• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

  • DC Guides
    • DC Events
    • DC New 52
    • DC Rebirth
    • Batman Guide
    • The Sandman Universe
  • Marvel Guides
    • Marvel Events
    • Captain America Guide
    • Iron Man Guide
    • Spider-Man Guide (1963-2018)
    • Spider-Man Guide (2018-Present)
    • Thor Guide
    • X-Men Reading Order
  • Indie & Licensed Comics
    • Spawn
    • Star Wars Guide
      • Expanded Universe Comics (2015 – present)
      • Legends Comics (1977 – 2014)
    • Valiant Guides
  • Drag
    • Canada’s Drag Race
    • Drag Race Belgique
    • Drag Race Down Under
    • Drag Race Sverige (Sweden)
    • Drag Race France
    • Drag Race Philippines
    • Dragula
    • RuPaul’s Drag Race
    • RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars
  • Archive
  • Contact!
You are here: Home / Personal / off-topics / meta / august 26th / happy birthday to this

happy birthday to this

August 26, 2015 by krisis

Baseline Peter on the way to play a Smash Fantastic show in June.

Baseline Peter on the way to play a Smash Fantastic show in June.

I.

I have wanted to have blue hair for at least half of my life.

Not bright, electric blue, but a dark, steely, navy blue that looked like Wonder Woman’s hair back when newsprint comics didn’t print a true black, but instead built it from other colors such that you could always detect blue in the highlights.

I couldn’t exactly pinpoint why. I like blue, but not navy blue. I’m actually a bit afraid of it, to tell the truth. I don’t like how it’s deceptively almost-black. Wearing pants that might be black or might be navy blue used to make me physically itch from confusion. Yet that’s how I’ve always described this dream hair.

I described it in high school, when Gina and I tried to Manic Panic it directly onto my long brown locks and failed to even tint it. I described it in college, when I inexplicably went copper-red instead because it wouldn’t raise eyebrows on interviews as it faded. I described it when I worked for Blue Cross, joking that it was the wrong Pantone blue for me to be their mascot. Yet, even as I did so many other things I had always wanted and dreamt of, I never had that blue hair.

All of that is to say I am proud and quite giddy to be writing this post to you from beneath dark blue locks today, on the fifteenth anniversary of this blog.

II.

If I had to speculate on the origins of my blue-hair obsession, I would trace it back to being psychic, which in turn is linked to summer camp. Not to say that my psychic powers came from summer camp. They’re just related.

Embarking on blondness a few weeks ago, here I am in the Spike From Buffy The Vampire Slayer phase of my bleaching.

Embarking on blondness a few weeks ago, here I am in the Spike From Buffy The Vampire Slayer phase of my bleaching.

Let’s step back for a moment. It was circa Junior year of high school and I had a major crush on a younger girl who, in retrospect, was part of a post-punk early manic-pixie-dream-girl movement of chicks who wore black with zippers and patches and dyed their hair awesome colors and who were very briefly my type. (My actually-punk female friends at the time were blonde and wore plaid.)

I was resolved not to repeat past romantic failures in this instance (oh, youthful hubris) and was gearing up to ask said young lady on a date rather than let the feelings linger unannounced. One night I dreamt that I was riding on a school bus with her sitting behind me, and I turned around to confess my feelings only to see that her hair – previously bleached blonde and dyed in streaks, was now blue.

This was a weird dream not because of the girl or the hair but because of the school bus. I had never ridden one of those yellow-colored, vinyl-seat school busses in any context other than summer camp, and just for one summer.

Summer camp was a miserable experience for me, because it involved spending unadulterated time with other boys my own age. I mostly didn’t like other boys my own age, but mostly because they didn’t like me. That started around the seventh grade, when I was suddenly teased for not being boy enough, which was a different sort of teasing than the teasing I’d experienced for having massive beaver teeth or Spock hair. Sure, all those times I was being teased for being different, but now I was teased for not being the same.

That summer was probably when I stopped really enjoying sports. I was actually a voracious watcher of football and wrestling around that time, and I had always loved gym class. Yet, at a sports-oriented camp, I discovered there were two kinds of boys – the boys who were good at sports and then the boys who got teased for being gay. And, of that subset, I was the one who actually seemed as though I might really be gay, which made me the teased-in-chief.

