My Photos & Travels Optimized for a 1024 x 768 screen width. (You can get away with 800 x 600 but don't even try it at 640 x 480!)   Events & Such Travels & Such Other Stuff Dore Alley Erotic Art Weekend Folsom Halloween IML Pride SDiego Comic Con Back East DC Trip The Pentagon Planes and Stuff The Whole Bay San Diego Fire '03 LA Trip Xmas 2007 Yosemite 2010 Zion Arimondi Gone Goat Leathers Long Ago My Projects Richard Chatterton Kilts! Septoplasty! Gallbladder!

My hair is what really started all this.  Back in 1998 I had shaved my head.  I wanted to see what I would look like with a naked crown.  I saw it and decided I liked it better covered in hair.  My hair preferably.  From that point on I decided to grow my hair out.  I'd always wanted a long mane and I find that a very attractive thing on most men.  I've also long wanted to remain profitably employed.  At times, Longhair and employment were mutually exclusive.  At least when things were tough out here in America's Finest City during the 90's (for more on this head over to the "Defense Drawdown," "Peace Dividend," California recession.) So, my hair remained fashionably short of most of that time.  Now no longer.

Back in February of '98 I had just bleached my hair out to blond.  After a month of that, I decided to shave my head and it was then that I was hired on as a regular employee.  From that point forward I began the growth process.  After about a year of that I discovered the online Longhair community.

My first website got its start as a personal ad page when I first got into the online Longhair world and was originally put up on GeoCities.  I had to have proof that I was a real Longhair and it was also a good way to document my progress over the next couple of years.  Originally, my GeoCities site was just about the hair.  As time went by though, I began putting more about myself up on it.  As more time went by I began to chafe at the restrictions running a site on GeoCities entailed.  As I couldn't beat their selling price (i.e. free) I decided it was time to move on and set up my own domain.  One in which I could be more expressive of myself and my interests than I could on GeoCities.  My Longhair interest remained however, as did my increasingly long locks.

However, my other interests began to crowd out the Longhair focus on my site.  Also, I found that the Longhair online community was not as cohesive as I would have wished.  So, I began to change the focus of my site around and the whole Longhair thing began to take an ever smaller part of it.  Smaller but not forgotten.  I've now decided to rearrange things a bit and devote a special page to just my Mane.  Here it all is.
 
 

This image on the left here, was taken at Folsom 99 with me and Andy, the lover of a good friend of mine, Kevin.  I think it is interesting because my head was as shiny and shaved as Andy's as recently as of March '98.  That is when I stopped shaving my scalp and went for the growth.  This picture reflects just a year and a half of that.   The photo below here was also taken up there at Folsom 99.

These two images above here are the ones that started it all.  This was back in the summer/ fall of 99.  Back in the summer of '99 I was reveling in both my hair growth and in finding others like me.  The Longhair community seemed rather strong and it was all very hi-tech and therefore very cool.  I jumped in with both feet and made a go of it.  One of the things I recognized early on was the need for a place to "hang" a picture of myself with my Longhair so that others could see it.  There is nothing like a picture to clearly convey things.  So, made sure to get some pictures of myself when I went up to Folsom that year.  My hair had grown out to an acceptably long length and I also attended a Longhair party the night before the Street Festival itself.  So I was very much in the Zen of the moment.

Upon returning from SF I immediately set up my site on GeoCities.  It was exclusively devoted to the Longhair community.  Over time I posted more images of myself and my growing Longhair.  I also posted images of other Longhairs I found attractive and of the Longhair events I attended.
 
 

A few months separate the first two photos from this one above here.  My hair is now mostly past that "bush head" stage which drives most potential Longhairs to distraction.  It surely did drive me to that point.  My hair was too long to be considered regular but too short to do anything with.  So, it just kind of laid there as a big mess.  It was an aggravating thing!

April of 2000 marked a major milestone of me though, I was finally able to do so something I'd been wanting to be able to do for over a decade.  Now I was able to. It felt good. I was able to put my hair back into a ponytail! Finally! I have long loved the way it looks on others, wanted that look for myself, and known what it would mean to be able to have my hair back like this.  Namely, that my hair was finally that long! Well, it was! Finally!
Thank god for friends with digital cameras! Well, I finally went and did it.  Change is good.  Change or die.  That is the way I try and live my life.  Whether that is an idealistic way of structuring my life to anticipate the future or a realistic way of dealing with what life hands me in the present, I'm not sure.  In any event, I am not as fearful of changes as some.  Nor am I as reluctant to make personal changes.  This picture here on the right illustrates that. Notice the change? I just had a wild hair and decided to shave off a few literal ones.  This was the first time I had been clean shaven in quite a while. Few folks commented on it so I had a hard time telling if anyone else can tell.  You know how people are. Years ago a friend of mine shaved off his eyebrows as part of a Halloween costume (he went as the main character from the Pink Floyd movie.)  It took days before anyone cornered him to comment on the difference and even then the most that they could say was that "Mr. Bezich, there's something different about you, but I can't figure it out!"

