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