Last Dance, Last Chance

celebrity. The Associated Press carried the syndicated story of the doctor who had the answer to the prayers of bald men all over the country.
    “Anthony Pignataro reached under his hair,” reporter Stephen Sobek wrote, “and—pop! pop! pop! pop!—in a matter of seconds, held most of his thick brown locks in the palm of his hand…”
    Anthony agreed with Sobek that his invention might sound “too science fiction” to the layman, but it was commonplace for him. He described the surgery in which his father had implanted the four titanium bolts into the top of his skull. The snaps would never need maintenance, and the hairpiece should last about four years. The initial investment was $4,000, and Dr. Pignataro said he had already done about a hundred of the procedures for men from all across America who had flown into his West Seneca clinic.
    The AP story that appeared in most papers around the world caught the interest of all forms of media. Anthony and his invention were mentioned on CBS Nightly News and by Tom Brokaw. GQ and Esquire had short articles on the lifetime hairpiece system. He appeared on the Maury Povich Show and on Hard Copy. Anthony Pignataro was finally enjoying the public attention and the accolades he had wanted for so long. The only place he felt he didn’t get enough press was Buffalo. His contribution to bald men—and women—was widely accepted.
    Money rolled in.
     
    Anthony had another favorite project, which he had been working on since 1994. He envisioned a kind of bra that would fit under the skin of the breasts. Not all the women who came to see him needed breast implants; some were suffering only from the pull of gravity. Mastopexy (a breast-lift) worked, but Anthony wasn’t happy with the scarring that often resulted.
    His answer was his invisible bra, a concept that he tested on female corpses in a medical school anatomy lab. His test subjects could not complain if the under-skin brassieres should prove to be uncomfortable.
    “Several materials were tested,” he wrote in his book. “Ultra-thin silicone sheeting seemed to have all the right qualities. Though not originally patented this way, a thin, lightweight underwire of implantable titanium forms the framework for implantation below the breast. Multiple devices, such as screws, metal sutures, and anchor were already approved and in use.”
    Again, he referred to himself in the third person but quickly slipped back into using “I”:
    “Anthony would never see those clinical trials [of the inner brassiere]. I would be remiss if I did not recognize the personnel of the local anatomy laboratory, who provided invaluable assistance to my research. Innumerable hours were spent working with different materials, methods, and cadavers, with surgery going into the late-night hours. They were always accommodating. Without such perdurable assistance, the entire endeavor may never have been possible. This research had consumed him [me].”
    But this was one invention he could not test on himself, and it didn’t sound all that comfortable. He put off testing it on a human being. He had, however, progressed to doing breast implants and lifts in his basement surgery. Business was good: men flew into West Seneca to have bolts implanted in their skulls, and women arrived to have breast augmentation.
    Anthony believed in advertising and marketing. His was a service like any other business. Why should doctors be so hesitant to compete for business?
    Anthony saw everyone he met as a potential patient, and he wasn’t shy about approaching them. He gained several patients at the sports club he frequented. He took before-and-after pictures of his breast enhancement patients and showed them naked on the Internet. He advertised his hair replacement system in the sports section of local papers, figuring all men would see them there.
    Probably his most unusual and innovative approach was to convince a Buffalo radio station to award a free breast enlargement to the winner of a contest. Anthony offered free consultations to the finalists: the contestants went on the air to tell why they needed their breasts enlarged, and Anthony explained what would transpire in the consultations and offered his easy-pay financial plan for those who didn’t win.
    As fate would have it, the woman who won never had the surgery, and it may have been a fortunate thing that she hesitated for so long.
     
    One of Anthony’s many out-of-state patients was a woman from