To Infinity... And Exceptionally Good Hair

Casual passers-by in Harvard Square might take note of the flamboyant writing on the Aveda sign; or they might glance twice at the dual pink plastic flamingos sunning themselves in the one-foot-wide garden on the sidewalk. The occasional intrepid individual might descend into the basement shop, where space paraphernalia, glow-in-the-dark stars, glitter and twinkling lights battle for attention amidst two unassuming barber chairs. Certainly, it's a hairstyling experience unique in the environs of Boston, Massachusetts, and you wouldn't know it from the hand-painted sign above the door: "DHR."

It stands, oddly, for "Dale-Hair-Rob." And it's been a Cambridge institution for 23 years, a place where Harvard professors and club kids - and club kids who became Harvard professors - have turned for fabulous hair design from the two gay proprietors, a couple whose last names are all but superfluous. They are, simply, Dale and Rob. And they're who you go to if you want a superb style without the infamous Newbury Street price point.

Their odyssey is a story of dreams and passions, of reaching for the stars and grasping three decades of commitment set against the most turbulent time for gay rights in our community's history - and in many ways, leading the way by example. Now, that odyssey is ending; not due to economic woes or a breakdown in their love for each other, but rather because of a space invader of the most hated kind.

Visitors to the shop notice little different in its outlandish d�cor or the inevitable, eclectic music played nonstop. The prices haven't changed. But Dale works there alone these days, and when he's done, he drives back to the boys' seventh-floor condo in Quincy, parks his car and runs upstairs to help his partner bathe, eat and navigate between a wheelchair and the hospital bed sandwiched in their living room.

Rob is dying of brain cancer.

Some days are good, when Rob can form complete sentences and express his emotions. Others are bad, when he struggles to overcome the pressure being exerted by the mass in his head onto his brain. Hope is a luxury, an estranged visitor. But curiously not strange to them is the acceptance of their neighbors and clients, who have reached out during the illness - with money, with gifts, and with cheer characteristic of the joys they've found in their haircutting appointments.

"It's been great," Dale says of the outpouring of support from their clientele. "They've been very loyal and understanding." But he also points to the fact that when he met Rob almost 35 years ago, it would never have happened.

Meeting By Chance

On New Year's Eve 1981, prior to Ronald Reagan becoming president, when the average cost of a gallon of gas was $1.25, a Tandy TRS 80 cost $149.95, the term "Internet" was coined and a cluster of homosexual men in New York and San Francisco began exhibiting signs of what would become known as the AIDS epidemic, Dale and Rob met. A straight man working at The Foxboro Company, producing electronic components for the computers just beginning to automate the planet, introduced two of his co-workers to each other. He didn't know they were gay, and once he became aware that he'd inadvertently helped forge a homosexual relationship, he never spoke to either one again.

But the damage, of course, was done. That New Year's Eve at First Night Boston was the genesis of their adventure; the following morning, Rob managed pancakes with Sweet'N Low and water, lacking most of the real ingredients required. "They were the worst pancakes I'd ever had," Dale jokes. "But I stuck with him."

It took but eleven days for the two young men - Rob, 24 and Dale, 20 - to move in together. According to Dale, Rob was "worldly," which essentially meant he'd been to more places than Dale. Rob says Dale was "innocent," which essentially meant he was a younger man. They listened to WBCN, rocking their tiny flat to the sounds of Depeche Mode, The Clash, and the Psychedelic Furs. They slept together on a twin bed. They worked alternate shifts at the factory. They felt an instant connection with each other.

"We'd go dancing," Rob recalls. "Mostly, it was at Buddies."

The legendary bar was then in its heyday. Friday and Saturday nights gay men would flock to the Boylston Street locale surreptitiously, there to swirl in relative safety while outside swirled the anti-gay rhetoric and the damnation of their lifestyle after the onset of AIDS. If it wasn't Buddies, the two would frequent Chaps. Or Skippers, in whose building overlooking the Boston Public Garden high-end clients of the Four Seasons now dine their business associates and friends.

Back then, "gay rights" victories essentially included two states holding same-sex sodomy laws unconstitutional - and Massachusetts wasn't one of them. Europe was considerably friendlier to the cause; and so, that summer, on a trip to visit Dale's brother in Sweden, Rob took Dale to a quiet park and presented him a ring.

There, with nobody in attendance but the two of them, and no photos to document the event, they pledged their lives to each other.

It was August 1st, 1981.

