Bald Tales : So, you’re searching to regain a thick, full mane? It’s not easy, but here’s how.

You want hair.

You want it bad.

Your hair has been disappearing down the shower drain for decades, forcing you to endure sadistic jabs from associates. “Is that your scalp or a cantaloupe on your neck?” Heh heh .

Your quest for eternal hair begins in the Ventura County Yellow Pages, which devotes an entire page to “Hair Replacement.” (For those who want the opposite effect, “Hair Removing” is the preceding category.) You notice numerous before-and-after photos of men who have beaten baldness. But it’s the headlines that really grab you.

“Restore your crowning glory.”

“Grow your own hair.”

“Permanent hair, with a natural hairline (emphasis theirs).”

And best of all: “Guaranteed.”

Your 10th-grade hairdo--thick and bouncy--immediately flashes to mind. You call the 800-numbers for free information. Within days, the first brochure arrives in the mail, a shocking 36-page guide on “the art and science of hair restoration.” You had always accepted male pattern baldness as a minor flaw but nothing like, say, disfigurement from a car wreck. But according to a Beverly Hills medical group, hair loss ranks right up there with the worst catastrophes befalling humankind.

“From Samson (sic) to Shakespeare, (baldness is) a tragedy of life,” the guide informs you. “For thousands of years, men of all countries and races have shared the tragedy of premature hair loss, and the hope of discovering a cure.” You learn baldness was “shameful” in ancient times and represented “the loss of a man’s virility.” Shakespeare was so resentful of his own baldness, the guide points out, that he made his bald characters either fools, villains or aging kings.

What a revelation. Far from being the swashbuckling figure you think you are, you are a tragic fool with a virility problem. Feeling as if you should go live in a colony of baldies so normal people won’t have to look at you, you now see yourself as the victim of an unspoken tragedy--and you’re not even entitled to disability. What a bum hand life has dealt you. If you had hair you would be normal, not the object of shame, pity and ridicule.

You would do anything to reverse this cruel twist of genetic programming. Anything .

Your enthusiasm lasts only as long as it takes to read more of the guide and find words like scalp reduction, minigraft, micrograft, megagraft, flap rotation, strip graft and bilateral lift . You come to realize that the medical profession’s answer to hair loss isn’t a simple potion or pill. To regain your mane, you have to be willing to spend several thousand dollars for minor surgery and then hide out for weeks until the scabs fall off.

You begin to wonder if you want hair that desperately.

Included on the “Hair Replacement” page are ads for hairpieces, an alternative to surgery. Billed as instant, painless hair, the wigs come in natural or synthetic, attaching to your scalp by means of fusion, weaving and “track bonding.” You can get “24-hour wearability” and a “unique comb-back hairline.” One company offers “private consultation rooms” and a “private unmarked entrance” so customers don’t have to risk being exposed by normal people.

Before visiting the medical and prosthetic hair establishments in Ventura County, you talk to an associate who has worn hairpieces and is currently undergoing $13,000 worth of surgical restoration.

Since May, Mick (not his real name) has had five procedures: two scalp reductions and three transplant sessions of 200 grafts each. The 46-year-old salesman has one transplant session left, plus a “touch up.” Even though he is nearly done with his ordeal, the transplanted follicles have yet to sprout (regeneration takes several weeks after the shock of transplantation) and the top of his head still looks raw and dappled, forcing him to wear a hat or bandanna in public.

“My (scalp) is not much of a turn-on until the hair grows in,” says Mick, a bachelor whose side hair flows to his shoulders. “I don’t go out looking for women. I sort of have to lay low.”

Last summer, Mick underwent two scalp reductions. “The doctor cut out some of the balding area and pulled (the surrounding scalp) together and stitched it up,” Mick says. Because of his tight scalp, a temporary “extender” was inserted sub-dermally during the first reduction to “give elasticity to the area,” he says. A month later, the extender and a large swatch of scalp were removed. Each reduction required Demerol and an IV. Excess bleeding gave him black eyes and a swollen forehead after both operations.