With that being the experience I associated with yellow school busses, you would think I would have recognized that my blue-haired school bus dream was not a good sign but instead a terrible portent of impending failure. Yet, the next day I waited in the hall in the stairwell outside one of my dream-girl’s classes. Out she emerged, and as I wound up for my actual-life confession of teenage crushdom, I noticed her hair was blue.

“Hi,” she said, smiling, not expecting to see me there.

“Hi,” I replied. Her hair was blue. I searched my memory, trying to recall if she mentioned she would be dying her hair blue. Nothing came up.

“Your hair is blue.” I remarked. It seemed like a good sign.

“Yeah, I did it last night.” Funny, that, since I had dreamt about the blue hair the night before as well.

I did ultimately comment on my feelings in that exchange, referring to them as “non-platonic.” She agreed. I was thrilled. Yet, a week later, she was surprised when I had Gina act as my valet to deliver her roses in homeroom on Valentine’s day, later commenting, “I didn’t know what platonic meant.”

Just as she had misinterpreted me, clearly I had misinterpreted the dream.

As it turns out, she was not amongst the most significant unrequited loves of my teenage life, as displayed by my songwriting habits of the time. However, the blue hair stuck with me. Maybe that part wasn’t such a bad idea.

2015-07-31 21.44.46

After one wash, my hair hadn’t quite settled down to the silvery, ash-blonde we were shooting for as a base-coat for the blue.

III.

Last week I went to summer camp for the first time in half my life – since circa the beginnings of my blue-hair urge.

It was not a weeklong hipster summer camp for Brooklynites (not that there is anything wrong with that). Instead, about a quarter of RJMetrics packed up for a weekend of sports, swimming, sun, and sleeping in cabins for no reason at all, although ostensibly the reason was team-building and camaraderie.

A lot of it was the most fun I’ve had while not playing with a band or with a baby in… I don’t know how long. A long time. And, in having that fun, I found myself doing things I’ve never done before – or, at least, had never had fun while doing before. I competently played sports, actually scoring and at one point sliding into a base (I was out). And, a gaggle of much-younger, much-fitter guys taught me how to do flips into the pool – something I’ve always wanted to know how to do.

Due to said band- and baby-having, I don’t get to do a lot of these off-hours team-building and camaraderie things. I’m missing one right now, actually. As a result, I try to do my team-building and camaraderie during my time in the office as much as I can, which means I have to figure out how to do them while working.

That recently took the form of a workgroup around selling analytics to content-based sites. I paired up with a group of people I never get to work with and dissected our favorite money-making blogs to understand how they ticked, which inevitably lead to dissecting this blog to expose those gears and guts of visitor patterns and affiliate links and conversion tracking.

I didn’t give it a second thought. Having a blog is part of who I am just like the band and the baby. I don’t hide those things, so why hide the blog? All of them are a part of what makes me a success.

Driving home on Sunday morning from my idyllic day at camp, it struck me that all the fun had to do with trust. I trust those three-dozen other people every day with my success and the success of our company. They trusted I would do my best to catch a ball. I trusted they wouldn’t make fun of my twenty back-flops into the pool on the way to a full 360 degree rotation. They trusted I wouldn’t make fun of them as they sang to my guitar playing around the campfire and that I could lead them through enough sun salutations to warm ourselves from the cold, dewy dawn that surrounded us. I trusted I could use my blog as an example for my colleagues and they trusted that I was doing something that would help them sell and service clients better, even though it seemed a little unorthodox.

All we had to do was trust each other.

2015-08-02 20.57.03

After another two washes I had a spectacular, surprisingly realistic silvery blonde. Now, the waiting game began.

IV.

This past year has been a year of everything and nothing, a constantly churning status quo. I don’t quite know how to sum it up. Maybe it’s because the things around me are changing more than I am, and so I am suddenly measuring time by my sameness rather than my difference.

