On being redheaded...

Growing up I was cursed with a plain name: Matthew. While my parents swear the name was original and unique at the time they bestowed it upon my cute little head, they must have picked it up on one of those annoying news stories titled "Most popular baby names 1981." My whole life Matthews abound. All throughout grammar school, I was Matty C., while the 3 kids who shared my name got Matt or Matthew or some other distinctive nickname. How I longed for a more dynamic name like Sebastian or Alexander!

Luckily I had the good sense to be a redhead. My fiery locks made me stand out from the crowd of Catholic school uniforms (and made me pretty darn cute if you ask me). My hair color has always been my best selling point. I don't think I've ever been on a date with someone who didn't have a specific "thing" for redheads, which is fine with me; I think everyone should sleep with at least one redhead in their lifetime, and I am happy to do my part to make that happen.

Redheads have a heavy burden to bare. We are expected to exude a simultaneous air of ferocity and woundability. Our hair invariably causes postal men, panhandlers, truck drivers and 8th Avenue winos alike to yell "Hey Red!" I would never dream of calling them “Hey, Brown!” or "Hey, Dirty Blond." (Okay, I might use that last one, but only because it sounds like it should be the name of a drag queen.) We will be the first ones to become extinct once the non-redheads in power destroy our preciouozonene layer. We are forever being asked by perverts if we are "natural redheads (wink-wink)." It is our lot in life to forever be reduced to a fetish, a crotch, a challenge, a mystery to be solved.

Lately, though I have noticed tons of redheads everywhere I go. The city seems to be crawling with them. Spring has arrived and like slugs after a rainfall, redheads have appeared out of nowhere to overrun Manhattan. It's nice to see so many pasty white, freckled, redheads walking around in a way, but it detracts from the exotic flavor of the hair color. When there is only a handful like you, one can achieve the status of "the desirable Other." You are checked out more, you turn heads, and you develop confidence in the process. With all these other redheads around, they are diluting my effectiveness. Like if there were 20 superheroes with the same superpowers as Superman, he wouldn't seem quite as super. But since there's only one who can do quite what he does, he remains the best of the best. Red hair is my super power (and sunlight my kryptonite!), and these others are all Bizarro Matthews.

This past weekend I started counting, and I have seen 15 redheads in the past 5 days. That seems like a high number to me. We make up maybe 5% of the population, and we all seem to have converged in NYC this week. Is there some sort of Redhead Convention going on at the Javits Center? Are they deciding important redhead-related policies that I need to know about? And how come I wasn't invited to attend? Is there some secret underground Redheaded League? And where do I sign up?