Earlier this week I decided to cut my goatee off based on
Wendy's complaints about being stabbed. Here is a before and after set of pictures:
So here I am, looking as I have pretty much all the time for the past 16 years. I have been clean shaven for about 7 days since I was 17 and the last time was in 2002 I think. I don't know exactly how it is that shaving regularly changes one's face but it sure as hell does. Shaving the sides is a simple zip zap done but shaving the goatee area was nothing but catching and ripping and going over the same spot five times and bleeding and pain. Minor bleeding, mind, but still the difference was profound. Somehow the skin really does become accustomed to a razor.
And here is the sight of my face being exposed to the light of the accursed day-star for the first time in nine years. I know I look different but the reactions I got were really something else. People at Elli's daycare stared at me and gasped and told me with faces full of disbelief "You are so YOUNG!" Yeah, I guess I should have expected that when I saw all the grey in the beard as I trimmed it off but I didn't think I would find half the people I meet with their jaws on the ground.
I remember running away and hiding from my Dad when he trimmed his beard off when I was very young. Elli didn't do that though, she took a little bit longer to recognize me but thought that the trim was quite exciting and told all her friends to touch my face.
I was hoping that Wendy's reaction would be much more heartening.
"Oh my God."
"You have no upper lip at all!"
Ouch? I mean, clearly there is more to my lower lip than upper but I gotta say that reaction isn't doing much for my self esteem. Not that this sort of thing is new, she does like to talk about how grotesquely enormous my nose is too.
She spent the whole evening staring at me and wandering around me giving me extra space saying things like:
"I can't believe your voice is coming out of somebody else's face."
"Is it cheating if I sleep with you even though I feel entirely sure the person I am sleeping with isn't you?"
"I feel like 'you with a beard' is going to show up and beat you up for kissing me."
So much for gratitude for me sacrificing my beard on the altar of matrimonial bliss; first thing that happens is she starts cheating on me with me. I'm going to have to get that other guy somehow.
You actually look a lot like your brother, it turns out.
ReplyDeletePro tip: I've stopped shaving entirely. I just use clippers to go down to next-to-nothing. Shaving is for suckers.
Hah, Elli said exactly the same thing. She told me I look exactly like her uncle.
ReplyDeleteThing is, I like the shaved feeling. I also like shaving more than clipping... I just dislike both of them such that I don't really want to do either.
The difference is that my goatee never gets itchy and my beard elsewhere does so I end up keeping the goatee and axing the rest.
When my sister and I were kids we convinced my dad to shave his beard. (We had never seen him clean shaven).
ReplyDeleteWhen he finished, we both burst into tears and said "put it back, put it back, put it back"
Snuggles
Gah! Terrifying!
ReplyDeleteWhat was it like for your skin shaving for the first time in a decade?
Bloody awful. Painful, some bleeding and soreness. Plus it seems like it will cause lots of breaking out. I assume that will all go away if I continue the regimen of shaving consistently though.
ReplyDeleteI like it. And you don't look at all like your brother.
ReplyDelete