MANILA, Philippines - I was always a late adopter.

Throughout the ?60s, when my peers stopped plastering their hair down with Three Flowers pomade and started combing it forward like the Beatles, I wore the same buzz cut, maintained at precisely no more than three millimeters by fortnightly visits to the barber.

Johnny Mathis gave way to the Kingston Trio, and the Beatles to Led Zeppelin. Hairstyles came and went: the classic Elvis ?D.A.? (?duck?s ass,? so named because that?s what your head was supposed to look like from the back, if done right), the Tom Jones sideburns and mutton chops a la Engelbert Humperdinck, the Beatles cut, and finally the free-form, let-it-all-hang-out anarchy of the hippie era.

Me, I kept going to the barber every two weeks, like clockwork. I was a high school freshman in ?69, and I was still a suedehead. My classmates would make fun of me by singing lines from ?Hair,? the Broadway musical. ?Oh say can you see, my eyes if you can, then my hair?s too short!?

I was also the last to switch from baston pants to bell-bottoms. I wore sharkskin hand-me-downs which, in a previous life, were the bottom half of my father?s business suits. This was way before geek chic. I was in desperate need of a makeover, though in 1969 nobody knew what that was.

As the new decade dawned, I had had enough. I put my foot down and declared that I was growing my hair out, much to the dismay of my parents. Back then, having long hair still meant something beyond making a fashion statement. It was a mark of defiance, a gesture of nonconformity, a break from the old order.

I stopped going to the barber?s. This in itself was a major break. Hard as it might be for today?s youngsters to believe, back then, if your hair touched your ears or your shirt collar, you were headed for trouble.

My hair eventually reached ?below the collar.? In those days this was the unspoken line, beyond which you were marked as a ?troublemaker? by your teachers and elders, a probable delinquent, and a possible communist and pot-smoker.

Ironically, this gesture of supposed non-conformity finally made me feel that I was no longer an outsider, that I finally belonged to a larger community of delinquents, communists and pot-smokers. Groovy.

Eventually my hair reached down to my shoulders, and beyond. I wore it straight and parted in the middle, like Joan Baez. My parents and relatives wrung their hands as I walked by, hair flying in the wind. It was a priceless feeling.

One of my aunts even had a standing offer. Two hundred bucks, she said, if I cut my hair. That was a small fortune then, but I wasn?t even tempted.

Two years passed, and my hair eventually reached down to my nipples. It marked me as a ?freak.? In those days, that was considered a good thing. It meant you were one of ?us.? Total strangers would pass me joints at concerts.

Then it all came crashing down.

A few days after Martial Law was declared, my father dragged me, kicking and screaming, into his barbershop to have my shoulder-length locks shorn.

He had panicked after seeing pictures of soldiers stopping long-haired youths on the street and giving them on-the-spot buzz cuts, in keeping with the regime?s new slogan: ?Sa ikauunlad ng bayan, disiplina ang kailangan.?

That night, sleepless, I gnashed my teeth and rent my garments like Samson.

The next morning I went to my aunt?s and demanded my two hundred bucks. I bought a second-hand electric guitar which gave me something else to annoy my parents with while my hair grew back.

But it was never the same after that. I still wore my hair longish in college, but I was just one of the crowd, a ?martial law baby.?

Still a late adopter, I kept going to my old barber for the occasional trim.

My more fashion-forward peers, however, had begun having their hair ?styled? instead of just cut. Because old-school barbers, with their iper and bonsilla, couldn?t get the new layered look that was coming into fashion, my friends had started going to beauty parlors to have their hair styled and blow-dried by gay beauticians.

This was another major crossroads, and I hemmed and hawed for a long time before deciding that, hell, everybody else was doing it so why not?

My first parlor cut was a revelation. My hair still covered my ears and reached below the collar, but it fell in neat, precise layers that framed my face like hair was supposed to. My stylist also managed to convince me that there was nothing sissy about using conditioner, or hair gel. Not really.

I was in for another rude shock, however, as the disco era faded, and punk arrived to destroy all that had come before it. Long hair had always been the mark of the bohemian, but all of a sudden, it was passé, unhip, old hat. Kids were chopping up their hair, bleaching it with peroxide, and spiking it with gel, beer, even egg white.

All of a sudden, I felt old.

I was pushing 30 anyway, and hair wasn?t a big deal anymore. Most of my peers had settled into the haircut they would keep for the rest of their lives, or at least while their hair held out.

Me? I had a short-lived, ill-advised phase in the mid-?80s when I combed my hair back in a little ponytail. I blame ?Miami Vice? and the stereotyping of Colombian drug dealers. ?Say hello to my leetle fren?.?

After that I settled into a neat, fuss-free normal average haircut.

Then, just as I was about to turn 40, I decided to grow my hair again. Punk had given way to grunge, and Nirvana made it OK to have long hair again. Anyway, I stopped going to the stylist (OK, beauty parlor) for my regular trim and just let it grow out again, and before I knew it, I had longer hair at 40 than I had at 16. Most of the time, I wore it in a ponytail, for convenience and to maintain some sense of office decorum. Is this a midlife crisis or what?

Hard to say. There were plenty of fortysomethings with long hair in ponytails, but they were either Baguio artists or old hippies in tie-dye shirts. What was my excuse? Grunge?

Eventually, it got to be a pain. I was spending a fortune on shampoos and conditioners, and combing out the tangles was a hassle. Eventually I said f___ it and walked into the first beauty parlor I saw for a trim.

The resulting cut was heinous, a ridiculous-looking bob that made me look like the Dutch boy in the paint ads. I realized that while I wasn?t looking, most men had stopped going to beauty parlors and back to good old-fashioned barbers, and that not all ?stylists,? gay or otherwise, knew how to cut men?s hair.

Argh!

The next day I walked into Hortaleza and plunked down P800 for an electric hair clipper. Then I went home and gave myself a buzz cut with the Number Two attachment.