COMBING THE PAST FOR STRANDS OF TRUTH -

For one reason or another, I've always had an issue with my hair.

When I was a young child, the choice of styling was not my own. My stepfather -- or the barber at my mother's behest -- cut me clean against my wishes. When I was a teenager, the question was whether to wear it short or long. Growing up, I mostly caressed it with thick pomade until the hair finally surrendered, metamorphosing into shiny, dark ripples we called waves. Later, when I left home, the question was whether to conk, clip, creme or curl.

Nowadays, I look in the mirror and consider slapping on the Rogaine. (I figure that if it worked for Utah Jazz forward Karl Malone -- in my opinion nothing short of a miracle given his former state of hairline regression, displayed before a nation -- it ought to work for me.) In the face of continual hair loss, I find myself dwelling on memories of yesterday, when pomade, picks and processors rendered endless possibilities. But I also wonder whether so much fuss over my hair was even worth it -- whether it's just not better to let it go, naturally.

As a teenager, I and just about every other young black man I knew spent hours brushing our uncultured hair and palming in the Murray's, a stiff orange pomade that we'd rub with our hands until it softened up. It bore a sweet manly scent, like Mr. Stewart's Barbershop on 16th Street on the west side of Chicago -- like Old Spice and machine oil.

For the best results, you needed to wet your hair before or after you added the pomade. But not too much. Then you'd run hot water on a towel, wring out the excess and place the steaming towel on your head. Some brothers, myself included, sometimes slept in do-rags or stocking caps, which could be made by snipping an old pair of your mother's pantyhose about calf-high. I'd awake the next morning, get dressed for school and save taking the stocking cap off for last.

"Voila! Good hair!" I'd think to myself, looking admiringly in the mirror at the satin texture spawned by the miracle of pomade and pressure.

It wasn't cool back then to be nappy. A kid with extra-kinky hair was a welcome mat to joning by classmates or other kids in the neighborhood. Being nappy was the next worse thing to being dark-skinned.

"Boy, yo' head so nappy, you tried to comb your hair and the teeth broke."

"Yo' head so nappy that I touched it and cut my hand."

"Yo' head so nappy it look like steel wool."

"Yo' head so nappy . . ."

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My head was nappy.

My sister's woolly inheritance was almost identical to mine, but girls had a way out. The standard of beautification for females allowed for extreme measures considered too effeminate for boys. That meant burning of her hair and application of Royal Crown grease in the kitchen, until the stubborn kinks dissolved under the searing heat of the metal hot comb warmed over an open flame. Occasionally, Mama accidentally singed my sister's neck and ears. But straightening was a necessary evil, and as natural as the curly bangs girls wore to church on Sundays. Well, maybe not natural. But, for some reason, necessary.

Even when we wore Afros, also called "naturals," nappy still was not happening. A thick, cotton-candy-looking 'fro was the target. The proper 'fro, the kind sported by the Jackson 5 and Foster Sylvers, the chiffon, blow-in-the-breeze 'fro, took as much work as waving. You either pulled at it by its roots with the straightening comb, careful not to overcook it, or you went to a barber and asked for a blowout. They even started selling "blowout kits" for the do-it-yourself brothers. The process was the same, except the professionals rendered perfection. The Afro stood at attention, as if each blade of hair had been injected with electricity. The finishing touch was a heaping helping of Afro Sheen spray that made it glisten like a trillion diamonds.

In the midst of the Afro movement came the "butter," also called the "fly." Or it more or less reemerged with a flaming fury. The processing of black hair with chemicals began to gain momentum when "Superfly" hit the big screen. After that it seemed as if every brother in my neighborhood wanted his head "fried, dyed and laid to the side." Brothers basically started hanging out at beauty shops, getting their dos done up in rollers like ladies, sitting under the dryer. My mother wouldn't allow me to perm. She and my grandfather and uncle said it was for sissies. When I went away to college, I couldn't wait to get my hands on a box of chemical relaxer. Feel the burn. Try the fly.

By the time the Jheri and "S" and California and Carefree curls arrived, I was free to indulge without any interference or objections from my mother. But I couldn't see myself wearing one of those obscene plastic shower caps it seemed like everybody was walking around in, especially as a man of the cloth, which I had become by the early '80s. That didn't stop some preachers from donning the drip. I never curled, but did take to using some texturizers, a less extreme chemical enhancer whose purpose ultimately is the same.

At 37, I wonder how much time I have spent over the years on hair. How much burning I have unduly suffered, trying to tame my mane only to watch it ultimately dissolve before my eyes. What bugs me more is that the black cultural fixation on the texture of hair still exists. Dark and lovely still comes in a box. Coarse hair is still called "nappy." And I still watch newborns being unwrapped by their parents only to have their scalps and skin surveyed by family and friends, and the inevitable comment: "Oooh-weee, he's got good hair" or "Oooh-weee, he's got bad hair." It's still almost as bad as being born dark.

It was years before I came to understand the subliminal self-hatred involved in the straightening of black hair, in the ritual altering of one's natural texture, of one's natural-born beauty, for the sake of conformity, social acceptance and a high-maintenance, elusive standard. All at a cost of self-denial. I've seldom seen a white man with an Afro.

Not that straight hair, either purchased or inherited, is bad. Neither is the other. Real beauty runs deeper than one's roots.

Maybe things are changing, in perhaps the same way that we have gone from being Coloreds to Negroes to Afro-Americans to Blacks to African Americans. Nowadays, I see brothers in an assortment of more natural dos: dreadlocks, twists, cornrows, short hair, no hair.

"Rogaine," says Karl "The Mailman" Malone, smiling on the TV. "It delivers for me."

Myself, I figure I've finally got it straight. And natural looks just fine.

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