Building A Future

Their initial commitment to each other was one of four times the duo got "married." But if you talk to either of them, they begin counting their marriage from that date.

"That was the one that counted," Dale states. "We pledged ourselves to each other in a park. Is there anything better?"

The couple also participated in a documented commitment ceremony in 1994, entering a "domestic partnership," and then again during a mass commitment ceremony at Boston Gay Pride a few years later. By then they were political in their ambitions, seeking the rights to become officially married under the law.

In the intervening decade, however, they were mostly concerned about hairdressing.

After they both got laid off from The Foxboro Company, they made a pilgrimage to, of all places, the Boston Public Library. Their goal: research a career where two gay men might not only thrive, but ultimately become their own masters.

"That left three choices in those days," Dale laughs. "Flower arranging, interior design, and hairdressing."

Tired of corporate life, they enrolled at Blaine Beauty School and put in 1,000 hours (about 10 months) of training. At the end of that stretch, Dale and Rob bopped between salons ranging from Newbury Street to Brookline until they ended up co-managing a quasi-franchised basement salon called Advantage in Harvard Square. The business owner eventually offered to sell it to his two gay employees.

"That was a nerve-wracking decision," Rob recalls. "We didn't know if we'd be in business after reopening the store."

More importantly, they didn't have the $10,000 the proprietor was asking for his stake. The money ultimately came from a surprising place: Dale's parents, whose first reaction to meeting Rob a decade earlier had been positively cool. Dale's mom, in fact, warned the two upon first seeing them as a couple, "Don't go buying any furniture together."

Instead, they bought a whole salon. On New Year's Eve of 1993 - twelve years to the day after the guys met - Advantage Salon closed for good. When it reopened, a few months later, it did so as DHR.

Initially, the business was a bit rocky. They still had employees - the chairs in the salon originally numbered four, and spry clients can still see the old station behind the register in the back - plus it took time to build a dedicated roster of customers. But those customers came nonetheless, attracted to the unique little boutique and its curious owners who cut such great hair. In those early days, the two survived on $400 per month plus credit cards and coupons.

"We were definitely nervous," Dale says of those first few months. "It grew very slowly. And it took a long time to realize that we didn't need other employees."

In fact, the two soon realized that the days they most enjoyed working at the salon were the days when they worked there alone. And when the last employee left, and they had a difficult time finding a qualified replacement, they realized something else.

"Without employees," Dale recalls, "we actually started making a little money."

The lack of employees also enabled the two to give their shop a little flair. One holiday, they put up Christmas lights; when it came time to take them down, the place seemed so depressing that they put them right back up. By this time the two were living in Bay Village, AIDS was stealing friends and clients, and they had discovered a new common love: science fiction.

"We always loved Star Trek," says Dale. "We loved the fact that in that universe, really different people were able to get along and live in peace together. We desperately wanted to see that in our own world."

When 2001 rolled around, they celebrated it - and the film of the same name - by taking their salon to a place far, far away. Orbiting planets, thousands of stars, and sci-fi curiosities began to replace the stark blue and gray hues of a more traditional atmosphere. And their clients responded with glee.

As the business grew, Dale and Rob found that it might not pay huge financial dividends - the landlords grew richer than the guys themselves - but they found happiness.

"We always had enough to get by," Rob explains. "And we loved the work."

Over the years, the two became increasingly political, participating in events that forwarded gay rights, their shop an ever-evolving platform from which they educated, exclaimed and evangelized how the LGBT community's need for equal treatment under the law roosted in a relationship on the ground. They lobbied hard from beneath their scissors and hair dryers when they couldn't stand outside the Massachusetts State House as the commonwealth's legislature debated gay marriage - their own dockets were too full - and they opted to celebrate in the most significant way they could when it was passed in May of 2004.

It was time to codify what they'd done thrice before. It was time to get married.

Into The Beyond

To make sure they could legally wed on the 22nd anniversary of their first commitment to each other, Dale and Rob needed to work fast. Marriage had been passed in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in May of 2004, and August 1st was rapidly approaching.

Moreover, a simple ceremony wouldn't do. The boys had done that, quietly stating their love for each other in a Swedish park in 1981. It was time to go all out.

"We decided to make a political statement," Dale recounts. "We wanted to throw a party for our friends, families and clients that would make fun of the whole 'world's about to end' reaction to gay marriage."

