A note on the menu

Nobody printed the fourth card.

Every man whose hair still matters to him gets handed the same three. Accept it, take it off, or go the medical route. Before you play one, look at who printed the deck.

  1. 1

    Accept it

    The card you play by never picking one up. It costs nothing today and nobody will argue with you for choosing it. It also answers the question for the next ten years, quietly, and you never have to notice that you answered it.

  2. 2

    Take it off

    Honest, immediate, and it works. It is also the one card with no expiry date on it. The clippers will be exactly as available in five years as they are this morning, which is the best argument there is for not reaching for them this morning.

  3. 3

    The medical route

    A real route, with real medicine behind it, and some men should be on it. It arrives with a conversation about the rest of you and a schedule somebody else sets. That is not a scandal. It is simply a larger thing than you were after, if what you want is for your hair to keep being your hair.

  4. 4

    The card that was never printed

    Blank. Not because nobody thought of it, but because it settles nothing, and a card that settles nothing is a hard card to hand out. The first three end the question. This one keeps it open.

An open bathroom drawer seen from above in warm morning light, holding a black hair clipper with its cord coiled, two loose guard combs, a fine black comb and a small folded appointment card, with stray hairs and dust in the corners.
The two cards that end up in a drawer. Neither one expires, which is precisely why neither one has to be played today.

Who printed the deck

What the three have in common.

Each one is somebody's business. The second belongs to the barber, and he is not the villain here: he has been giving you the straight answer for twenty years and he will give it to you again. The third belongs to a clinic. The first is free, which is exactly why nothing in the world ever argues against it.

And not one of the three has a word to say about your scalp.

That is not a conspiracy. It is arithmetic. All three cards are decisions: things you make once and then live inside. The condition of your scalp is not a decision. It is a Tuesday. Nobody prints a card that says do a small thing on Tuesday, because there is no moment in it, and a moment is the only thing anybody knows how to sell.

So the fourth card got left out of the deck. And the man who asks for it is told he is in denial. Say out loud that you would rather keep what you have and someone will tell you to take it off and get over yourself. That is not advice. That is somebody handing you the second card again.

What the fourth card says

Hair is made in one place, and it is not the place every product in the aisle goes to work on.

Not along the length, where the shampoos and the sprays live. Underneath, in the skin, where the follicle is fed and where the oil your own scalp is supposed to make comes from. What arrives next year is set by the condition of that ground this year. Look after the ground and the hair that comes out of it keeps arriving with the shine, the softness, the colour and the body it already has.

That is the whole of the fourth card. It is not a bigger idea than that. VALEVA Golden Oil is eight botanical oils and vitamin E, and it goes on the scalp, not on the hair.

Jojoba goes first because it is built like the sebum your skin already makes, so the blend reads as something the scalp recognises and lets in instead of something sitting on top of it. Rosemary and peppermint move blood at the root. Castor and batana are heavy and slow and are still there hours later. Coconut is the one of the eight that goes into the fibre itself, where it slows the protein loss that leaves hair feeling like wire. Vitamin E keeps the blend from oxidising in the bottle.

A couple of drops. Damp scalp, after the shower. Two or three minutes with your fingertips, three to five times a week.

This card has a cost too, and it would be dishonest not to name it: it has to actually be done. Three minutes, three times a week, for as long as you want the thing it does. If that is more than you care to carry, the first card is free and it is right there on the table.

Which brings up the other thing. You have bought something for your hair before and stopped using it. Maybe by the third week, maybe into a drawer near the clippers. That is the ordinary ending for these things, and it is the only reason this line exists:

The VALEVA Golden Oil bottle standing uncapped on a warm walnut bathroom counter in morning light, its glass dropper lying on a rumpled damp white towel beside it, next to a worn steel wristwatch on a leather strap, with faint water rings on the wood.
Thirty millilitres, a glass dropper and a towel that is already damp. That is the entire ceremony.

The unit is the year

The unit here is years, not density.

A few more years of the hair I have. That is how the men who want this card actually say it, and it is the only unit the card is worth anything in.

It is also the one honest argument for picking it up now instead of in the spring. The other three lose nothing at all by waiting. The clippers will be there. The clinic will be there. Doing nothing is available at any hour of any day. The fourth card is the only one on the table that is worth less the later you take it, because it works on the hair you still have.

You will see the first part of it in four to six weeks, and it will be the surface part: shine, softness, the way it sits after a comb. Anything tied to the hair cycle itself moves at the speed of the hair cycle, which is eight to twelve weeks before it is fair to judge anything. You get the whole 90 days to decide, so there are about six weeks left over after you can already see something.

I have been skeptical of oils since the 1980s, when they were sold to me as a cure for everything. This one makes no such promises, which is exactly why I kept using it. The hair looks the way it did a decade ago, not better, just maintained.

Douglas R., 67

A man in his mid fifties seen from behind and over the shoulder in a bathroom in warm morning light, a white towel around his neck, working a couple of drops of oil into his scalp with the fingertips of both hands, his thick damp salt and pepper hair combed back.
Two or three minutes on a damp scalp, three to five times a week. This is the fourth card in full.

The next step

Take the card off the table.

The eight oils are named one by one on the product page, along with the two ways men use it, what it is not for, and the terms of the 90 days. Read the label first if you like. It does not ask you to believe anything you cannot check on the bottle itself.

You do not have to play the fourth card today. You do have to be holding it, which is more than the deck you were handed will ever let you do.

Order the bottle