Last year I had a baby and now I have a toddler. Last year I had a scrappy acoustic trio sweating out covers and this year I’m leading a full band confidently unreeling unheard tunes. Last year I wasn’t writing music, but this year I’ve got a fistful of new songs. Last year Arcati Crisis was on indefinite pause, and this year we played one of our best shows ever. Last year I had hired a core of my team, and this year I nearly tripled it. Last year E was also the director at a successful start-up, and this year she is employee #4 at an even-newer start-up and a local tech figure of some note.

All those things changed, but it’s hard to tell if I have. If I did, it was in a much more incremental way. I’m the same shape and weight, the same voice and temperament. I didn’t change many opinions or buy many new clothes. Despite nearly slicing my thumb-tip off a few weeks ago, I don’t even have any new scars to report.

Maybe it would be easier to tell the difference if I was writing more, but maybe I’m not writing more because things seem so the same. I suppose the only way to know would be to write about it.

I should probably do that.

2015-08-26 16.13.28

Back to the salon today to touch up my roots and then paint me blue!

V.

Today I almost cried in a hair salon.

To be fair, I cry a lot of places for a lot of reasons – becoming a parent just exacerbated that. But when I hugged my long-time stylist goodbye today with tears in the corners of my eyes it was because she helped me perfectly realize a dream that had stuck with me for over 17 years. It was a complete shock to look in the mirror and see that blue I imagined sitting on my head, perfectly realized.

That blue-hair urge is only slightly older than this blog, seventeen to its fifteen, but where my three week process of changing my hair still feels sudden, Crushing Krisis is anything but. It’s like a fossil record of myself, full of dated thoughts and opinions in each era, crystalized in HTML to be excavated and revisited later. If it wasn’t for this record, maybe I wouldn’t understand how much I’ve changed except for those big, blue-haired milestones.

I’ve been wrestling with trusting other people even longer than with the blue or the blog, and tracing the story of the blue back to its proverbial roots made me realize just where that trust began to elude me. It was at that point where everyone stopped being just kids and started being boys and girls, jocks or geeks, straight or gay. That continued through playing my own songs, always ready to wince away a heckling comment.

It doesn’t make any sense that performance anxiety or avoiding sports or not wanting to hang out with other men could stem back to those formative moments just like it’s hard to believe my wanting blue hair somehow emerged from that marble stairwell, but those are my best two guesses and thanks to one psychic dream they’ve been inexorably connected all of this time in the back of my mind.

This week feels like a sort of kismet in that way, wherein I resolved the camp issues and then my long held hair wishes, and also stayed in a cabin full of a dozen other dudes without feeling out of place for a second, all right in time for the day of the year that I retrospect the most. It’s clear that I’ve changed a lot in the past year despite some semblance of status quo, and not just by the virtue of it ending with me scoring points or dying my hair blue.

I feel like I’ve just put a final piece of punctuation on a long-unfinished sentence – one that’s been playing out here for years. It’s a lot about trust but also about just doing what you know will make you happy when you are sure it can’t hurt anyone – only help.

So here I am, instructing my future self: when you look back at this sort of epiphany and want to know how it feels to get here, do not think of the way your whole body has ached for days or the dye burning your scalp. Instead, consider that second after my feet left the diving board dozens of times and how I shut my eyes and just spun, unmoored from gravity and rotating, spinning free, knowing I would hit the water in a moment but also knowing that was not the point at all. The point is the journey, the spinning, the trying to orient myself the right way, and all the rest is just what results. That’s why I kept diving, even after I stopped landing on my back and got the flip right. It wasn’t about getting the flip right. It was about what happened on the way.

Tomorrow when I wake up I might feel the same, but I will have this blue hair to show me I am different. Yet, blue or not, no day is ever the same and that’s why I keep waking up and doing it again. Sometimes I am the change and sometimes the change is all around me, and no matter what I spin through it again, trying to orient myself.

Thank you for being a part of that change and part of what stays the same. Thank you, and happy birthday to this.

2015-08-26 18.04.46-1

A toddler, a dinosaur, and your author with his long-awaited blue hair.

Related posts:

  1. Happy Birthday To This
  2. Happy Birthday To This
  3. happy birthday to this

Filed Under: august 26th, Year 15

Previous Post: « RuPaul’s Drag Race Power Rankings, S7E12 – “And The Rest Is Drag”
Next Post: Why female comic characters matter (to a baby) »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Sandra Hanks says

    August 27, 2015 at 12:48 am

    Congrats on your 15 years, Peter. Can’t help but be envious of your sticktoittiveness, as my blog has been badly neglected since life started getting in the way and became less filled with much of anything I want to talk about.
    It’s great to be able to continue following your life though so many developments.You certainly are doing it right!

