Hairy lends to hairless ends

Late growth spurt

My beau, just like the Jack Sprat of the nursery rhyme fame could not grow a beard, yet I like his wife just needed to leave it there, and so it grew wilder every day for 10 weeks. Grizzled and wizen, the highlights gained the kind of prominence of men of a certain age.

As I had written before, I dared to believe I would have no beard, I was in my late twenties when it began to show and having not shadowed my dad in grooming, I had no idea what to do with it apart from remembering he used Magic Fragrant Shaving Powder as a chemical depilatory and Old Spice as an aftershave.

The former didn’t work for me, I still came out in razor bumps and the latter was best left to that generation. After many experiments, I settled on the Gillette Fusion5 Razor that I have been using for over a decade. This became necessary when I began to show signs of male pattern baldness and decided it was best to shave both my head and face at the same time.

I can’t remember when 

Glee and plea

I rarely ever had more than a week’s growth before a shave because once that hair grew to a certain length, it became irritating. Now, my beau has this vision of a bearded and hirsute man, a younger Teddy Pendergrass figure, I could never imagine myself becoming, but I humoured him through the slight incapacity of illness to recovery, his excitement leaving quite bewildered.

Now, I had suggested ways in which he could acquire a beard, the stray threads under his chin never numbering more than 6 and that would have followed a hormonal surge of testosterone. Maybe he could graft it from elsewhere. Plastic surgeons can come up with interesting ideas if you want it bad enough.

Falling away to sticking there

When I underwent chemotherapy a decade ago, my consultant assured me that it was unlikely I would lose my hair, that was true, he, however, did not inform me that I would lose my fertility. Though in a life and death situation, you are probably thinking of surviving than procreating.

Then one morning, the moustache falling over my upper lip and stick up my nostrils was too much of a bother, the fine comb I used to groom the sideburns and beard seemed to up and leave for Bulawayo and I was left with no other option before my face became a Medusa of dreadlocks.

I produced a furball, not as a cat might, but good enough to roll up and put in the post with instructions to apply super glue and stick the ball as is directly on his chin. His wishes coming true out my selfless sacrifice of follicular hari-kari. Together, we would have switched faces.

Furball

For posterity sake, there is an evolution of hair, from when I can no more remember to what makes me feel a bit comfortable.

The Before

The Aftermath

Looking like I do, happily

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Of weight and form

For a man my age, I am pretty much comfortable in my own skin, in my identity and generally in the way I express myself. Yet, I do suffer from middle-aged angst about my body, I obsess about my weight even though my doctors would prefer I maintain the weight I have considering I lost 25% of my body weight when I had cancer 10 years ago.

I probably would be happier with myself if I lost a few kilograms. That, along with middle-aged spread that can plague you if you are not committed to an exercise and fitness regime. A gym membership languishes with monthly extractions from my account, the gym in my apartment block has not seen a visit in aeons and the swimming pool that gives my the yearning to learn to swim, leaves me with the best of intentions, good intentions, but intentions do not keep you fit.

FaceApp on WhatsApp

Then with the fantasy of desire and probably the means to acquire, I was visited with a remodelling of my face, a full beard that is attractive to someone but a complete irritation to me. Five days after shaving, every pore of the nascent beard growth is itching stimulus receptacle asking a tug, a pull or a scratch, it is only assuaged with a shave, a good clean close shave with 2 days for my skin to heal.

What I could be in the imagination of FaceApp and none look the least attractive to me.

It drives me to distraction; I would rather I had no beard as I did not even start growing one that responded to shaving until I was in my 30s.

There is much else I could change, male pattern baldness with a dusty brown Caucasian wig as bangs. I know of no other male in my immediate family that has this condition, but when I saw that I was losing the hair, I did not agonise about it, I took it all off especially after watching a film of people with a snake oil remedy for hair growth inject people with hair loss issues with a serum that grew their hair at unbelievable speeds, until it became clear that they were being used as hosts for aggressive follicular snakes. [Body Bags – Wikipedia]

All the makeup MAC can make

Maybe there are things I would have liked to change, my teeth, the front two which I lost in a childhood wheelbarrow game and the stories that follow. It is somewhat unsightly, but I am not that self-conscious about these things, I have faced more life-threatening situations than the absence of a complete set of fitted mandibles and maxilla. I could tamper with my nose and fiddle with my ears, but I would no more be who I am after all that.

Blog - Childhood: Defanged by Misadventure

Then I think of the girl with her boyfriend in the video of TLC’s Unpretty, he was not happy with her as a person, he wanted her to have bigger boobs and persuaded her enough to feel so inadequate that she contemplated cosmetic surgery until it dawned on her that she was just good as she was.

I don’t feel unpretty

The battles we fight in our heads where people who are naturally beautiful get to the point of thinking something is so wrong with their looks that after rounds of plastic surgery, they become grotesque caricatures of their former selves and bizarrely contented with the butchery of their bodies.

I pray I never have to suffer that level of psychological discontent leading to the physiological hacking away of my natural features. I have lost a few teeth, had a crown or two inserted, but for everything else, I am blessed with much more than I have ever been grateful for. No, I don’t feel unpretty, I love my body, I could do much more to be fitter.