The Random Thoughts of a Sometimes Bored White Guy

There’s something remarkably delightful about letting your facial hair off on its own tangent.

Maybe it’s the fact that I can’t grow an equivalent amount of the top of my head and the hair on my sides doesn’t grow out much to boot. It could be the follicle version of compensation. In order to forget that the Mohican or even an Art Garunkelesque Chia Pet-do is but a distant dream, I allow the hair on my face to serve as consolation. It’s like the needless Porsche acquisition of hair growing.

Maybe it’s the fact that I’m a lazy bastard. Think of the women’s liberation of the 1970s when an increase in unshaven legs was afoot. Hell, given how annoying and aggravating shaving my face is, I’m completely in sympathy with these people! Gloria Steinem was more than just an inspirational cultural radical; she was a pragmatist.

Maybe it’s the fact that I’m sparing myself a tremendous amount of irritation and bloodshed. At five blades and counting, there’s no telling how much further razor companies will allow me to gouge my face—and allow themselves to gouge my pocketbook—as they continue the relentless pursuit to create a razor bigger than my head.

Maybe it’s because beards supposedly command a certain amount of respect. The evil Spock on Star Trek wore a goatee, no one would have wanted to mess with him. Grizzly Adams wore a big-ass beard and he was able to talk to bears, wrestle wolves and snort cocaine at an impressive pace (well, I only made some of those up….). Upon lopping off a long-standing goatee, a colleague informed me that he’d always wanted to talk to me more but that with my beard, I “kind of scared him a little.” The fact that he stood near a foot taller and probably 60 pounds heavier seemed a bit lost on him. I’m not sure if he thought I had a machete hiding under there.

Whatever the case, there has to be a logical reason why so many of us males have chosen at some point in our lives— some of us more significant portions of times than others— to live the face-hair life. It certainly isn’t because women (or gay men for that matter) prefer it on the average; in fact, some studies suggest that a beard might be a cost-effective alternative to a chastity belt. That’s a long path from the declarations of Roman Era author Lactantius, who decreed beards contributed “to the beauty of manliness and strength.” He had not the foresight to imagine bearded yuppies or me in a weight room.

It’s not as if there isn’t also early historic precedent for the hate-on towards beards either. Apparently during ancient Egyptian time, not only were they considered unattractive but also signified a person in mourning. Come to think of it, if people didn’t find me appealing, I guess that I’d perpetually mourn too. Maybe the people with the beards that didn’t suffer the loss of a loved one were just genuinely unaware of the connotations they were implying. Conversations for these people must have been quite circular: “Excuse me, but why won’t you come talk to me?” “I’m sorry sir, but it seems as though you are in mourning, I found it awkward to come talk to you.” “Well I am mourning!” Oh, what are you mourning, sir?” “The fact that everything thinks I’m grieving! I just want to talk about the chariot races!”

One thing of which I can assure you, thesis #2 (the laziness-maintenance principle) actually falls apart when you’ve lived long enough to consider all the options. Oh sure, if you decide to grow your beard at age 13 and never ever shave again, that thesis might hold weight. Let me be the first to tell you, though: the moment you shave that sucker, prepare for aggravation like you’ve never known before.

First of all, the longer you have had the beard, the more shocked you will feel when you look in the mirror. The last time I shaved my beard off, I suddenly felt as though I looked like I had ten days to live. I wanted to know who had replaced my body with that of a heroin-injecting haemophiliac. This impression was clearly lost on all of my friends and acquaintances that, though taken aback, did not immediately contact the closest medical practitioner to address my malnutrition. I guess the beard had given me a false impression of what passes for a “healthy face.”

You’d think the problems would end with the initial shock but you’d be wrong. If you’ve ever tried to drive a vehicle after such a radical alteration, you’re lucky not to be killed when you become diverted by the COMPLETE AND UTTER STRANGER staring at you in the rearview mirror. Who the hell is that and how did he commandeer the vehicle without my knowledge? Once you survive this incident and subsequent conversations with the officer about your shaky driving, the most constant irritation persists.

There’s itching. Lots of it. Why? Well, one becomes so used to the beard being there and he’s reached up to stroke it in that fake intelligentsia pose one too many times that he returns there as a force of habit. But there’s nothing there. So in lieu of that, the scratching begins. Quickly thereafter, the realization that daily shaving is the only thing that makes this thing stay away. The itching remains and suddenly growing the beard back doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. Then the beard grows back and the horrible realization sets in that the beard is now itchy too. We cannot return to Camelot.

