months of not vising a barbershop. Hair is like a plant. You’ve got to water and feed it so it grows. To be honest, my hair was healthy in the summer. I even had a tweet about it because I could see myself keeping it, but this bloody West African hair does not understand the weather change in Toronto, and it’s back to square one again. You know, even if I am going to pluck myself bald when I am nervous, at least, when I put my hands into my hair, I should feel it alive and breathing. Alive and breathing hair looks like something lustrous with moisture not begging to be violently itched and standing apart like repelling magnetic poles. Healthy hair should not retract into balls after you do the CCO (Conditioner-Cream-Oil) method every morning and wash day every two weeks. And do you know what irritates me a lot? The height of my seven-month-old hair. I’m far too embarrassed to say the months.

In all honesty, I don’t know if I am exaggerating it as Esan told me when I showed him a picture of my hair, but every time I put my hand in it, this is what I feel. Or maybe that’s the problem — putting my hand in it? The Trichotillomania I am just finding out about this as I write this piece. Maybe I am missing out on a product or two. Maybe someone with 4c curls wants to help? This is a cry for help after all.

note

I am going back to studying now. This is crazy because I have not had time to write for weeks, but suddenly I find time in the midst of chaos to write this week when I shouldn’t. It is Wednesday and I was dozing off on the bus an hour ago before I got home.