Is there such thing as a chest hair transplant?

Hi, Matt:

How shallow we are. I'm a gay man chasing a younger gay man who won't give me the time of day because I don't have a hairy chest! My question: Is there such a thing as a chest hair transplant? How about minoxidil? Would that work on a bare chest?

-- Hairless, out there somewhere

Sorry, but hair-grow goo isn't likely to do a thing for you. It's certainly never been tested on chests and isn't recommended for anything but hair regrowth or to slow hair loss on heads. (Even on heads, it works better in some spots than others, and it doesn't work for everyone.) Minoxidil requires that you had something there to begin with. Besides, LaWanda, our staff aesthetician, says, ewwwwww, male body hair is out, out, out this year. Spas can hardly keep up with the lasering and waxing and tweezing. Perhaps all possible hair has finally been removed from women, and they have no choice but to move on to men. Or maybe it's just some weird spin-off of the recent Chihuahua madness.

But exactly how obsessed are we with His Royal Shallowness? How far will we go in our quest for the Hairy Grail? A ready-made, cut-to-fit chest rug (from a wig maker, theatrical supply shop, or the Internet) or a couple of bottles of minoxidil doesn't seem like much of a commitment. Surgery will show how much you really care.

Yes, some men have had punch-graft chest-hair transplants. First, you find body hair that you think would look cute hanging off your pecs. Then a dermatologist uses a device like a paper punch to cut out a small piece of that hairy skin, inserts the plug into a tiny slit in your chest, repeats the process maybe 500, a thousand times, and after three or four months of punching, grafting, bleeding, scabbing, healing, and check-writing, you have your new lawn. Research suggests that hair-plug transplants from one person to another could be successful, so be on the lookout for a follicle donor who's a sucker for romance.

No one else would make this next suggestion, but that won't stop me. If you're suffering from slick-dome disease, your doctor might choose to cut out the bald spot, yank the hairy scalp edges together, and sew them up. So how about you have the doc remove your chest skin, then tug that underarm hair until it meets in the center? A nice cross-stitch up the middle and you're in business. Of course, these surgical solutions take time to heal, so by the time you're back on the party circuit, you can be guaranteed that His Shallowness will have flown off to Key West with a lumberjack.