I grew a six month mustache. Then Monday morning I shaved it off. I can’t believe I had a mustache for six months! Time flies when you’re growing bizarre facial hair.
I converted a two month beard to a six month mustache on Thanksgiving morning 2005. The beard had been bothering me; it was starting to ache. A nonobvious thing about beards is how they can ache on your face. It’s as if sometimes the hairs aren’t quite straight, and for a while they loop onto eachother and meet resistance, pushing back onto the follicle. This causes you to pull at your face constantly, trying to straighten yourself out. Then after a few days of pulling the ache settles down.
I wanted to grow a confederate general mustache, as I’ve mentioned before. My first mustache ever, December of 2004 through February 2005, I’d had the same intention; then I had to loose the ’stache in exchange for romance. It was a worthy trade! Yet still, my top lip never got covered; my teeth were never obscured.
My second mustache was the best yet. The hair fell like a soft brown waterfall from my nose. At its longest it grew well below my lower lip. I don’t know if it was exactly confederate, though I thought (hoped) it was. It got close, but it turns out waiting for your mustache to grow is a bit like watching a pot you’d like to boil; it never quite happens fast enough.
One of the startling things about wearing a long mustache is that it sheds! I’d never noticed that facial hair fell out until I had lip hair that looped into my mouth. Then I’d find a few quills a day, floating on my tongue. Another startling thing is how great a clean mustache feels. Every morning when I stepped out of the shower with a freshly tended stache I felt good. As the day wears on one’s mustache becomes less and less fresh, but those first few hours of the day wearing a clean one are some of the best.
Another great thing about wearing a mustache is how it changes everything. Suddenly you look like a completely different figure: somewhat less reliable, creepy yet silly. You’ve got a caterpillar on your lip! A young man with a mustache is quite a puzzle–at least I think so. Some people didn’t think it was that odd, but I thought it was completely nuts the whole time I had a mustache. Every time I looked in the mirror I chuckled at my confusing self image. But then the chuckling turned more serious, more adoring. “What a handsome mustache” I’d tell myself. And then I met a lovely girl who loved my mustache, and my facial hair ego got stroked often. Then the mustache was less funny, more me; six months on my face and I couldn’t remember what my self image was like without one.
But it’s a bummer when you’re growing a confederate mustache and eat burritos often, as every time you take a bite your mustache gets bitten above the tortilla. That’s terrible! And as if that wasn’t enough, after every bite you need to wipe yourself down, account for rogue crema. Then you start to wonder, wearing a big bushy unkept thing on your lip, is this really wise? You’re showing the world a demonstration of your vitality, your capacity for masculinity, but is it really that masculine? Does my mustache measure up?
Six months was a good run. I got my driver’s license renewed, had a mustache trapped in holographic plastic. I rode my bicycle fast and felt like the train had a cattle catcher. I learned that it’s even possible to have a bad hair day with your mustache, those days I had fly aways and dark curls that looked like lacking teeth when I smiled.
Now my face looks naked and fleshy. My upper lip is a singularity; I try not to stare at it too long. I don’t look the same, it doesn’t make sense. If I stare at my eyebrows, squint, I can tell it’s still me. But if I stare at my bare lip I can see anew that my face is asymmetrical, jaw askew. My face is wide and distorted; it looks fat. Staring at my lip feels like shaking my own hand in the middle of the night when it’s fallen asleep. A-ha, so this is what it feels like to shake my hand! And this is what my face really looks like, preconceptions removed, self image and fantasies dropped. This is what I really look like, to someone else: a freak!
It’s getting better. Losing the mustache tan helps. Change is good and I’m a rolling stone, I collect no facial moss, though I know I will again some day. Some day I’m going start taking myself too seriously again, and then it may be time to re-cover this wimpy naked seal effect with another bitchin’ mustache.
