Around midmorning yesterday, I stumbled back in from a rigorous personal training session. In the bathroom, I beheld myself in the mirror, tousling my sweat-soaked hair. I may have let out a sigh of dissatisfaction.

See: a few years ago, I had brain surgery. Prior to that, my high school and college years had been marked by a particular attachment to my hairstyle. Imagine mid-length, side-sweeping, boy-band-looking flow with a cowlick above my left eye. There were a few variations, of course— long sides, short sides, one side shaved— but I was a product of the 2010s, you may be sure. With the hair having become a part of who I was, the shearing of my head for surgery constituted such a shock that I let my hair grow largely uncut for four years thereafter. In time, the look had begun to wear me, so over the course of the past month I have been incrementally & painstakingly cutting my own hair ever shorter with the aid of an old electric clipper, a pair of surgical scissors, and a handheld mirror from Target. I would spend hours in the bathroom, attempting to sculpt a new identity from the figurative clay of my once-chest-length hair, but ultimately, all I had managed was kind of a sad adult version of my pre-surgery hair— 13mm on the sides and back, with bangs just long enough to cover my forehead.

So there I was, frustrated with my hair once again, but also worrying about the things I needed to get done. My passport is expiring soon, so I need to get the ball rolling on that, I mused. My last passport was issued when I was 16, so this would be my first time initiating the renewal process myself. Being ineligible in the US for an in-person renewal, I must acquiesce to renewing this bad boy via snail mail, and as part of my submission, I have to procure a suitable passport photo. But how can I look good in my passport photo with this hair? I thought sorrowfully.

And then it dawned on me: I needn’t worry about how my hair looks if I don’t have any.

Plus I get to look like one of those nosferatu for a little while, what with my split tongue and the way my ears kind of flare out from the sides of my head. It's nice to feel like a lil' creature sometimes.

Clippers in hand, I mowed down every last strand of hair north of my eyebrows. Once again, the surgery scar was exposed, a thin line stretching from ear to ear just an inch or so behind my hairline. I had come full circle. The transformation took minutes, but by golly, my head could blind passing motorists by the time I was done. My girlfriend recoiled at the sight of my handiwork and then rolled her eyes as I excitedly divulged my plan to be bald for my passport photo.

The capture of the photo itself? Went off without a hitch. On the subway to and from the nearest CVS, the sight of my nude scalp in the window reflections repeatedly startled me. I couldn’t stop running my hands over my newly exposed cranial skin, relishing that slight buzz-cut feeling. Later, still in the throes of giddiness at the notion that I would be bald in my passport until 2033, I felt it would be a good idea to text my parents & let them in on the joke. A minor FU? It seemed so at first, because immediately they started expressing concern that what I had done might be in violation of the passport photo requirements.

Sure, I rationalized, hair color has to be listed on my passport & they theoretically couldn’t prove it if I’m bald in the picture, but people go bald all the time. They grow beards, lose beards, dye their hair, do all sorts of shit to themselves. That's life, baby. Nonetheless, before actually replying to them, I started indignantly Googling *is it bad to shave head for passport photo* in an effort to prove my parents wrong. As I scrolled through Chrome, my only passport hair requirement I could dig up was that hair shouldn’t block your face or eyes. Victory, I thought.

That’s when I saw the article. Some silly little 2019 tabloid number about a Malaysian man who had to have immigration officials shield his bald head for his passport photo because with unfettered access to light, his scalp was too shiny to meet requirements.

Shit.

This time, under the search parameters *bald head too shiny for passport photo,* a more concerning panel of results came up. Many of the articles were about the aforementioned Malaysian man but there, another one— someone apparently had the same problem back in 2008. As I continued trawling for knowledge in cyberspace, I began to learn about the glare requirements for passport photos, concern mounting with each passing page.

Digging out the photos that I just moments ago had been so proud of, I peered at the first two with trepidation.

And beheld, with horror, my bald pate, gleaming unashamedly like a thousand midnight suns.

The exposure setting on the pictures practically blended the top of my head with the white background, producing an overall effect as if the rays reflecting from my brow could not only scramble the facial recognition software of foreign nations, but also level planets and bring entire galaxies to their knees.

No way this meets passport photo requirements.

And so, as the day winds to a close, I find myself a mixture of embarrassed, bemused, frustrated, and defeated. By doing a funny for an important photo, I have consigned myself to making the same journey tomorrow to perform the same task, this time with a big piece of cardboard or something to hide me from the light like a fucking creature of the night.

Real nosferatu shit.

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TL;DR Shaved my whole head so I could look like a bald little troglobyte on my passport photo, but my exposed scalp cast a glare that violates US passport photo requirements so now I gotta go back tomorrow to take the pictures again