My Beard: A Life in Hirsuteness

The halcyon days of not-ever-shaving. The magical mornings scratching a thicket of nettles permanently affixed to your face. You cannot remove this accentuation. You cannot hide it, lest you hide yourself. The beard is a elaboration of the face, not an obfuscation. It is a boon, and not a hinderance. Too many scoff at facial magnificence. Too many lead lives of jealousy and influence.

Such was the case with myself and shaving my beard. I had grown Barbara, as I came to call it, for four months, starting with my trip to New York with my blood-nigga Mike, and ending just a few days before Fancy Dinner. Those four months, they would later prove clear, would be the happiest of my life.

The beard is not a fashion choice. The goatee, the sideburn, the handlebar mustache... these are fashion choices. The beard is a lifestyle. It is a conscious decision to be separate, to be ostracized and admired simultaneously, to be loved and de-loved often by the same person, often for the same reasons, often over a period of five minutes.

The thickness of the beard is inconsequential. Should you grow your facial protuberance into wispy, sparse strands or into a full chin-mane, it matters not. Every kind of beard, true beard, has its appeal. From the kung-fu, almost zen simplicity of the Asian spotted-speckle, to the flaxen, Nordic paint-remover and wife-abrasier. Mine, and each as individual as the human they sprout from, was a multi-hued intimidator. A wonderful block of character jumping off of me. I loved it. I loved... her.

I shaved my beard as so many do, under pressure. I had a formal affair coming and I thought, for reasons beyond me now, that a beard would be incongruous to the event. Only now do I see that not only would it have fit, hand-in-glove, but would have been the toast of the evening. Would have given rise to the evening. Would have been the evening. But I gave in, I admit that now, if only to atone for letting my one true cherished possession (if such a love can be considered possessed) slip through my sink.

I now don sideburns, and a goatee on my chin which no doubt I will one day be proud of, but never to the grand extent that I was of my prow. My introduction. My life. My beard.

When first I grew a hair upon my chin,

And little elsewhere did it seem to be,

I'd fashion for myself a foamy rim,

around my childish face, awash with glee,

The unkempt corners of my smile bedecked

With patchy fuzz, a peach's pitied sight.

I'd lather up the scruffle, burned and wrecked,

There on my barren face of plague and blight.

And, razor-happy, I would short their lives,

As I would short their lengths, in twos and threes.

Rushed, I, to rid my face of them, besides,

And render it succumb to bite and breeze.

Here trapped without, here lost in rhyme and stave,

I'd give no thought but one: to be unshaved.

A more fitting memorium I could not imagine.