chemicals? cut? wear hats? i’m stuck.

I'm a 20 year old guy with coarse, curly, thick hair and I'm really tired of fighting with it. I don't really mind it being curly, but there are far too many textures to deal with. The top is mostly just wavy, but the sides and back grow in really tight ringlets, and the whole thing just looks like Shirley Temple stuck her finger in an electrical socket. The only way I can find to tame it is to spend 30 minutes blowdrying it and then going over it with a flat iron on a low setting to smooth it down. I realize that all this heat can't possibly be good for it, but air drying never looks good at all, and it takes far too long.

I know there are a lot of ways I could solve this if I had $300 to throw at it, but I really can't afford that. My hair also grows really fast, so the upkeep would be very expensive. I've tried having it grow down to my shoulders and I've had it short. Even when it was short I had to flat iron it to smooth it out. I've read a lot about the Rusk Anti-Curl thing, and it sounds like it'd work ok, but I can't find pricing anywhere. Any advice at all would be very appreciated. I've read posts on these boards for a while, and people here generally seem to know what they're talking about.

Thanks a lot.