Barbudo

They say that everybody needs a bosom for a pillow, everybody needs a bosom. And while I definitely agree with that, it seems like there are a few other things that everyone should have, at least once. Everyone should order escargot at least once, just to say you've eaten snails. Everyone should write in a cartoon character as their vote for president at least once. Everyone should have intercourse outdoors at least once (preferably on the 1st of May). Along those lines, everyone should go skinny dipping once...or more than that if possible. Everyone should live in New York once (but leave before it makes you hard) and live in Northern California once (but leave before it makes you soft). Which leads into my whole point here. If you're a man, you should, at least once in your life, try to grow a beard. See how it looks. Well, I've long considered giving it a shot, and recently, when I'd been lazy and failed to shave for about a week and the time came to shave it back, I just thought, screw it, let's see how a beard looks.

Beards are a bit of an exclusive club. So many people have issues with facial hair coming in sparsely in some areas, but fuller in others. That tends to make beards look awful. I let my beard grow for upwards of a month, knowing that I was going to fall into that awful-looking-beard club. My sideburns don't grow at all, so any beard that I have is never going to be attached to the rest of my head. My cheeks grow sparsely too, so there's that. The hair on my neck grows really thick though, so I could have one of those hideous neck beards that you sometimes see in period films set in the 1800s.

A lot of people at work told me that it looked good. I don't know how much I can trust them though, I think they all just wanted me to stop being such a dullard and live a little. One of the women who told me it looked good was once arrested for streaking at a local arts festival. Another is married to the guitarist for a rock and roll band that played on The Tonight Show. They've got wilder tastes than me, I think.

Beards are really hard to deal with too. Growing in, they itch like a son of a...hey that rhymes! Well it would have rhymed if I'd finished my thought anyway. After that, you've got hair all over your face. It's like taking a cat, and gluing it to your upper lip. It will drive you a bit crazy. I'm already one of those people who can't leave any anomaly alone. When someone spells something wrong, I point it out, even though it makes them hate me. If I have a new jag on one of my teeth after a dentist appointment, I worry that thing until my tongue is scraped raw. So, if there's hair on my face, I'll stick out my tongue and mess with it, until my lips are dried out and my tongue hurts.

But the final straw, was...well there were two final straws really. First, I went to work, and someone that I hadn't seen in a while noticed my beard. "Hey, like the beard," he said, "It's very Muslim. You growing that for Ramadan or something? It's coming up you know." The Muslim beard was definitely not the look I was going for. Then, the next day, I kissed my wife, and she said, after having been supportive up to this point, that it wasn't nice to kiss me. It was like kissing a stranger. Instead of kissing my lips, she was mostly getting the hair around them poking her.

It was time to give it up. I'd had a good run, and now I needed to throw in that towel. I took a couple of pictures, just to prove that I had once worn a beard, and then I spent a half of an hour hacking and slashing that thing off.

Get an eyeful, because there will never be another picture like this one.