Experiments with Facial Hair.

Hmmm...when I said that I'd get back to this later, I thought later would entail days, maybe weeks, adrift in a sea of writer's block and DayQuil haze (which REALLY is the Devil, folks. I've never been so awake yet SO out of it.) Imagine my surprise when I come home to discover no one home, my computer free, and a fresh infusion from my muse, that most fickle and deranged of creatures.

Ok...So, every two years I try to grow a beard...I have ever since I was fourteen. Why every two years? Good question...and one for which I'm lacking an explanation. I'm a cyclical kind of guy, for one...I read "It," "The Stand," and "Needful Things" every three years, and the entire "Shannara" series every four (Only now with the release of the new books, my schedule's being thrown off. Damn you, Terry Brooks!) I never seem to PLAN it, exactly...it just kind of works out that way.

Anyway, it all started when I was 14. I woke up one fine fall day, put on my best sneer (ah, the teenage years,) and shuffled to the bathroom to start another day of my sophomore year of high school. I looked in the mirror, fully preparing to splash some water on my face and then go tell my mom I'd showered (hey, I was 14, back off. Do you believe your boyfriend/husband when he tells you he showers all the time? Please. Lady, he just scrubbed his face, slapped on some deodorant and aftershave, and hopes you don't notice the difference.) Instead, on the bottom left corner of my chin, I found a hair!

Now, you men in the audience will understand the momentousness of this occasion. I imagine you women greet the arrival of your first facial hairs with somewhat less enthusiasm. For me, however, this was a truly great day! At long last, I was a man! From this single hair would sprout a veritable forest, a regal mane that would surround my whole face. It was inevitable! Surely, respect, power, women, and wealth would follow this undeniable signal of my adulthood!

I let that hair grow for months. By January, it was...well, maybe a quarter inch long. The respect, power, women, and wealth hadn't shown up yet, but I figured a real man could afford to be patient. Then, one morning in late January/early February, I sat down at the breakfast table, and my mother said, "Oh, hold on, honey, you've got something on your face." And then, with a ninja-like speed that I have NEVER figured she could possess, she reached over to my chin and pulled out the hair.

She never did figure out why I didn't talk to her all spring.

Oh, well...que sera, sera. Two years later, I tried again. I made sure to announce to both parents that I was going to let my beard grow out, and then stoically endured their stifled laughter. Grown men don't let such things faze them, naturally. I got a few hairs to almost darken, when they were noticed by my friend Hilary, who announced in the middle of lunch, at the top of her voice, that they were "just the cutest things she'd ever seen."

I shaved the next day.

18...well, the hairs had multiplied, a little, but they were still REALLY sparse. I had tried out for a play in College, and was told by the student director that the part was mine as long as I shaved the "chin pubes." It's hard to maintain your dignity after something like that, but since I later had to narrate two shadow puppets making love with a giant pepperoni as the male puppet's member during the play, I figured my dignity was going to take a worse hit on opening night.

20...not so much an organized, beard-growing attempt as a bout of laziness and general distaste towards razors. I was then poetically described by my friend Emily as looking like a "porcupine with mange." Damn.

22 wasn't so bad, really...it was getting there. It was still really sparse (stupid Native American genes!) but it was at least growing. However, due to an unfortunate drunken wager with my friend John involving using lighters as razors, I had to shave off the left part and wait for the right side of my face to get less tender before I cleaned up. I was lucky, really...John's hair caught fire. Fortunately, there was a lake nearby, and John looked really good with a shaved head.

Now, I'm twenty-four, I have a full, functioning goatee...AND IT'S DRIVING ME ABSOLUTELY NUTS! It itches, it feels REALLY weird, and when I eat, or sneeze, I keep getting paranoid that I never got it fully clean. I thought I could trust my friends to once again relieve me of this burden by teasing/humiliating/daring me into stupidity to get rid of it, but all I get are compliments! "Hey, Nice goat, Josh," or "Wow, it looks good," or, "That'll look damn sexy to the lesbians, Josh." (Sharon thinks she's funny. Anna gave her a well-deserved swat, which then turned into the two of them kissing, which caused me to begin cursing the callous and spiteful God that ever made me cross their path.)

Oh, well. Actually, it doesn't look half bad, and it does give me a kind of distinguished, Jesus-like feel with my long hair. We'll see where it goes. No doubt, my family will mock it straight off my face when I go home for Christmas. Actually, maybe I can convince my dad and my uncles to give it a try with me...although the wrath of my mother and aunts would be a pretty gruesome sight to behold.