I never had a reason not to do it. I never had a reason to do it, either. It just seemed like a clich�, a temporary tattoo for people who like to think they're intelligent. Especially in college. I was expecting to play some father of three in a play, and that would force my hand to grow something to look older. But I never go to auditions, and when I do I'm lousy, so those Male � 30s plays aren't coming in.
It came down to having a convenient time to do it. In July I went camping in Kentucky for vacation. Ten days where the only running water was a full mile hike away. It'd be a flat out pain to shave regularly (or shower, as I found out).
Our culture has interconnected running water with mirrors, so I didn't see the first nine days� of the growth come in. After the sandpaper feel of the first couple days, it grew long enough to feel like regular hair, only lower. I don't know why that surprised me. It wasn't fully covering the cheeks, so it must have looked like a scraggly mess. The longest I'd gone was five days without shaving, and then I'd look like a castaway (and not in a good way). I made passing references to how ragged I must look, and everyone in Kentucky agreed a little too enthusiastically.
At rest stop bathrooms on the way home, I looked at what I had become. It was exactly what I feared it would look like: a bunch of pale half inch lines on my face, with nothing to indicate this was grown intentionally. It wasn't as bad as the high school mustache, but it certainly wasn't pleasant. Growing a quick beard went on my list next to juggling and a four-minute mile as things I can't do. The cheeks were unnecessary for my future facial hair plans. Back in sweet home New Jersey, I shaved the sides, clogging my razor with quarter inch hairs. The rest I kept.
At work, no one really noticed. This was partially because some people don't look to make small talk, partially because I didn't have much facial hair, and partially because it came in red. Orange, really. This runs in my family, brown hair and red beard. It wasn't dramatic enough to call myself Redbeard, but it was enough to camouflage as the same color as my skin. If it was jet black, it'd be patently obvious I had facial hair. Since I didn't, I'd have to rely on length. Easy way to do this: don't trim, ever. It'd grow out into something respectable quicker that way. It must, since there're a lot of people with facial hair out there, and absolutely no one has an ungroomed look. Facial hair just must not grow sloppy.
After another week or so, it began to look legitimate: a real, actual, evil Kirk goatee. People began pointing out to me that I had a beard now. I was glad they were able to notice, but a little off put by the word 'beard'. It was a goatee, not a beard. A 'beard' is a continuous patch of hair going from temple to temple. It can go over the lips or on the chin, or under the chin, or all three, but it's got to connect. If not, it's muttonchops, or a goatee, or those grease pencil lines that boy band members have. Beards are for nineteenth century presidents and lumberjacks and people who own houses. This was just a goatee. No need to change the driver's license photo.
There are decided upsides to have a goatee.
Someone said I looked like Burl Ives. I had no idea what Burl Ives looked like, but I couldn't imagine anyone named Burl having flattering facial hair. I looked him up, Yikes; this guy was a werewolf in mid-transformation. Well, just one person's opinion.
Then I heard I looked like Don Quixote. Quixote was much older than me, Not a hero, but definitely someone who was trying to be a hero. Facial hair was nothing more than appearance, so through stretching that philosophy minor logic, I looked like a hero. In seventeenth century Spain, but hero nonetheless.
Then I heard "musketeerish." All right, definite hero category. And up a couple decades.
Then I heard Burl Ives again. Someone says you look like Burl Ives once, it's a novelty. Someone says you look like Burl Ives twice, you look like Burl Ives. Time to trim. All the under the chin stuff got whittled down, as did that under-the-chin follicle barnacles, and the result was something that, when combed, flowed under the chin like it was mooused. It was no longer possible for any strand of hair to reach my mouth.
I figured a goatee staring back at you in the mirror would look like someone doodled on your yearbook photo, but I got used to looking at it very quickly. Life went on as usual, but I was now furry.
Some people keep their facial hair in a holding pattern. They find something that works, and go with it. ZZ Top. The Pringles guy. Santa. The rest of the world shaves, or grows it for a bit and then shaves. I had no reason to shave, but I had no reason not to shave, either. I had proved to myself that this was biologically possible for me (although that was already proven during the two or three goatees that Jeff had). I wasn't expecting to attach any meaning to it but, now that I had it, I was still disappointed that it held no significance either way.
