‘I don’t want you to feel insecure,’ my mum said, as she looked at me with pity, ‘we will pay for a hair transplant.’

I was only 18, which is young to be balding but the process had actually started a few years before that.

I had confided in my parents about it so that they could help me try to figure out a way to not be self-conscious about it – not to offer to pay for a hair transplant.

I was not thrilled about the prospect of losing my hair but more than that, cosmetic surgery was not on the list of things I wanted to discuss with my parents. It felt embarrassing.

I knew they were still paying off their house at the time so $10,000 USD (nearly £8,000) to buy their son a rug was out of the question.

After the initial outburst and insisting my mother to ‘just drop it!’, I gathered my emotions and said: ‘Mum, I appreciate the offer. I don’t want a hair transplant and I also don’t want to talk to you about this anymore.’

The first person to notice I was going bald was actually my sister, who was a hair stylist.

At 14 in 1999, I had a routine haircut with my mum when my sister said: ‘Kevin, your hair is thinning, you are getting a bald spot.’

Mum rushed over as they combed through the crown of my head, both attempting to assess whether this was new or a development that could be slowed or stopped. Disbelief was my first reaction.

Within one year, my mother booked a doctor’s appointment to see if there was anything seriously wrong.

A doctor that looked like George Clooney entered the small sterile examination room with a sombre look: ‘Kevin, you have an incurable disease. Androgenic alopecia,’ He let out a deep breath, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Oh no, what is that? Is he going to be OK?’ my mum worried aloud.

‘I think he will be OK because that is just a fancy term for… male pattern baldness,’ the doctor made a face to punctuate his already failing joke.

That was the joke – make a high schooler think he has cancer of some sort, then pull the rug out from under him. The worst part was how thick the doctor’s hair was. He didn’t know the life of a bald man, it wasn’t his place to joke about it.

I felt deeply self-conscious for the first time in my life. My mother wanted to do anything to make it go away and the doctor – who surely saw much worse conditions every day – wasn’t crushing it with his bedside manner.

He ran through my options – get a hair transplant, get on finasteride and rogaine (hair loss drugs) or go bald.

Hair transplants were expensive and were not yet as perfected as they are these days, while finasteride can cause early onset erectile dysfunction. But going bald? Completely free! No impact on erections!

After the doctor’s appointment, my mum would sheepishly bring up the hair transplant every few months, as she could see the process of my androgenic alopecia naturally taking its course.

The doctor explained that hair loss drugs are best to retain the hair you have and they are only partially effective at growing hair back. So, the longer I waited the more the thinning would become permanent – it felt urgent.

All of this was clouding my mind – I would’ve rather been thinking about graduating high school instead.

I went into denial for a few years. By 18, reality was setting in. I was reaching a crucial decision point – and that’s when she seriously offered to pay for the hair transplant.

In the ensuing years, I wore various hats: baseball, beanie, fedora. I got used to wearing them to hide my scalp, as there was less and less hair.

When I didn’t wear hats, the biggest enemies of my thinning hair were the elements – wind and rain.

Then one incident when I was 22 changed everything. I was out to dinner with some friends, with no hat, a perfectly arranged head of hair, and hair spray to keep it in place.

When we left the restaurant, the wind blew and the rain poured and by the time I got to the car my hair was a wet thin mess. My (poorly) but carefully covered scalp was exposed.

That night, I wrote in my journal: ‘I want to feel joy and comfort in how I look. Every time I try not to care, I start caring. So after years of worry and self consciousness and my mind being focused on my hair, I pray that by buzzing it off and facing my head, and not trying to cover it up, God will just give me relief and happiness in who I am.’

Sure enough, I went to the bathroom and shaved my head. And I have never looked back.

Before that point, I’d worried about everything from being attractive to women to getting cast in acting jobs, and – with hindsight – it honestly turned out not to make any difference. I’d taken control.

Looking back, I can comfortably say that going bald is much harder than being bald. Whatever hair loss represents, it is difficult to swallow; it brings up thoughts of death, aging and a general loss of attractiveness.

Not to mention the way it’s easily joked about. That was all a lot to handle for a teenager and young adult.

Embarrassment, discomfort, frustration – they were overwhelming for me. But in the ensuing years, I found starting stand up comedy a huge help.

It was cathartic to get on stage and talk about the doctor’s appointment or kids laughing at my bald head when I took my hat off. There is something that happens once an audience laughs and all that discomfort turns into a connection and conversation with the crowd.

After performing my show, Diary of a Bald Kid, I’d get many audience members say, ‘Kevin, honestly, you look better bald. I can’t imagine you with hair.’

I am 39 now and a happily bald man. In fact, I like the way I look.

I look at that journal entry from when I was 22 and I understand that young man’s fears, so I am glad to be on the other side of the process.

At the end of the day, what I longed for was to not care. To just like who I was and like my body for what it was.

I have nothing against hair plugs, transplants, toupees, hats, Rogaine or anything else. Let a thousand flowers bloom but, for me, what I deeply wanted was to be my authentic self and I could feel in my heart that I was not comfortable.

Lately, my social media algorithm floods me with ads for hair transplants, hair loss drugs, and all kinds of experimental therapies for male pattern baldness. They always begin with some sort of hook like ‘We all know going bald sucks’ – and that is true. It did.

But choosing what nature intended was the best choice I could have made. I learned a lot about myself – mainly that I have a really well-shaped head.

I can’t imagine myself with hair now either. My mum agrees – and is really happy to have saved $10,000.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing James.Besanvalle@metro.co.uk. 

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