To do so, they booked the largest dance venue at the time - Avalon on Landsdowne Street, in the shadow of Fenway Park, a nightclub where the two had spend countless hours dancing on Sunday nights. They invited all 2,000+ clients. They wrote a futuristic play about a time-traveling couple returning to 2004 to see how a gay marriage "in the beginning" might have happened. They conscripted DJs and caterers from among their friends. And they threw a party that 520 people - including some who flew in from Tokyo and Moscow - would never forget.

"It was amazing," Rob remembers wistfully. "I was so surprised at how moving and emotional it was."

Dale agrees. "I thought it was going to be political, but it changed the way I view the world, and especially the way I view weddings. I cry at them now, because I remember how much that day meant."

That year, the two men decided that their business had grown to the point where they could relax a bit. In the ensuing decade, they travelled - most notably to Hawaii, on the 30th anniversary of that first commitment in Sweden. They bought their small condo in Quincy. Rob hand-cut 66,000 stars for the ceiling and walls of their shop. And they each cut a lot of hair.

In July of 2014 - just shy of the tenth anniversary of their Avalon wedding - they traveled to Italy. During the trip, Rob started to realize that something was wrong. He was experiencing difficulty walking; his right foot kept dropping. Initially, they thought that decades of standing all day at work or perhaps the ancient cobblestones lining the streets were to blame. But it got worse when they returned; Rob dropped a coffee cup. He started to lose control over his right hand.

Doctors ordered an MRI. One day after the procedure, Rob fielded a call on his cell. There was a mass in his brain. He needed to see a surgeon immediately.

"I kind of went blank," Dale says. "All of a sudden a lot of what they're saying to you - some of it sinks in, but a lot of it goes right by you."

Both men held onto hope that the mass might be benign. On July 14th of last year - Bastille Day - Rob went into surgery, gamely singing The Marseillaise from his gurney as they rolled him out of prep. Dale settled in to wait. After nearly eight hours, the surgeon was optimistic that he'd removed the great majority of the tumor, but it turned out to be malignant.

To their clients, the next eight months seemed to pass in a whirl. Most saw Rob once or twice during the latter months of last year when he underwent experimental chemotherapy. One client brought in a comical foam brain that still sits on the register counter. One set up a fund on giveforward.com called "Rob and Dale's Intergalactic Brain Odyssey," which ultimately collected nearly $8,000 to help offset the medical bills of near-constant treatments.

For a while, Rob and Dale documented the disease on Facebook - photos of both guys without hair, comparisons to Star Trek's nefarious Borg race, and updates on holidays spent together kept their fans up to date.

"Those posts were a lifeline to him," Dale explains, noting that Rob - even now - reads every Facebook post from every friend or client. For a time, the tumor was responding well to treatment. Optimism overcame fear.

Then, in late November, the cancer began a rebound, and Rob's body began to encounter ancillary challenges related to the aggressive treatments he'd undergone. His colon ruptured. He began to weaken. The two celebrated the US Supreme Court's support of gay marriage last month from a hospital room. And on June 28th, a few days after that worldwide affirmation of the journey they'd been on for thirty years, and less than a week after the interviews held for the article you're reading, Rob's doctors gave up the fight.

Rob is now in the care of home hospice nurses whose overarching goal is to keep him comfortable. And the two men who charted a path into the starry unknown are facing, for the first time, a future they cannot explore together.

"We're doing this day by day," Dale says now. "Some days [Rob] can feel strong and put full sentences together. Some days it's like he's in this fog and has trouble finding the words to express his thoughts." Rob's movements are limited, and occasionally he's had extended hospital stays, forcing Dale to sleep in their bed alone - something he never did, not even once, prior to the cancer.

There's still a level of resistance, of not wanting to give up, even if the doctors have. And there are emotional highs and lows. "Things mean more to us," Dale says. "Like music. The other day we were listening to Abba's Mamma Mia and we both started crying."

The diagnosis at this point might be uncertain; but there is one thing Dale and Rob say they know with every fiber of their being - they're in it together until the end.

"I'm not going anywhere," Dale says defiantly. "We've done everything together for thirty years. We built this salon, we wrote our wedding, we cooked our meals together. Now, we're going through this together, too. I'm not going to abandon him."

For his part, Rob sums it up in one simple sentence penned via email for this story: "I wouldn't be here without his love and strength."

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Author's Note: On August 2nd, a few weeks after this article was published, Rob lost his battle with cancer. Our heartfelt sympathies go out to his entire family.

To help Dale and Rob, donate here.