Halloween came up, and I had a decent costume party to go to. Everyone put some effort into dressing up for this, so it's more than just one girl who painted a pumpkin on her cheek. Last year I bought a cheap Indiana Jones hat and whip. Combined with my existing leather jacket and existing brown pants, it looked decent. This year I had a plan involving the facial hair. Put on an existing green sweater, existing light red shirt underneath, the same existing brown pants, and turn the goatee to a mustache, and I'd be Ned Flanders. Of course, this would mean shaving the goatee, chopping it off for a semi-adequate costume. I didn't feel bad. As a matter of fact, I felt pretty excited. I had a reason to shave it off, however crummy.
Shaving three months of hair when you have no shaving cream (a purchase successfully delayed by months thanks to the goatee) is a multi-stage process. Trim as close as possible with scissors first, then use the razor. Don't get too close with the hinge of the scissors, or it'll yank the hairs out like a Band-Aid. Use the razor first, and you're just smoothing down wet goatee with a sharp piece of metal.
The chin got swept clean, leaving the mustache hanging down around the lips like linguini. This was a cool cowboy mustache. It was no means a mustache for me. I'd just drag down the cool factor of that mustache. The words 'homeboy' and 'phat' were largely abandoned by their core constituents when nine year old white kids listening to rap began using them. I didn't want thousands of real cowboys in America to have to shave because their mustache was now on par with 'def'. Also, this was not the Ned Flanders mustache. Off went the dangling ends.
I was not mustachioed, I was mustached. The word 'mustachioed' throws in two too many vowels, and shows up in books where anal micromanaging editors change the spellings and delete all dialogue that start with a preposition. 'Mustachioed' should be banished to the Home for Outdated Words with 'datum' and 'catsup'. And 'def'.
The completed Ned Flanders costume, although accurate to everything but skin color, scored a zero for recognizability. I was the guy who thought he'd look good in a mustache, a costume in itself. Yellow face paint is the unsung, unused hero of Simpsons costumes. Also, if you're not forty, a mustache will bring you up to speed.
Not even in the Simpsons-drenched Mixed Signals folk was I recognized as Ned Flanders. I wore the sweater to a Mixed Signals practice, and stumped most all the troupe. Ken finally got it, after thirty seconds of prompting that I was indeed wearing a costume. But Ken's gone so far as to memorize every episode of Boy Meets World, so he really doesn't count.
My upper lip and I went to a Halloween night showing of the Tingler, the Vincent Price movie best known for putting electric shocks in the seats for the original release. It was ripe material for MST3K, and a group called the Mock did just that, ripping it to shreds. I came in Flanders garb, and got dragged out of my seat for the costume contest. It was me versus a baseball player and someone in a blonde wig. They came together, and stupid me didn't recognize who they were until they got called Joe and Marilyn. Then it was the audience's turn to not recognize who someone was. A whole audience of ironic film geeks staring at me in confused silence, with one guy guessing "Uh, Weird Al?"
The back row suddenly exploded, and someone yelled out "Flanders!" That prompted a round of applause, either for that guy for breaking the code, or to me for slipping under the radar with the costume. It ended up with me narrowly beating Marilyn, and winning a video of Halloween. I'm proud of this, since in these contests the attractive girl usually wins over the guy whose costume is exclusively clothes he already had.
November 1st, I shaved the mustache off. It had to be done quickly. I had four days to look at that thing, and heaven help me, I was getting used to it. I am currently back among the clean shaven. I wasn't expecting this, but I looked different in the mirror. It's the same me I saw every day of my life before July, but it looked like those freaky times when Alex Trebec or Tom Selleck shave their mustaches. My mental picture was ingrained as having a goatee. It took a few days to get over that.
Maybe I'll grow one again. I probably will, some time next year, becoming that annoying guy whose facial hair you can never keep track of. It's gone from something I thought about having to just plain old something. So expect it in the future. But not if that resume I sent to Disney gets to the right people.