A Brief History of My Beard
Now you see it, now you don't, now you do.
OK, enough about the monsoons, global warming, the election and building a fence along the border. Let's talk about something really important here—namely, my beard. In case the New York Times neglects to pick up on this breaking story, here's the headline: The beard is back.
Folks here in Southwest New Mexico have hitherto known me only as clean-shaven—that smiling albeit graying guy in my picture on the Editor's Note page. (In answer to many reader questions, however, no, I am not really black-and-white and my head is not the size of a thumbnail, despite my appearance in this photo.) But the shocking truth is that most of my adult life has been spent bearded.
Since I know most of you would much rather read about my facial hair than endure, say, yet another depressing revelation about some New Mexico elected official caught with either a) his hand in the cookie jar or b) his blood-alcohol level, while driving, roughly equal to the proof of malt liquor, let me give you the "backstory" here. (That's Hollywood talk, just in case some movie executive is reading this and pondering a multimillion-dollar option on Dave's Beard: The Motion Picture. I think Tom Hanks should play me, by the way—think of his on-again, off-again facial hair in Cast Away.)
I started to shave at about age six (OK, perhaps an exaggeration here) and soon was suffering from two-o'clock shadow where most guys don't have to fret until five. Oddly, though, this bristly display of masculinity did not help me attract girls in high school; perhaps they couldn't see past the pocket protector. Somehow, in our senior year of college, my now-wife endured my sandpaperish face and mid-date runs to the restroom to shave (not to mention the attractive bits of bloody toilet paper stuck to nicks on my face), and we got married soon after graduation.
By late summer of our first year of married life, however, she'd had enough and suggested I try growing a beard. Given my youthful hirsuteness, this experiment took about two days to reach fruition. (OK, perhaps another exaggeration—but not by much.) We unveiled the result as a surprise—the start of a pattern, as you'll see—on a Labor Day visit back home to see our parents.
My mom and dad reacted to the new beard adorning the face of their baby boy roughly as they would to a poisonous jellyfish affixed to my chin. Although always fond of my wife, their new daughter-in-law, they nonetheless may have seen this as the start of a pernicious influence on me. What next? Would I drive up at Christmas on a Harley, clad in black leather and sporting a "Born to Be Wild" tattoo on each bicep?
Gradually, however, they got used to my beard. Indeed, when I switched to being clean-shaven, many years later, my mom seemed rather wistful about the disappearance of that once-loathed beard.
It was a blessing, I'll admit, not having to shave—that is, not having to shave as much. The truth is, unless you're going for the Grizzly Adams look, bearded guys still have to shave around the edges. Over the years, my beard advanced and retreated, from a goatee to a dashing chin-hugging number, but always I had some area requiring razoring. And now there was the added hassle of deploying a beard trimmer every few days to keep the thing from heading southward toward my chest. Also—and I'd forgotten this until my recent re-growing—if you don't trim the moustache and the little tuft under the lower lip, pretty soon you'll have little hairs tickling your lips with every bite of food.
On the hassle-reduction scale, in short, beard vs. shaving proved pretty much a tossup.
But I decided the beard gave me a distinguished, authorial sort of look. In subsequent years, when I had to supervise employees several decades my junior, it made me look older. ("Talk to the beard, buddy!") So the beard stayed.
After two-dozen years of being bearded, however, the idea of making me look older began to have a downside. I was doing a pretty good job of looking older without the help of my beard, thanks very much. As my hair grayed (following the genetic path blazed by my dad, whom I never remember otherwise) and the staff under my supervision began to think of me as "the old man," I eyed my beard in the mirror increasingly as a banner of advancing age. It had lost its youthful hue at least as fast as the hair on my head. The adjective "grizzled" kept coming to mind: "Grizzled old Dave Fryxell"—that was not what I wanted it to say on my AARP card when it inevitably arrived. "Graybeard" was another term I pondered, one not commonly paired with "hunky."
So, right before a 10-day trip out of town—again over Labor Day—I shaved off my beard. If I hated my clean-shaven look, I figured, I'd have time to re-grow the beard before anybody back home saw me.
Actually shaving it off was terrifying. Once the trimmer took the first big divot, there would be no turning back. And scraping the razor blade over my chin for the first time in decades felt bizarre, like prepping for surgery. Good thing the nicks clotted quickly.
Who was that guy in the mirror? I looked different, that's for sure. I don't know if I looked younger exactly, but I certainly looked like a stranger to myself. Do women experience this out-of-body sensation when they color their hair or adopt a dramatically different hairdo? I'd apparently borrowed somebody else's body, at least from the neck up. Hope he didn't need it back anytime soon.
We unveiled my new look to our daughter, as was now traditional, with no advance warning, on a Parents' Day trip to visit her at college. She stepped into our hotel room, took one look at me and shrieked. Keep in mind that she had never before seen my bare chin. It was as though her mother had showed up remarried to some guy from a Gillette commercial.
Reaction to the return of my beard this fall has been more muted. Perhaps I shouldn't have told our daughter the news over the phone, waiting instead for a surprise Thanksgiving "reveal" (as they say on those home-makeover shows) in person. Universally, women have noticed my new beard and commented on it; men have either failed to spot any change in my appearance or opted not to mention it. (Is this a "guy thing"? Real men don't talk about other guys' facial hair lest they seem unmasculine or to be taking an unwholesome interest in a fellow fellow's looks? "Did you trim your beard, Grizzly Adams?" "Why—is there somethin' you wanna tell me, Zeke?")
I'm not sure why I decided to try Dave's Beard II. Maybe it was that the hair on my head had reached the point of grayness where a clean-shaven chin could no longer fool anyone, youthfulness-wise. Maybe it was the end of summer—my face was as tan as it's gonna get for awhile, so what the heck. Or the approach of winter, when a little facial hair might help against the chill.
It's decidedly not one of those "I won't shave until the Cubs win the pennant" kind of deals. Why some men figure that the universe cares about their razor usage is beyond me. (Of course, I'm assuming all of you care about my beard, but that's completely different!) There's no timetable for cutting it off again, if I ever do. Maybe this spring, maybe not.
Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed, however, that so far I'm keeping the beardless photo with my Editor's Note. Could be that I'm just keeping my options open. Could be that photo makes me look younger.
It's not the lack of a beard that makes me look younger in that black-and-white photo, though. It's the fact that it was taken three years ago. If merely shaving could turn back the clock three years, there'd be a mad rush to the razor.
Still. . . Maybe next I oughta try turning myself from full color into black and white. . . .
David A. Fryxell is editor of Desert Exposure.