I call it my ‘retirement beard”. As the days of court appearances dwindled down to a trickle, mornings without the shaving ritual accumulated, allowing a force of wispy soldiers to occupy the pristine beaches of my face. I’ve dabbled in a few tonsorial adventures in my life. The most memorable were the copper-red muttonchops that I allowed to grow wild and referred to as my ‘lobster claws’ because one was longer than the other. I was young and I believe the look I was going for was weird or just plain rebellious repulsive. As I aged, an occasional extended vacation period presented the opportunity to dispense with the daily shave and flirt with the stranger in the mirror. But these dalliances never lasted long for one basic reason. I couldn’t stop playing with it.
Now, I am not someone who is prone to any sort of obsessive compulsive behavior or addictions. I never developed cigarette smoking or coffee drinking habits in large part because I was too cheap to be anchored to any financially draining pastimes. Fortunately drugs like caffeine and nicotine didn’t do enough for me to justify the expenditure when compared to the drugs and alcohol I did enjoy. Even those worthwhile drugs and drink were relegated to functions of social events, or what I generally referred to as “partying”. Other than elevating my consciousness to watch an occasional ballgame on television, I’ve never been one to sit around by myself and drink or get high. I don’t hang out at bars to drink unless there is some live music I’ve gone there to hear. My self-analysis has always been a diagnosis of a non-addictive personality. Playing with my facial hair appears to be my Achilles heel.
If I’m not using my fingers to tug, twist or twirl it, I’m using my lips to mash it or to be brushed by it. Consequently, I often look like either a dastardly villain plotting someone’s cruel demise or an excited old toothless prospector. It’s one thing to indulge this pleasure in my private moments but when I’m with other people its embarrassing to constantly succumb to this telling lack of self-control. On the other hand, I’ve known women whose hair-fingering obsessions wove an hypnotic spell on me that enhanced their attractiveness. Maybe their habit says more about their weaknesses than I may suspect but I just don’t think there is an equivalency of acceptability between playing with the hair growing from one’s scalp and the crop growing on one’s face.
Unlike most addictive substances or amusements, my facial hair is always there in perfect unlimited propinquity to my lips and hands. Indulging my habit costs nothing, usage doesn’t result in any material depletion and it’s harmless except for the damage to one’s social esteem, much like nose picking or chewing the inside of the cheek. Its pleasures are manifold. The face is one of the most sensuous organs and erogenous zones on the human dermal landscape and when combined with the sensitivity of the fingertips, its hard to resist bringing them together. Twirling a tuft of beard between the forefinger and thumb slaps it against the shaved cheek with the soft propulsion of the pad of a kitten’s playful paw. It pinpricks the skin with the slightest shock, like that of one electron. Plucking short strands of mustache, I bend and release them so that they bristle against the top of my upper lip. The sides of two fingers pull a row of beard, twist it like a curling iron and sculpt it into a bouncy ringlet to be pinched and preened. All these fine motor calisthenics are done repeatedly, pulling and pricking the skin with just the slightest amount of stimulation, relieving stress, anchoring me to the corporeal and allowing my imagination to roam.
An addiction is a means of filling a hole with something other than what’s missing. What subconscious need compels me to engage in such constant self-fiddlement? Am I merely seeking physical pleasure and stimulation or is it just another temporarily satisfying but ultimately futile attempt to find the connection between my mind and my body that I’ve been searching for since I was a little boy coming home with a stolen Playboy?