The hairless option is seen as the lesser of two evils for a couple of reasons. First, it is often argued that the most unappealing thing about a beard is the discomfort of the pour soul kissing a man bearing it. Yet for all of this complaining, some of the most commonly appealing beards seem to be the ones that you would think would hurt the most: stubble beards. They have the consistency of your average piece of slightly-used sandpaper but still only half the creepiness and none of the sleaziness of the dreaded pornstache. 80s music star George Michael was often suspected of shooting his videos on a “one-day-after-the-shave-but-dear-God-not-a-moment-later” schedule in order to preserve this swarthy appeal. It also seems to be the look for those men in shaving commercials that are supposed to appear as cleanly shaven as possible but look instead as though they used a trimmer instead. The women in these ads have no trouble snuggling up to these stubbly men as long as it’s a one day effect, not two. It’s almost as if stubble bearers have tricked women into believing that their five o’clock shadow is really not hair at all. Instead it literally is a shadow; a magic, majestic, manly shadow that provides him with his magnificent prominence.

Second, the hairless option has its roots, like so many things, in status practices of the past. When the safety razor was first invented, the best way to show off that you had money to all the ladies you were trying to impress with affluence was to plunk down for it and continually pay for the overpriced refills. Come to think of it, that’s actually exactly the same as today. Except in 2006, shaving isn’t a matter of looking affluent, it’s simply a matter of not looking homeless. I suppose if I was six more months into the beard I sported weeks ago, I’d be all-too-close to resembling starving, possibly drunk philosopher.

There are some “happy mediums” that men have arrived at during the course of history to try to negotiate this tension. Novelist Stephen King has often stated that the best way to look at it is be clean-shaven during the warm spring and summer months and let the blanket of your beard warm you during the fall and winter. I kind of like it; it’s sort of like a “two lives” storyline. I could devise a weird and wacky bearded Bryce who’s a bit of a loose cannon and tell off every second person I know, only to pave the way for the spring/summer onset of level-headed Bryce, the calm, reasonable man that will apologize for all of his wrongdoings and hosts power lunches on Wednesdays. The duality of it all already has me expecting to see Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari on my daily adventures explaining their latest attempts to keep up their cross-dressing ruse before their landlords.

My current compromise is the feather-duster, flavour-savour, beard-but-not-quite-a-beard and slightly bohemian-implying tuft of hair known as the “soul patch.” It’s kind of a brilliant ploy because you can almost get away with not shaving a little longer as the patch offsets the effect of the stubble; tricking the viewer into believing you shaved yesterday. The look in my case draws inexplicable endless comparisons to Anthrax’s Scott Ian. How wearing facial hair that doesn’t even measure an inch suddenly brings out my resemblance to a man with a goatee that at times rivals ZZ Top’s for audaciousness, I’ll never know.

I find “soul patch” to be the most ironic preservation of a title of all time. OK, I admit: I have a “soul patch.” I think I look good with a “soul patch.” But I do not have “soul.” Sure, I have a soul (at least I hope I do…), but if you’re waiting for me to join up with a runaway beatnik group playing a bongo drum and quoting Kerouac, be prepared to wait a while. I don’t think anyone with “soul” under the age of 30 has worn a “soul patch” since December 7, 1979, when Tom Waits celebrated his 30^th birthday. Mostly, it’s me, a bunch of coffee-drinking poets lamenting the loss of a Beat Generation their parents aren’t even old enough to remember and maybe a small group of IKEA bargain-hunters. Nonetheless, the patch provides a small amount of “yes, yes, yes, I’ll stroke this faux beard in a fain attempt to pretend I’m paying attention” without the major irritation of walking around with your face covered with the equivalent of a used-up human brillo-pad.

Alas, the awkward and terrible title may transform my beloved clump of hair from a subtle fashion choice into the 2000s zeitgeist equivalent of the mullet. The last thing I need to do is look back at pictures of myself in my late-20s, early-30s and compare it to Billy Ray Cyrus videos. It’s enough to make me consider clipping it off. However, I’d just be left with the same old dilemma again and again. Scratch my babyface red and try to convince myself that I command enough respect without the beard or scratch my bearded face into oblivion, having people try to tug at my face and try to compensate for messiness with a comb.

On second thought, maybe I can afford to be the 2006 zeitgeist of tackiness. Being compared to Scott Ian never really hurt anybody. If I had to overthink it any further, I’d tolerate the itching, let it grow out and stuff that machete into my big-ass beard. That beats a Porsche for compensation any day.

BMN

# posted by BMN @ 11:43 PM