My hair had always been thick, thick enough that the stylist at Supercuts was forced to use thinning shears just to work with it, but perhaps because of the amount of chemicals I’d put in my hair since birth, or the aggressive way I combed it every morning, or my general lack of a healthy diet and exercise regimen (but probably not), it was undoubtedly starting to grow thinner. My mother blamed the woman at Supercuts for her indiscriminate use of the thinning shears, but I suspect she was just angry I’d started going to a salon rather than have her cut my hair in the laundry room with the same scissors she used to groom the dog, and was looking for a reason to prove me wrong. She had cut my hair until I was nearly twenty years old, and the betrayal she felt when I finally announced I’d be going to a strip-mall beauty parlor reverberated for months. She still blames those Supercuts thinning shears for my receding hairline, despite the fact that it’s receding in the same fashion as my father’s and his father’s before him, in what some might call a pattern of male baldness.

It’s been a handful of years since then, and I’m glad to say that I still have a fair amount of hair on my head. (And, for the curious, a thriving amount of hair everywhere else.)

But here is hair’s final twist of the knife. I’m now an adult gay man, at a point when hair is of premium importance in life. After all, in the gay community, for better or worse, hair defines everything. It is virtually the single most ubiquitous characteristic in the gay taxonomy: there are twinks, bears, otters, cubs, wolves—all defined one way or another by the presence or lack of hair. And I fit neatly into none of those categories, which means if I ever do porn, they won’t even know what part of the website to put me in. (For the record, if I had to categorize myself, I probably most closely resemble a bear, but like Paddington, because I always keep my clothes on, so the porn thing will have to be artsy, like for guys who get off on watching other guys eat meatball sandwiches.)

The gay community has had a long obsession with grooming, and for many, a proper, professional gay needs to be waxed, shaved, and styled to perfection—all before getting out of bed. Beards, which are now the defining symbol of gay hotness, should be trimmed and shaped to emulate no less than the Spartans themselves. And of course, manscaping is an absolute must, and body hair of any kind should be expunged, besides perfect, decorative topiaries above the genitals, beneath the armpits, and along the arms. Failure to meet any of these specifications will result in the immediate destruction of one’s gay card.