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

Thought Picnic: An Ode to the Armpit Smoothener

Wax that chesty walk

I once suggested that those with a swagger of arrogance that involved pushing out their chests should have their chests waxed. My thinking being nothing will force that ribcage of the gibbon back to its intended structure faster than a good strip ripping the hairs violently off that chest – it should also make the man cry – serves him right.

It reminds of me of a classmate of mine in secondary school who from the first form walked around with an exuded chesty posture as if to make himself bigger than he really was, by the time we got to the fifth form, that chest had become the best part of what I would regretfully call a deformity, I do wonder if someone had to take a hammer to to the ribcage to set it back in place.

Death from the armpits shorn

In any case, I have never been waxed and I do not intend to suffer the indignity of beauty acquired through unbearable pain. However, depilatories are useful especially after someone saw me using a pair of scissors on the hairs of my armpit and came up with the weirdest superstitions I have ever heard ever – I risk the loss of a child if I trim my armpit hairs.

The correlation was completely beyond me apart from the fact that I could using my least adroit hand have the scissors do me some serious mischief in the cavity of my armpit and that would be more pain than I am willing to endure.

I then resorted to shaving, but shaving sticks do not adapt to the contours of the armpit and you are half a contortionist trying to pull the skin to allow for a flat surface to shave off the hair – it is hard work – honestly.

Creams and screams

So, depilatories it was, with the cautionary tale of timing and coarseness of hair between races and the particular about oneself. This is because, if you do not get it right, in removing all the hair, the standard advice is not to use the depilatory again for at least 36 hours.

I had also learnt to use latex gloves when applying the cream because years ago, having used my fingers, I forgot to wash off the cream properly and suffered severe burns which manifested on my first day of holiday – I could handle very little and was really uncomfortable.

The other discovery I made was until recently, I used branded depilatories that had to work on the hair for 5 to 7 minutes before it could be scraped off. Though I don’t use a scraper, I prefer to use a wet sponge in the shower, it is easier on my skin and I can readily wash it all off before I suffer any burns.

A third and a half

So, imagine my surprise when the shop had run out the branded product and I was left to choose the shop’s brand which was going for a third of the price and was effective in half the time. In most cases, the maximum time was 3 minutes whilst it was still quite easy on my skin.

I wonder if there is something to deal with nose hair, not that I am turning into a mammoth but I have seen many a homo-sapiens-mammoth with hairs sprouting out of their noses and ears like some other-world pre-evolution creature – I have to say my prayers, the words are spoken already.