There was no room in my suitcase for souvenirs in 2015, though I did manage to bring something back from Paris: facial hair. My own, of course – not someone else’s. Otherwise, that would be plain weird. How would you explain a baggie of someone else’s shavings when going through customs?
I first noticed the facial hair aboard a cruise on the Seine. I was taking a selfie on the top deck. It was chilly. The wind carried a bite. I studied my selfie while surrounded by both French- and Asian-speak. There was a noticeable dash of salt and pepper on my chin, even beneath my nose, the possible birth of – dare I say it? – a beard.
I saw my foreign self in the phone’s screen, all sock-cap skulled and stubbly, the beginning of a beard sprouting from the weathered face of this wayfaring stranger adrift on some famous French waterway while enduring the spittle of heavy gray Paris sky; the Eiffel Tower behind me, The Louvre at left, Notre-Dame ahead. I had never felt more cosmopolitan. I had never felt so not me.
Normally I shave each morning, but I accidentally left my razor behind in Poland. I really wasn’t in the mood to shop for le rasoir on my first full day in Paris – too scared perhaps that I might pronounce it wrong for the store clerk, only to end up having to say, “Hey, I don’t want these raisins! I said razor!”
I had never considered growing a beard before, which was weird for a bald guy. In case you haven’t noticed, bald guys typically tend to sport facial hair, as if to draw unwanted attention from their perpetual chrome dome – even though it makes them look even balder. Basically, I always feared that any attempt of mine to grow a beard would be futile, adding yet another follicle failure to forever haunt this international man of misery.
While growing up, there weren’t any notable beards in my family. My dad sported a rare spotty one during the Great Blizzard of ’78, which gave him sort of that crazed look made famous by Jack Nicholson in The Shining two years later. It was like a deranged stranger had moved into our house. He disappeared a lot out in nature’s deep freeze to chop wood (we didn’t own a fireplace) or, if he was really pacing the cage, to brave the insane southern Indiana snowdrifts in his pickup and help stranded travelers out of ditches – the victims likely being other newly-bearded men who also, fueled by cabin fever, decided to go mano a mano with what the headlines called “the great white hurricane,” a modern-day Donner Party in the making.
A few months before Paris, a former girlfriend said I had a baby face and suggested I stop shaving, which I ignored. She didn’t stick around, returning, I think, to her former Sasquatch of a boyfriend. But it did get me thinking that maybe she was onto something. After all, my unshaven approach to life wasn’t, as they say, causing the ladies to beat down my front door – not that that would be necessary for them to do since I typically left the door unlocked due to endless wishful thinking. Who am I kidding? – not only was the door unlocked, but I seldom closed it. Who am I kidding? – the front door had been removed from its hinges at that point.
So yes, the beard seed was planted by a former heartbreaker, and my new face took bloom in Paris on Sept. 19, 2015. After 45 days bearded, as feared, it seemed to be a hopeless endeavor. Others likely thought I was part cactus, part catfish. Even Shaggy on Scooby Doo put me to shame when it came to beards – even Velma for that matter.
Photo provided
Sometimes, if the sun hit my face just right, my facial hair was almost translucent. It’s not a beard really, nor will it ever be, I thought. I don’t know what it was. More so, a goatee, minus the goat.
One friend merely referred to it as my “growth,” as if I was flaunting a cancer. “How’s your growth today?” she’d ask over the phone, likely using “air quotes” at the g-word.
A guy at work with a cool beard commented that he liked the “Walter White” look I had going on. I assumed that was a compliment. I love Breaking Bad. Did my beard make me look like a meth dealer?
Mom was strangely silent since seeing my post-Paris face. She usually had something nice to say about everything I did. Even if I had an arrow sticking through my head à la Steve Martin, she’d compliment the look before calling 9-1-1.
All Dad said was, “Haven’t you heard the saying that you should never trust a man with a mustache?” “That’s OK,” I replied. “People probably shouldn’t trust me without one either.”
My 16-year-old said she liked it. She even encouraged me to stay the course, making me suspect I was being set up for further social ridicule. Never trust the teen daughter of a man with a mustache.
Some assumed I was a participant in “No Shave November.” Most “No Shave November” guys have more facial hair on Nov. 2 than I have by Nov. 30.
Before I finally shaved my starter beard, I took one last look in the mirror, fondly reminisced about where it all began, and declared, “We’ll always have Paris.”
Scott’s new humor collection, Quietly Making Noise, is available on Amazon. Contact him to be a guest speaker at one of your gatherings. Contact: scottsaalman@gmail.com.