I Don’t Want to Shave
Lately, I have been letting both my whiskers and the hair on the dome grow and grow. I make a hundred excuses about not having the right razors, not having the time to put together a hair appointment. But the truth is, I just like all my hair and I want to have as much of it as possible. I don’t want to cut or shave it. It’s got nothing to do with style. I don’t look good unshaven and I look even worse with longish hair but I find that I become quite attached to the little follicles and I suffer from brief periods of depression whenever I go under the blade.

Just this morning I shaved off what was becoming a good week and half long facial adventure into beardland. It was great. I was walking taller and feeling warmer with my hairy protection from the winter elements. Then I took the Shick out and put an end to all my little friends. Damn, just like that I had performed a follicle genocide that I am still working through at this late stage of the day.

Hair cuts are worse. I am at least a month overdue for one now and I just can’t bring myself to do it. Bob Marley use to talk about his dreadlocks as this spiritual connection to rastafarianism. They could never be cut. Jesus was a locksman. Now, I would look damn silly with dreads, but I feel what Bob was saying. It’s a part of your body after all and to just chop and cut pieces of it off, wholesale, with no thought to the cosmic consequences, is equally silly.

For good or ill this phenomenon runs in my family. I’ve never known my father without his ZZ Top beard. As a kid whenever I asked him about the beard, he always replied that he didn’t like shaving, which always seemed strange to me as a boy. But now I think I am beginning to appreciate more of what he was unable to say. It isn’t the process of shaving that sucks, it’s the little kid you have to look at in the mirror when you are done. Who is that kid?

As I was writing this post the misses emailed me this little piece of information: Men Who Don’t Shave Have Less Sex, More Strokes. I guess it’s one thing not to shave because of your sloven nature but an entirely different story if your committed to your follicles and their intrinsic beatitude. At least I hope that’s the case.