Let’s go outside
Okay, so yesterday I finally gave in and bought a beard trimmer, which I’d resisted doing before because it meant that I officially have a beard that I do NOT WANT. I am now the proud proprietor of a glorified pet groomer. To use on my face. At least the guy pictured on the box is cute. And I guess I shouldn’t be complaining too much, because if you use it on the lowest setting, you just end up looking as if you hadn’t shaved since yesterday. That I think I can live with, even if it is a little Faith-era George Michael. It’s better than Older-era George Michael.
In better news, I forgot that the long weekend starts Friday this time around. That means that Atsushi will be home in a little less than 24 hours. I have to work tomorrow, but we’ll have time to have brunch first. I’m thinking of making the baked French toast recipe here. You must understand–people eat like this ALL THE TIME where I grew up. I’m surprised the recipe doesn’t tell you to dump powdered sugar over the finished product, and I’m absolutely floored that the writer says you won’t need syrup.
Why don’t you want the beard?
I’m not against beards on guys who want them. Some of my friends look much better with beards than without. I’m sure I must have dated at least a guy or two with a beard at some point.
I just don’t have the beard personality. For one thing, it’s like, I roll over and there’s this stuff between my face and the pillow and it wakes me up. Or I take a drink of water and if I’m not super-careful it clings over my upper lip. IOW, the beard gets in the way.
But there’s also the fact that I hate taking time in the bathroom. I’m not one of those guys who need only a comb and a bar of Ivory soap; but I’m in and out in ten minutes–twenty if I shave. When you’re clean-shaven, you shave, you stick your fingers next to your ears to make sure your sideburns are even, and you’re done. The thing with having a goatee is, you have to do the edges so that they’re sharp and the whole thing is symmetrical. If you don’t fuss over it, everyone else at the bar is perfectly turned out, and you feel like the only guy in the housing development who isn’t trimming his lawn up to neighborhood standards. It’s a pain.
On the other hand, I’ve been getting compliments on it. And I love compliments the way…uh…the way a conceited gay man loves compliments. I just wish I could get them with something that doesn’t catch crumbs.
I hate shaving and I’ve had a beard ever since I got out of the Army (over 3 decades ago!). I only shaved it off once, when I went to do fieldwork in the 1970s and wanted to look a bit tamer than normal. (But I kept my ponytail!) The older I get, the shorter I keep my beard, so being a bit too long in the beard is often what motivates me to go get a haircut and beard trim. In fact, that’s just what I did yesterday, giving a young Japanese barber his first chance to trim a foreign beard that flatteringly likened to Sean Connery’s. Yeah, sure.
Well, you do look cute with the beard.
And I hate shaving, too. My whiskers are heavy, and they lie flat at weird angles around my Adam’s apple, meaning that unless my skin is having an extra-mellow day, the process turns my throat to hamburger. Still, after I’ve let it grow out for three or four days, the itching totally does me in. And I feel as if I had a sweater on my cheeks. I really don’t know how guys do it.
What I meant was “Why do you have a beard if you don’t want one?” The way you described it, I thought you were being forced to grow one, like to hide a hideous birthmark, or because your boyfriend said he would dump you if you didn’t.
If the beard is freely chosen because you get compliments on it, then you DO want it. You just both want a beard and the right to bitch about it at the same time.
I have a beard myself, and I love not having to shave all the time. I just trim it once every couple weeks and that’s that.
If you have a goatee, though, then I hope you are one of the very rare people whom that actually suits.
I’m growing it because my dermatologist told me that I should give my treatment-fried skin a rest from having a blade dragged across it. I resisted for months, believe me. The goatee is a compromise because I can’t stand the whiskers on my cheeks.
Ah, I see. This is the information I didn’t want to have to dig around to get.
I personally like the hair on the cheeks, as although it reduces sensitivity it can be used to….oh, nevermind. You and Atsushi figure it out.
(PS – I have a long-running hypothesis that women named Atsuko are hot. I’ve known three, and they are all at least 2 SDs above the mean in terms of looks. I wonder if the same holds for the male equivalent, Atsushi.)
Well, you don’t expect me to say my boyfriend isn’t at least 2 SDs above mean hotness, do you?
(Idle thought: Does hotness follow a normal distribution?) Of the Atsushis I’ve known, I have to say that they’ve been scattered all along the curve. Now that you mention it, though, I don’t think I’ve ever met a guy named Tsuyoshi who wasn’t unbearably sexy.
Do all your Atsukos have the same kanji, BTW? I wonder whether that could make a difference.