23 Hairpieces

Oh, yeah, our hirsute hippie here is adorned with 23 different hairpieces (trust me, you DO NOT want to see the rest of them!). Indulge yourself by partaking of just the eight different stylings so displayed when this dude is relatively completely robed in one of his habitual hallucinogenic dashikis.

Rodnum Squelch was afflicted young and early with male pattern baldness, as well as a confounding variety of skin and follicle disorders that continually left tufts and trails of his russet body hair wispily trailing after him as he moved about the family’s cramped Brooklyn apartment. Seems that poor Nana Squelch could never completely clear the creaky wood floors, tiled bathroom or drains of Roddy’s clumping red filaments.

So, quite logically and inevitably, young Rodnum — as vain and self-regarding as any other 15-year-old urchin longingly pining for his first date, first kiss, first fondle — developed an avid interest in hairpieces to mend his deficient appearance. No, it was not enough for him to cut out and send away (accompanied by a few hard-earned quarters) the occasional hair restorer coupon found among the back pages of a dog-eared Action Heroes comic. No, Rodnum desired real human hair, preferably strongly stitched to a suitable wearable or adhesive backing, washable, stylable, and preferably in his own distinctive shade of red (though, as the poor boy’s hair loss became ever more complete — causing the sleeping naked child to resemble nothing so much as a pile of pale eggs — he became increasingly unsure of what his own distinctive shade of red had really been).

Rodnum dutifully began with a wig, the sort one buys for meager change at Sol Binsky’s Haberdashery & Hair Haven in the old neighborhood. Cheaply acquired, it was cheaply made, and before long it began, much like its owner, giving up its strands of hair. Within a few short weeks, the cheesy wig was jettisoning whole tufts at a time. (Rod’s little brother Jeromy caught a severe paddling for strutting around his bedroom holding a squarish discarded tuft against his upper lip, shouting “Sieg Heil!”) For his part, Rod shrugged off the loss, since the wig was definitely more Cheetos-orange than russet red anyway, and moved on to his next acquisition.

By overseas mail-order, our determined depilitated friend obtained a fiery henna peruke, much like those worn by the French aristocracy at the time of the Revolution. Swishing and swaggering ‘round his room, he delighted in the long tresses tied at the nape by a sleek black silk ribbon and cascading down his back. That is, until he’d been called Frog just one time too many. The peruke went back onto its plaster headstand and into its original shipping carton, where it remains today.

Ever determined, Rod moved on to periwigs and toupees, hair in a can and woven extensions, braids and falls, hair dickeys and fuzzy codpieces and caveman-like anklets. Over the years, he has glued and reglued eyebrows and soul patches, sideys and forelocks, ‘staches and beards, mullets and mohawks. He’s become quite fond of his current headpiece (though I think it looks like an overgrown and badly yarned yarmulke!).