The transplants were less traumatic. Sitting up in a barbershop-like chair, he watched videos for two or three hours as a surgical team hovered around him. Using a scalpel, the doctor extracted healthy hair follicles from the fringe around Mick’s head and inserted them into Mick’s barren dome, making sure they were placed in natural-looking positions. Working at the hairline, the doctor had to be an artist.

“You don’t want it to come out looking phony,” Mick says.

Hair transplantation has improved aesthetically since its development in the 1960s. Less than a decade ago, surgeons were still experimenting with radical flap rotation--in which large sections of hair-bearing skin were moved to balding areas--and were transplanting plugs of five or six hairs, causing an unsightly “Barbie Doll” or “toothbrush” appearance. Today, micrografts of one or two hairs are much less detectable, especially along the hairline.

Even though Mick’s scalp is still numb from the anesthetics, he is pleased with his progress and relieved that the worst is behind him. “You go through this once in your life,” he says, “and that’s it.”

Why did he care so much about being hair-challenged? “I’ve always been vain,” he says.

Mick advises you to pick a local transplant doctor “in case something goes wrong and you have to see him quick.”

You go for a free consultation from a Thousand Oaks dermatologist who has been transplanting hair for several years. An assistant escorts you to a small examination room. The doctor follows. He wears a starched white lab coat and a smile.

“So you want to talk about hair?” he says.

While he examines your hair, you glance at his: dark, flecked with white, fairly full in front. Nature? No, micrografts, he confirms.

The doctor sifts your strands with a comb. “Right off the bat,” he says ominously, “I have to tell you, I can’t give you a full head of hair.” He sees your disappointment. “But I can give you a ‘look’ of hair up front so as people face you, it looks like you have hair.” You envision a social life spent with your back to a wall.

The doctor informs you that a scalp reduction isn’t practical in your case. “You don’t have enough (donor) hair to fill in,” he says. “What’s the point of giving you a scar in the middle of your head if you won’t be able to cover it?”

You need about 800 minigrafts over three or four sessions, he says. His standard price is $16 a graft, but he gives you a discount and will do the surgery for “roughly” $8,000.

You want a second opinion, so you visit the county office of an L.A.-based doctor with branches as far away as Albuquerque.

Arriving at an expensive private home, you are greeted by the L.A. doctor’s representative, a friendly Englishman who identifies himself as a doctor and consultant. Escorting you into a paneled office, he tells you his doctorate is in “atmospheric physics” and he is qualified to analyze your scalp and “remove sutures.”

Also, he is living proof that hair transplants work. Just a few years ago, the L.A. doctor performed two scalp reductions and 800 transplants on the consultant, giving him a satisfactory top of wavy tan hair and making him a true believer. “Your own (transplanted) hair is so much nicer than a wig,” he says. “I wore wigs for 22 years. Hated them. The happiest day of my life was when I threw them away.”

The Englishman walks behind you and kneads your scalp. He winces: “Not much mobility there.” He says you will probably need three scalp reductions, more if you don’t embark on a program of “vigorous scalp massage to give you average flexibility.” You tell him the dermatologist warned against scalp reductions for you.

“Hmmm, he may be right,” the consultant says. “Or he may not be right. I’ll let (the L.A. doctor) make the determination.”

The consultant writes out two estimates: one for $15,200 that includes three scalp reductions and 700 micro-and minigrafts, the other with no reductions but 1,800 transplants for $14,400. But if you take advantage of a soon-to-expire promotion and give him a $1,000 refundable deposit, you can save about $4,000.

You decide against transplants.

But you still want hair.

Wigs, you learn, have been around for a few centuries, but only in the last two decades have manufacturers solved the fundamental problem of keeping them from moving around, falling down or blowing off and humiliating the wearer. Some solutions were drastic, borderline barbaric: The wig was secured to wire loops surgically stitched into the scalp, or to loops of living skin transplanted from the groin area. Not only do you never have to remove your wig, you never want to.