Primary Sidebar


Support Crushing Krisis on Patreon
Support CK
on Patreon


Follow me on Twitter Contact me Watch me on Youtube Subscribe to the CK RSS Feed

About CK

About Crushing Krisis
About My Music
About Your Author
Blog Archive
Comics Blogs Only
Contact Krisis
Terms & Conditions

Crushing Comics

Marvel Comics

Marvel Events Guide

Spider-Man Guide

DC Comics

  • It’s gonna be May! Oh, wait, it’s ALREADY May…
    Hello, friends! Unfortunately, my non-CK life and […]
  • Drax GuideDrax Guide – now available to the public!
    Learn how the MCU merged several incarnations Drax into Dave Bautista's hyper-literal warrior with a vendetta agains Thanos in my Drax Guide! […]
  • Guide to GamoraGamora Guide – now available to the public!
    My Gamora Guide will help you find every Marvel comic starring Thanos's adopted daughter and the most dangerous woman in the galaxy! […]
  • Drag Race España Season 3, Episode 2 – “Drag Vision” Review & Power Rankings
    The queens of Drag Race España Season 3 make a collective stumble in this "Drag Vision" choreography challenge, earning the ire of the judges (though it's the kindest ire you'll ever see). […]
  • Star-Lord GuideStar-Lord Guide – now available to the public!
    Get ready for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 with my Star-Lord Guide, including every comics appearance of Marvel's TWO distinct Star-Lords! […]
  • Drag Race Sverige Season 1, Episode 8 – Sweden Grand Finale, “Queen Delicious” runway, & season retrospective
    It's the Drag Race Sweden Grand Finale! Our final three queens put their spin on an original song and walk a final "Queen Delicious" runway alongside their eliminated peers. […]
  • Adam Warlock GuideAdam Warlock Guide – now available to the public!
    Find the comics that inspired the plot of James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in my Adam Warlock Guide - now available to the public for the first time! […]
  • Monica Rambeau: Photon (2022) #5 released by Marvel Comics April 26 2023New Comics & Collected Editions: Marvel Comics – April 26, 2023
    Catch up on newly-released comic books and collected editions from Marvel Comics April 26 2023, with guides to every title & character! […]
  • New for Patrons: Guide to Spider-Man 2099 (+ Guide to Marvel 2099!)
    Does Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse have you ready to read some Spider-Man 2099 comics? Use my Guide to Spider-Man 2099 to find every issue! […]
  • Updated: Guide to Exiles
    My Guide to Exiles is newly updated with an improved reading order, ISBNs, digital buy links, Marvel Unlimited reading links, and more! […]
  • Guide to Rocket RaccoonNew for Patrons: Guide to Rocket Raccoon
    Want to brush up on the comics origin of Rocket before the MCU tells their version? My Guide to Rocket Raccoon covers his EVERY appearance! […]
  • Drag Race España Season 3, Episode 1 – “Spain is Different” Review & Power Rankings
    Drag Race España Season 3 debuts by showing off its 13 queens (yes, we've added one) with a Supremme Talent Show and a "Spain is Different" runway. […]
  • Drag Race Sverige Season 1, Episode 7 – “Diva Assoluta” acting challenge Review & Power Rankings
    The Final 4 queens of Drag Race Sverige Season 1 bring their best performances to a Diva Assoluta acting challenge and a Drama Queen runway. […]
  • Tigereyes Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus 11th Annual Secret Ballot Results & Mappings
    Want to know the 61 books that ranked on the Tigereyes Most Wanted Marvel Omnibus 11th Annual Secret Ballot? I've got them all fully mapped! […]

Content Copyright ©2000-2023 Krisis Productions

Crushing Krisis participates in affiliate programs including (but not limited to): Amazon Services LLC Associates Program (in the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain), eBay Partner Network, and iTunes Affiliate Program. If you make a qualifying purchase through an affiliate link I may receive a commission.