About four months have passed since this batch of pictures and the last ones.  Things have changed a bit.  The most noticeable of which is that I grew back my mustache and goatee. I liked the clean shaven look but thought the goat' was better for me in this day and age.  So too did most other folks who saw fit to comment. This bunch of photos are ones that I took while up in San Francisco for about a week in August of 2000.  A good friend of mine, Frank, was traveling off to New York to teach some classes and he offered to let me stay in his place while he was away.  That is pretty damn hospitable and he didn't have to ask me twice! The photo on the left here was taken by another friend of mine, Victor Arimondi.  I met him at an art expo in Los Angeles a couple of years back.  Victor is an artist and photographer, among other things, who lives in SF.  While I was up there in August he snapped these photos in between our eating lunch and catching up on each other's lives. It had been a couple of years so we both had a lot to say.  Among other things, Victor has been busy painting and photographing those in the City around him.

This is the second shot Victor took of me that day.  We had just sat down for a lunch of the salad that he had made and he found the camera in his hands before he could pick up a fork.  This from an artist.  Go figure! The salad was wonderful,  the wine delicious and the company excellent.  Victor has an apartment on Market Street near Duboce.  The view out his apartment window was quite nice and the building he lives in is one of the grand old apartment buildings from "Mexican Art Deco" period of the 30's.  It really reminded me of some of the older and grander apartment buildings in Washington, DC.  That is to say, it had a sense of style and formal elegance that most modern buildings have dispensed with.  It was nice to see some of it still around though.

This is actually the first picture Victor took of me in his apartment.  He liked the way my hand framed my face.

It was a very windy day but it was also a glorious one and perfect for taking in the sights from the Golden Gate Bridge.  In this shot I was trying to hold my head in such a way as to have the wind blowing the hair off of my face.  The wind was only partially complying.   That is better than not complying at all as in this shot below!

That is Andy there on the left.  The same Andy as from the Folsom 99 photo down at the bottom of this page.  He has kept his head shaven while my hair has grown much longer since the.  A nice "progress" shot.   On the right is another shot of me fighting the wind on the Golden Gate.

September 2000   About a month or so after my SF trip a good friend of mine, Sharon, helped me out with a mutual photo shoot.  We both wanted some good personal shots of each other so we got together and had at it.  The results of which, for me, are posted elsewhere on this site.  As far as my Mane goes though, I was finally getting enough hair length to really enjoy it and for it to have enough body to stay together for me. I was also beginning to learn the ins and outs of proper hair care for hair this long.  This isn't something most guys ever learn.  Nor do most women for that matter.  Still though, most women have picked up a lot the tips & such by the time they hit adulthood.  Not so with the guys for Longhair on a man is still very unusual.   IML 2001 What a blast! This was my first major leather event, aside from Folsom, that I'd been to in all my Longhairedness.  There were but a couple of other Longhairs there so we all stood out a bit. Perhaps too much. The standard look for leathermen in the gay male scene is that of a Tom of Finland clone.  Aside from the leather, boots, and butchness, that also means short hair.  Short as in Marine Corps recruit short. Either that or it is "biker dude" long.  Like mine.  Yet, I am not a biker. I do get asked that a lot though.  The hair, the beard, the leathers, all combine to give that image.  There is nothing wrong with that image, per se, but it is not me. As a result, most guys don't know what to make of me and my Longhair.  That I look like a biker to many of them seems to keep too many of them away.  Very strange.  Perhaps they just don't know what to do with an individual who is happy with his individuality.  I guess the herd mentality is strong even among leatherfolk who pride themselves on being unique individuals.  Go figure!   Kilts One thing that my mane does lend itself to is my wearing of kilts.  For some reason, short hair and kilts really doesn't seem to go well together.  Longhair though... well, that's a different matter all together! In this picture on the left here I'm up at another Folsom Street Festival and am getting a free digital picture taken of me at the Berkeley Steamworks booth.  I am also wearing my freshly purchased Utilikilt.       This shot above here was taken whilst I was in Portland awaiting my flight home.  I'd gone up there to attend the Portland Leather Alliance's KinkFest.  Aside from having a great time, while waiting for that flight, a friend of mine, Marie, braided my hair for me.  One of these days I've got to learn how to do that myself.

The Hair Glove This is a neat new toy for me.  I'd heard of this for a while now so I decided to try it for myself.  The purpose of this rig is to gather your tied off hair inside a sleeve so as to protect it.  An interesting concept.  The Hair Glove itself is very simple.  It features a small plastic hook at its top which grabs hold of the hair tie you've already secured your mane with.  That hooked in, you can then wrap the rest of your tail down inside the Glove.

I'm still getting used to this rig. It takes a little work to get everything just right in the Glove and, as it is new, the leather of the Glove is a bit stiff.  So, my hair feels a bit awkward with it on.  At least for now.  As I get more used to this I'll let you know.