You visit a one-man hairpiece operation in the back of a Ventura barbershop. The owner, a folksy man with a thatch of graying chestnut hair, leads you into a private room and seats you in a revolving chair.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve,” he says. You look at him blankly. He winks. “It seems to take a lot of nerve for a guy to come in here.”

You tell him you want hair bad and you’re looking into wigs. “Looking into it won’t do a thing,” he says. “You won’t gain a thing until you actually buy one. And nothing you can do will change your looks like a hairpiece. You are a different person. You won’t be recognized. It sounds scary, but it’s a lot of fun. Kind of like the ‘Twilight Zone.’ ”

He grasps his hair and suddenly peels it off his head, exposing a shiny bald scalp. “See, it does make a difference,” he says. “Thirty-one years ago, when I was 26, I got contacts and a hairpiece. Greatest thing I ever did for myself.”

He reattaches his wig with two-sided tape, first degreasing his scalp with an alcohol-based solution. “Can you shower in this?” he asks without prompting. “Yes. Should you shower in it? No.” He revels in his candor.

“I’m a little different from the average hairpiece man of today,” he says. “Most people are out for your money. Well, I am to a degree, but I wear a hairpiece and really want you to be as happy as I am.”

He recommends a custom piece made from synthetic hair and costing from $550 to $1,250. What kind of guarantee does he provide? “What kind of guarantee do you want?” he says. “It’s not a piece of metal. You take it home and I don’t know how you treat it. I guarantee you hair--I’m not guaranteeing it will last forever.”

Turning you away from a mirror, he fits a wig on your head and styles it. “This is not your size or color,” he cautions. “Our brains are like a computer. If I put something on you, even if it looks fantastic, chances are you won’t like it ‘cause you’re not used to it.”

He spins the chair toward the mirror and you gape at what seems to be a coonskin cap perched atop your head. “Notice how it shaves 10 years off your age,” he says. “You kind of look like your younger brother.”

Before you can tell him you don’t have a younger brother, he’s whispering: “You know the biggest problem you’ll have with a hairpiece? You’ll be uncomfortable with women running their fingers through your hair. You kind of tense up.”

You say you’ll have to think about buying a wig.

“By all means,” he says, “get one or you’ll think about it till the day you die. It’s like thinking about food when you’re hungry. It don’t really solve the problem.”

Another wig outfit offers other choices. At the Oxnard branch office of an established statewide company, a consultant with glossy real hair tells you his product is made from hair of European teen-agers and costs as much as $3,000. The hairpiece would be glued to your scalp along a shaven “track” around your horseshoe-shaped bald spot. The process effectively prevents the wig from ever coming off, but you have to sleep and shower in it. And when the shaven hair grows out in a few weeks, the wig loosens and requires servicing.

“It’s $55,” the attendant says, “but we give you a haircut and clean your unit.”

Although the hairpiece is exposed to sun and chlorine, it should last for years, the attendant says. “A person who grooms himself well should not have a problem. The life expectancy of a unit should be between three and four years. We have some clients who work out in the fields or in machine shops and tend not to take a shower every day. That will wear the unit out, and the life expectancy will be 1 1/2 to 2 years.”

When you get home, you ponder your options--scalp reductions, micrografts, fake and genuine hairpieces, regular showering--and decide to save your money and your scalp. You adopt a mantra, “bald is beautiful,” and accept your destiny, reluctantly perhaps, but with the courage to go forward despite your tragic condition.

Off the Top

Ever wonder what would happen if you woke up bald one morning? You would still be that same lovable, sensitive human being, of course, but would you have the same charisma? Would anybody still trust you, take you seriously or ever describe you as dashing ? For an actor suddenly gone bald, romantic roles are history. In politics, nobody ever won with the slogan, “Vote for Me--I’m Bald.” You think we’re exaggerating? Test your reaction to these computer-altered photos of famous Ventura County residents. We think you’ll agree, Sue Ellen never would have given J.R. a second glance.