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I’ve been a skinhead now for fifteen months now and figured I’d share my experience with the millions who read this blog.  For riding motorcycles with a helmet, I cannot imagine it getting any better.  No helmet hair and maximum ventilation.  The down side is that there is no sweat barrier called hair.  If you sweat, it gets soaked up by the helmet liner / sponge.

After over a year of trouble-free skinheadedness (that’s my copyrighted word and if you want to use it send me $1), I had my first run in with Mr. Murphy’s law.  See, I’m in Japan meeting all new folks since taking on a different role within my job.  First impressions are important to make in any relationship, so I figured I would start with a clean shave.

My blades to my razor were dull and I had no new ones left, but fortunately the hotel room was equipped with a disposeable unit.  Whew.  That’s a helluva lot easier than looking for a Mach 3 blade when I’m a stranger in a strange land.  Life is good.

Monday morning rolls around and I jump in the shower to wash up and shave.  Yes, I know its too much info, but I shave my skull in the shower.  No razor burn ever.  Even though I would like to think that the skin on my head is as soft as a baby’s ass, it’s not.  I have guy skin - bumpy, hairy, guy skin.  I am all that is man.

Everything is going well in the skull shaving until I fell this small sting on the side of my skull above and behind my left ear.  I do a blood check, and a little but no big deal.  I continue to shave my head and low and behold, ten seconds later I have a stream of blood running down my chest.  WTF?  I look in the mirror, and there is a river runnig off that little area that is stinging.  I shaved a layer or two right off my head about 1/2″ long by 3/16″ wide (sorry for the metric folks).

It was a gusher. 

So I decide to try to quickly finish up before I pass out due to blood loss.  Up until this very moment, I also had a mole on the back of my neck.  I felt another stinging sensation and no longer felt that mole.  It was time to “STEP AWAY FROM THE RAZOR”.  So now I am hemmoraging from two locations and have about an hour to stop the bleeding. 

It took fifty-nine minutes of toilert paper stacks stuck to my head (changing the dressing every five minutes) and a wad of toilet paper in my pocket to get things under control.  I decided that I would wear a dark golf shirt for the day, too bad that I did not bring my red Red Wings shirt - that would have been perfect.

After a couple days and a couple of transfusions, all is well.  I’m a little pissed, because my molectomy seems to be only temporary (its growing back damnit).  I feel bad for the hotel cleaning lady as my pillow case had blood spots all over it.  She earned her money this week. 

I was definitely in no condition to wear a helmet on Monday morning.  Even though no one else uses my helmet, that’d be gross as hell to bloody up my helmet liner.  To date, its the only time I’ve FUBAR’d my head.  It in no way has changed my opinion of being hairless.  I’m brave…I know.

At the very least, I am one who can laugh at myself when something stupid happens.  New sharp higher grade razors - GOOD; New (friggin’ jaggety edged, but still sharp) disposeable razors - the Great Satan of proper scalp maintenance.  It’s all fun and games until you cut your epidermis out.