RITES OF PASSAGE

Dr. Robert Thomas’ waiting room is packed with balding men, all wearing hair styles designed to elude reality and make the best of nature’s curse. On my left sits a man with the standard part-over-the-ear variety, with wisps of hair skillfully swept up and around and over; to my right, a young rocker with black waist-length tresses camouflages a chronically receding hairline with a set of conveniently placed Walkman headphones.

But no one is fooling anyone here in this room, where male vanity nervously collides with its counterpart, outright male insecurity. In walks 25-year-old Chris Travis with luggage in tow. A detention officer at the county jail in Havre, Mont., Chris has just flown to Los Angeles so that Thomas can transplant some of the hair from the back of his head to the front and top. Beginning today, Chris will no longer be a victim of genetics but will fight back, strand by strand, plug by plug.

“First you see it in the sink,” Chris says, “then in your comb and even on your pillow. It seemed like it started falling out all at once. It’s depressing. There’s nothing to look forward to except being bald. You’re constantly looking in the mirror, combing your hair in different ways, trying to cover up things. And you look at everyone else’s hairline and envy people who have a full head of hair. People take it for granted.”

“I take the approach that here’s a man who is feeling bad about what’s happened to him,” says Thomas, 41, who performs more than 1,000 transplants a year. “He thinks there’s been some sort of injustice done to him. A lot of men think that their social lives are disintegrating because they’re going bald. It’s a very sensitive area.”

Thomas and Chris consult privately for a few minutes. When Chris comes out, a crayon-like line has been drawn across his forehead, marking off the hairline of the future. He’s excited and revved up.

“I’ve waited for this for quite a while, you know,” he says. “I’ve been wearing a hairpiece for the past five years. It’s not natural looking. And it’s so inconvenient. I just got tired of it. Now I’m going after something permanent.”

A nurse calls Chris in for surgery and he goes . . . after something permanent.