Notes on an Attempted Beard — Split Lip Magazine

I have done this before, let my face become the animal that it wants. I’ll usually get itchy and self-conscious after a week or two, and shave it to make it smooth again. I haven’t shaved in two months. I don’t know why I let it grow out in the first place. After two weeks, it just kind of stalls. The cheeks and chin are not terrible but the hair above my lip—I hesitate to call it a mustache—is sophomoric. The hairs there don’t grow long enough, don’t lie down like a full mustache would. I could never comb it. Instead, hairs poke out like baby porcupine quills. It is hideous and lecherous and not distinguished at all. But still, I haven’t shaved.

Whenever I do let it grow, it becomes like a challenge to myself. An experiment in facial appearance. How long can I keep the razor put away? The shaving cream can unshook? It’s as if I’m holding out hope that maybe both my attitude and facial hair growth will change, will blossom, will become more me.

I don’t find beards to be attractive, can’t imagine kissing someone with a big beard. If I’m attracted to a man, he is clean-shaven. But there have been many times when I’ve enjoyed kissing women with slight mustaches. The whisper of stubble there.

I asked the person I’ve been kissing lately if my facial hair bothered her and she said that it didn’t, but I don’t know if I believe her. We have not been kissing long enough to establish an intimate trust. However, she did instruct me to kiss more on her upper lip than her lower lip. It felt less ticklish there, she said.

I was on the bus the other day and I saw a man with an unkempt beard, salt and pepper like mine, but wilder and weirder. Not your typical Portland beard, which is often tidy and sculpted just so. This beard looked more like tattered cotton balls on his face. I stared at its undisciplined form. It made me uncomfortable, and I felt a strange disgust for every beard in the world. I vowed to shave that night when I got home, but of course I didn’t.

I don’t feel like me. I feel like an impostor. I saw an attractive woman at a bar recently and I wondered what would happen if we talked. I would have to take a few moments to figure out if she liked the facial hair. Would she be sneaking quick glances at it? Would she be tempted to touch it? Or would she try to figure out what I looked like without it? I wondered if I should say something like “I don’t usually have a beard” or “I don’t really look like this.” Maybe we would become a couple and she would always think of me with a beard because that was her first impression. If I shaved it off, would it be jarring, like when you see someone without their glasses on for the first time?

One of my co-workers stopped shaving around the same time I did, and we compared growth when we worked together. He was usually clean-shaven, too. I encouraged him to keep going. He was concerned with areas that didn’t grow in fully, bald patches on his jaw. Two weeks into it, he showed up baby-faced again. Admittedly, I think he looks better without a beard, but I wanted him to keep going so I wasn’t the only fool.

Some people have attempted to make beards cool: James Harden (beard as rebellion). Walt Whitman (beard as earthly lust). ZZ Top (beard as guitar riff). Zach Galifianakis (beard as ironic joke). I can’t think of anyone else right now. Tom Selleck had his famous mustache but he was sexy because there was still a lot of smooth skin in the surrounding areas, a lot of places your kisses could land without touching that weird hairy slug on his face. As grossed out as I am about my mustache—even typing the word mustache!—I cannot fathom the kind of day I would have if I shaved it off and did an Abraham Lincoln kind of thing. No one looks good like that. Not even Daniel Day-Lewis.

I wonder why I feel like I need to write about this. Isn’t this what literary critics are referring to when they use the expression navel gazing. Is this beard gazing? Who is the audience? But then I realize this: A lot of people have beards and a lot of people had beards. There are a lot of humans who can’t grow beards but are still attracted—aesthetically and sexually—to facial hair in all its forms. It’s like when editors say, “I’d like you to write a story about depression because so many people have depression or have experienced depression in their lives.” I’m going to guess that the amount of people (i.e. potential readers) that have beards or have experienced beards in their lives is about the same as people who have lived with depression. I tell myself that a lot of people will probably be able to relate to these thoughts and concerns of mine about facial hair, even when they’re specifically about my facial hair.

Perhaps I am really writing about depression. Maybe my facial hair is my depression. Is it a coincidence that famous musicians always have a moment in their careers when they let their beards grow out as they work on their most personal, depressing albums? There they are, posed on the cover, sad eyes pleading for you to understand their pain. The lower half of their face shielded in thick fur. I wonder: Can you shave depression?

Parts of your own body that you can’t see yourself, unless with a mirror: Your neck, your back, your butt, your whole damn face. Abraham Lincoln, even with his famous beard, was famously depressed.

Remember when Al Gore lost the 2000 presidential election and then grew that beard? Remember when your uncle went away to live in nature and showed up a year later with a lumberjack beard and a weird look in his eyes? Remember crying into Santa Claus’s beard at the mall as an elf took your photograph?

My beard is not due to a bad breakup, a dead pet, or a lost bet, and it’s not November when guys let their facial hair run wild for male cancer awareness. This is not “Brovember.” There is no cause. No purpose. My beard is meaningless.

Some people have seen me recently and have said things like, “Oh, I like the beard. Looks good!” But I don’t believe them. I just shrug and say, “It’s an experiment,” and then hem and haw and wait for them to come up with more flattery. But honestly, I think people just react to any change in your appearance and if they’re polite, they’ll remark positively before they really think about it.

An informal poll about my beard: 90% of people who see me regularly and know me well actually like the beard. 5% are neutral (which I interpret as against) and 5% have been anti-beard—I am one of those votes. But there have been a few moments in this “beard experiment” where I’ve looked at myself and think, Hey, this isn’t bad.

Ultimately, my beard is a sad state of affairs. I don’t know what I’m trying to prove, or if this facial hair growth proves anything. Is it impressive to display a macho virility, to have testosterone? Does this hair—this scrubby fuzz—make me more animalistic or like a sexy gorilla? Having a beard has made me question everything and re-evaluate how I present (or don’t present) myself to the world. It makes me look ten years older. I don’t color it. I don’t have special soap for it. It makes me look more dad-like. And yes, even my son thinks it’s looking pretty rough. His own beard isn’t much better though—he looks like a pubescent Wolverine.

As I get to the end of writing this essay, I want to shave as soon as possible. I kept it as I wrote, because it would feel wrong not to have it and to be writing about it. It’s like method acting—I’ve changed my look for a role. I’m obviously not a beard guy. But I may keep it for a couple of extra days when I’m done writing, just to show a little extra commitment.

Soon, I will shake up the shaving cream can again. I will lather up my face, probably getting some of it in my mouth and nose. I will find a good spot, right by my ear, to press the razor. I will move it down steady and slow. I will hear the scraping sound and feel my skin become naked again. My face, smooth, set free, will emerge, refreshed and ready to be touched.

Kevin Sampsell (@kevinsampsell) is a writer, bookseller, and artist living in Portland, Oregon. He has run his small press, Future Tense Books, for nearly thirty years. A book of his collages and poems, I Made an Accident, will be published in late 2020 by Clash Books.

Matt Young holds an MA in Creative Writing from Miami University and is the recipient of fellowships from Words After War and The Carey Institute for Global Good. He teaches composition, literature, and creative writing at Centralia College and lives in Olympia, Washington. He is the author of the memoir Eat the Apple (Bloomsbury, 2018).