A small defiance

You say A, I say Z

This is not about hair.

---

During my second year of lyceum, with a year and a half to graduate, I got expelled for having long hair. I’d grown it nearly to my cheeks.

I was into metal. Still am.

In Cyprus, at least back then, having hair past your eyebrows was a ‘no’. We even had to wear uniforms.

Many tracks to follow during lyceum, I was in the scientific track. The hardest one. For no other reason than I had no clue what interested me and I seemed to pick things up easily.

Got expelled mid-year. Had never been expelled before. Took it to heart. And somewhere between being expelled and being utterly bored with the track I was in, lies the truth behind a decision that ended up shaping my life.

I decided to switch schools and go for another track, Graphic Design. And because of some bureaucratic logic nobody could fully explain, had to repeat a year I’d already done.

Fine. Fuck it.

At least I’ll be learning something I love, and I get to keep my hair.

When at the Technical school, I’d devised a ritual to keep my hair from being spotted during inspections. Yes, we had inspections for hair and uniform. Wtf, right?

Every morning for two and a half years, I performed the same ritual.

Half a tube of gel, sometimes more. Fold the hair into itself, press it flat, smooth the sides down until it looked short enough from a distance. Check the mirror. Try to look at my hair from the side by whipping my head sideways real fast and hoping the mirror was slow to respond. Wish we had mobile phones back then.

OK, hair plastered down, good to go. Motorbike to school, hat on, obviously, to keep hair fixed down.

By my final year, my hair was nearly to my shoulders, give or take an inch.

I was in a band. And my hair was important to me. Being a metalhead gave me an identity when the world had simply shunned me for being different. In metal, I met brothers and sisters who never once labelled me. It’s a family, really.

By then, I had rules. Never with my back to a teacher. Blend into crowds by becoming smaller. School gathering? Stand in front of the tallest school mates. Protect the hair.

And it worked.

Then, senior year, came the uniform inspection.

The vice principal spotted me. He was a nasty bastard. I got expelled for the day.

I went home, slept, went back the next morning exactly the same. Expelled again. Next day, the same.

On the evening of the third day, I threw the gel in the bin. Rode to a friend and got my hair shaved off with his dad’s clippers.

I went to school the next morning. Didn’t report to anyone. Vice-principal came for an inspection, especially for me though.

I can still see his face even now in writing this. He was as pissed off as someone can be. His authority in tatters, the result of some teenager.

After a lot of shouting and calling me some interesting names, he left furious.

I had won. Because there was no rule against having a shaved head.

Sure, my hair was gone, but my identity wasn’t.

---

Fifteen years later I walked into a consultancy job.

I’d been working freelance for many years by then and my hair was an inch and a half long, neat, tidy. Hey, you play the game, sometimes you make some sacrifices.

First day. Walk into the office, an introvert saying hi to everyone.

First ten minutes of being at the office and my boss told me we’re visiting a client. Fuck. OK, I guess.

Got into my boss’s car. On the drive he said two things to me that pissed me the fuck off.

One, why didn’t I bring a notebook and pen with me? Bitch, you literally grabbed me as soon as I got to the office and insisted we leave because we’re running late for the meeting. Whatever. Fine.

And two, my hair was not ‘professional’ enough. Needed to be shorter, more like his, Tony Robbins-esque.

He kept at it for three months. Not aggressive about it, just persistent. Accompanied by a look that made me feel like an idiot for not doing it.

One night I was feeling bad. Whatever I did, I couldn’t shake the nausea that took hold of me when I thought about work the next day.

And (knowing? without knowing?) I got my clippers out from my ‘someday’ drawer and shaved my head.

Calm. I slept well that night.

Went in the next morning to the office with a shaved head. Boss was furious. Called me a variety of names, but names have never hurt me. Plus, he wasn’t really creative on that front. His look was one of contempt, which continued for months whenever he turned his eyes to me.

But I felt… calm.

I got on with work.

---

I’ve spent a long time trying to work out what this actually is.

But it’s not courage exactly.

I’m a quiet rebel. I avoid confrontation more often than I seek it. I absorb a lot of shit I should push back on. I am, by most reasonable measures, a person who accommodates.

But I also have something else in me.

I have some lines drawn in the sand. Ever changing, depending on the situation I’m in. And when someone crosses one, something in me fires that I don’t fully control.

When my sense of autonomy is threatened, when someone tries to take away a freedom or a choice that feels like mine, something instinctive pushes back. Sometimes it pushes back hard.

Sounds about right for me.

If the particular thing in question is personal to me, maybe somehow tied to my identity, then I go extreme opposite.

You say white, I’ll say black. A for you, it’s Z for me.

It’s not always rational. And it’s gotten me in trouble many times, from school all the way until now. I’ve alienated people, I’ve made myself look stupid and unreasonable. Because my beliefs in these situations are more complicated than the positions I’m taking.

I know this about myself. Not proud of it, but not hateful of it either.

Because I know where it comes from.

The hair stories weren’t really about hair.

They were about the one thing I had, that said something true about who I was.

The metalhead, the kid who moved schools every year and lost friends before he’d finished making them, the outcast who found his people in music, not classrooms. In bands full of other people who didn’t fit anywhere and had stopped trying to.

It was an identity that gave me a sense of family and purpose. I belonged to something bigger than me. And that was worth protecting by any means.

You don’t want me to have long hair? I’ll shave it the fuck off. You’ll be pissed but I’ll be fine with my decision, because I’ve taken away your power over me.

It was never about the hair.

---

It’s an annoying reflex to have.

The more we feel like we’re being controlled and attacked, the more this reflex fires off.

And then, what most people see is someone who’s just being contrarian for the sake of it. But it’s not that.

It’s defiance? Strength? Stubbornness wearing strength’s clothes?

I still don’t know the answer to that, if I’m honest. And maybe I don’t care to.

Because for the same amount of times it’s caused me trouble, it also saved me from as many situations that were quietly killing me. Gave me a sense of control back.

I believe every quiet rebel has this. But maybe it’s been conditioned for some. Years of accommodation, of learning that standing up for something gets punished, then makes sense that the reflex will just stop firing. Or if it does, it never registers anymore.

You hand over the hair. You change the thing they wanted to control about you. You tell yourself it didn’t really matter anyway. Maybe it didn’t.

But something goes with it when you do.

I’ve seen what happens to people when it goes quiet.

Some other Quiet Rebel essays you might enjoy:

Jagged

The great disappearing act

One-path maths

Hey dad

Dear you