To tell you the truth, I shaved my head out of plain old necessity. I was too broke to perm it anymore and too afraid to experiment with a home kit and do it myself. Besides, every other anybody I knew was a rude boy, a skinhead or a punk, so being bald wasn't that big of a deal.

I liked punk because it was everything rock and roll was supposed to be, but wasn't: loud and violent and colorful and angry, and dangerous. I didn't get any of that when I listened to Van Halen or Aerosmith. I listened to that stuff, too, but it never scared me, not like the Dictators or The Damned. I didn't know as much as everyone else did about its history or its major players or anything like that. I wasn't there in Max's Kansas City in the '70s with Lou and Nico and Iggy, but I didn't feel that I had to be for my punk experiences to be valid. Punk augmented my everyday life. Lots of people were in punk bands, practicing all the time, doing shows. Bands like The Fleshtones and the Cramps came through every so often. The Butthole Surfers lived in a big house across town. The Red Hot Chili Peppers were playing tiny hole-in-the-wall places like The Continental Club when no one knew who they were. Fishbone was an event. The entire campus would shut down when they showed up.

So punk rock was a cool way for me to not only deal with my black girl hair issues, my black girlness, period. Once my hair was gone, all of the guilt of not having been that kind of female went with it: the kind that sleeps in silk scarves and never perspires, the kind that is demure and feminine and quiet and wears lots of beige. I was running around with people who weren't holding anything against me because I couldn't keep my hair straightened.  They actually liked it that I was strong and loud and smart.  And eventually so did I.

There was a lot of other nonsense for me to outgrow but at least I figured out one thing relatively early in the game: it didn't have to mean I was less of a black girl if I didn't encompass those Southern/black/female beauty ideals, but it would mean that I was less of a human being if I wasn't true to myself.