MULLET-OUS: Part II: "My Face Is About to Explode"

Things were slightly better in Mullet-ville after a dismal sophomore year of high school. There are, however, a couple of things that can be discerned from Mullet Portrait #2:

1. It's still the same essentially mullet; in fact, I'm not someone who changes my hairstyle all too often. I've had the same haircut, varying in length, for the past 12 years or so. There was a brief period, circa 2003-05, where I bought hair-clippers and buzzed my head, but, as you might expect, I looked like a guy who should ride the little bus. Unless a male---especially Caucasian males---is going bald and trying to work with baldness, he should not shave his head. Ultimately, it looks bad, grows back into Chia-hair, and seems largely unnecessary unless you're a.) in boot camp b.) serving our country in a Middle-Eastern desert, or c.) part of the Aryan Nation. The only thing worse is "cop hair," which is the close buzz with a little pubic patch on top. I digress.

2. The blue sweater, which I rocked for the next decade, is a step up from the sad shower curtain-patterned shirt, unbuttoned halfway to expose my pasty white hairless chest, in Mullet Portrait #1.

3. I'm almost smiling. This can only mean one thing: There was a female insane enough to let me touch her boobs.

However, despite advances toward becoming a semi-tolerable member of the human race, my acne became an indefatigable force on my face, shoulders, and back. For the next two years, I would see a dermatologist, a short man shaped like a weeble with a creepy Hitler 'stache, who tried everything known to modern medicine at the time to clear it up. Finally, I decided to take Acutane, which was like taking daily napalm pills that nuked my skin from the inside out. I had a six-month sunburn, but it did the trick and my skin cleared before I left for college.

Yes. Things were slightly better, but the mullet was also starting to lose popular favor as Grunge music, flannel shirts, and the spider-plant---sometimes referred to as "half-a-hippie"--- hairstyles [edit: for those of you who don't remember, you shaved the sides and back while the you grew the top long, long, long) became the rage. I would eventually grow the spider plant, but only after grudgingly giving up my mullet, two years later.

So take it in, folks. While certainly not the most ostentatious mullet (it's no Kentucky Waterfall), it's clear that I partied while getting my business done. And look at that shit-eating grin. I have a mullet and I'm modestly happy. It only goes to show you what I complete idiot I was. Am.

Someone call the little bus.