By  “Eagle”

    This story took place my junior year at UCLA. There were 4 of us sharing an apartment near campus.  We got along very well and did almost everything togerher – bar hopping, parties, football games, etc.  One of my roommates, David had long, thick, wavy brown hair.  Todd, another roommate, had a younger brother starting at USC, our rival school – which did not bother him or us for that matter, at all.  We were constantly driving across town to visit and hang out, and he’d drop by regularly with his friends at our place.  They were students, we were students, there was a lot more in common to keep us together as friends than apart as cross town rivals (at least until the big football game between UCLA and USC).

     David and Todd shared a room, Andre and I shared the other bedroom.  I had known David and Todd since junior high, Andre we met our freshman year in the dorms.  He was from New Orleans, we were from San Diego.  He & I  - black, David & Todd - white (not an issue, but important to understanding the prank).  More background – I was beginning to go bald, my forehead was growing faster than my hair and I was kind of sensitive about it.  I was only 21, and it was pretty clear that before 25 my forehead would probably reach my crown.  David was always on my case about it and was always telling me to shave my head – “You’d look better.  Its not like you’ve got nice hair (like his, which he’d also point out).  That  I had nappy “black” ugly hair (which Andre didn’t – he had soft curls, almost straight) and that my scalp was showing through in the front anyway.”  Eventhough he was probably right, his comments did not sit well with Andre or me.

    A few weeks prior to the big game Todd’s brother and friends went out drinking with us.  We got a little bombed and a little riled up about who’d win the game - I suggested that we bet our hair on the game (I was actually curious about shaving my head and didn’t have the nerve to actually go and do it, and I thought that this would be a great excuse, and ”misery loves company”).  Anyway we agreed that the guys from the losing school would be shaved at the after game party at the winning school.  A couple of days later I mentioned the game to David and said that I hope that we win cause I didn’t want us to have to shave our heads.  David chimed in that I’d look 100% better “completely” bald, but that he also didn’t remember joining in this stupid bet (he was drunk – he had really low tolerance for liquor and would usually just pass out of fall asleep after a few drinks) and that he wouldn’t be shaving his head no matter what happened with the game.  The three of us tried to convince him that he’d have to if we lost, but we got nowhere, he said that he wasn’t shaving his “beautiful hair” under any condition.

    The big game arrived, UCLA lost to USC.  Todd, Andre, and I went over to USC for our “punishment” as agreed (I was pleasantly surprised by how much better I did look completely bald, David had been right – at least something good came out of our loss).  We apologized for David and vowed that to restore our “honor” we’d somehow make him into a “baldy” as well.  David had avoided us before the game, during the game, and after the game he immediately left to visit with his family.  So we had to devise a plan.

     David had a “hair regime” that entailed a monthly treatment of putting a cream masque on his hair, covering it with a plastic bag, and then wrapping his head with a towel.  He looked pretty bizarre for he few minutes that he walked around the apartment like that, but it did work cause he did have very nice hair.  Anyway, we decided that we’d mix “Magic Shave”, a razor-free shaving product for blacks, with the masque.  Andre and I had been using this stuff for awhile anyway and we decided that the next time David masqued his hair (usually on a Fri. afternoon after classes) we’d apply “Magic Shave” (me to the head as well as my face) so that the strong odor wouldn’t strike him as strange.  I had started to do this every Friday anyway to keep by head smooth.

    The day finally came I had already finished, my “bald” look was fresh, when David put our doctored masque on his hair, covered it all up and then plopped on the sofa to have a beer with me.  He’d obviously forgotten all about our little bet – time had past and we had said nothing to him about it.  I don’t think that he suspected a thing (truthfully, we thought that he’d leave the stuff on for such a short time that there’d be a few bald patches, or thin spots and therefore he’d have to shave the rest – like we had done after the game, we really diden’t expect anything drastic – nothing permanent).  We were sitting on the couch watching TV and drinking beers.  David didn’t seem to be all that eager to rinse the masque out of his hair.  I began to worry, after about 20 minutes I said – “shouldn’t you rinse that stuff out of your hair?”  He said “no hurry, you can’t over condition hair.”  He kept watching TV and drinking beer after beer – “he wasn’t feeling any pain.”  He was so bombed that I wasn’t even sure if he’d be able to get into the shower in order to rinse the stuff out.  I didn’t know what to do and kept dropping hints.  I even said that the smell of the masque was beginning to get to me.  He retorted that the place smelled so bad from my “black stuff” that I had no right to complain (he had it right on his head, but he thought the smell was from me using it earlier).  I was at wits end, after more than an hour he appeared to be dozing off.  I had to do something, I couldn’t let him fall asleep with that stuff on his hair, so I went over and snatched off the towel.  It all came off, all of his hair was either in the plastic bag or laying limply unattached on his scalp, face, & shoulders.  His scalp was smooth, smooth, smooth – no trace of hair, no roots, no follicles - just smooth red skin.  I felt awful.  He still wasn’t aware of what had happened.  I started to clean off his head with the towel.  Suddenly he jerked awake, apparently by the strange sensation of the towel on his now bald head.  He ran his hand over his head in shock & ran for the mirror.  A sound somewhere between a moan and a scream came out of the john.  He couldn’t believe that he was completely without hair on his head, and he was also in a lot of pain.  The stuff had been left on far too long and his scalp looked red and raw.  Touching it caused him to wince.  I decided to rush him to the ER in order to find someway to neutralize the “Magic Shave”.  I had to confess to him what we had done to the masque, and got slugged more than a few times on the way to the hospital.  He was so uncomfortable that I felt like dirt.  I was bald too, but with “Mother Nature’s” assistance & it was a lot more of a “main stream” look on blacks than whites at the time.

    It’s a good thing that we’re such good friends and that he happens to look great bald, because the skin doctor says that his hair will not come back in like normal hair.  That if any hair does grow back it’ll be much finer and fuzzier, and only in areas that weren’t totally inundated with the stuff, like around his ears and his nape, but that even in those areas it wasn’t very likely.

     David took it well, better than I would have in his position.  His girlfriend actually prefers it,  She says that it looks good and that his hair doesn’t get in the way anymore.  He did get in another black jibe by saying to me, “at least I get my ‘Mr. Clean’ look without having to use that smelly black stuff like you do”.  I told him that now we look like a set of salt and pepper shakers, and we laughed.  The 3 of us  - Todd, Andre and me vowed to him that we’d stay permanently bald (I didn’t have much choice) because of what we’d done to him.

     Now 14 years later we are still very close and are always together.  “Bald” seems to be the most popular haircut around for whites as well as blacks.  I sure hope that long hair stays out of fashion, just to relieve my sense of guilt for what we did to David – eventhough he’s quite happy with it, I still feel bad.  By the way, his 11 yr. old son recently shaved his head in order to look like the four of us (and half the boys in his class are also “baldies”).  Thank God that its not the ‘80s anymore!