My Pseudo-Brad Pitt Beard

I am in the process of growing my winter beard. No, not because it’s the coolest thing since Brad Pitt, nor because I’m wanting a little protection from the wintry elements (although it does afford that, at least a little). It’s simply because I’m way too lazy to take time every other day to shave. It’s as bald-faced as that, and I’m not too ashamed to say it. Now, that’s not to say that I don’t trim it up so it looks presentable, because I do, but I don’t spend more than a couple minutes each morning with the trim-up job, and occasionally I look in the mirror, pronounced myself good, and that’s that. I started with the sideburns. I wanted those big ol’ mutton chops like the guys in the ’70s used to sport. You know, like Shaft, and Robert Wagner (Wagner had some mutton chops, right?) used to have. So I grew them, but they made me look a little weird without the beard. Plus, that’s when I started realizing my hair doesn’t grow fast enough to make it look unkempt if I don’t shave all that often. Yup, that’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

I do this. You know, tinker with my hair. Probably because it’s the only thing I can really change about myself. I mean, I’m tall, and there’s nowhere to go from there. I’m dark-skinned, and I can only get marginally darker in the heat of the summer sun. I wear glasses, so sometimes I take them off and look like a cross-eyed steer, but the thing I can really work with is my hair. So I do.

I’ve had every possible hair style, from Afro, to the box cut, to dreads, to braids, to even for a couple of days… a mohawk! I’ve even kept my head shaved close before, a la Michael Jordan. When I was a kid my mother would get me the standard close cut with an off-center part at the local barber shop (I swear they sold unquestionables in the back — it always smelled weird in there). She would then put pomade in my hair every day, she said it would keep my hair soft, but I thought it only made my hair stink. Then she would brush it, and when I say brush, I mean she would go to town on my head. The tears would begin welling up almost immediately at the torture she imparted on my poor scalp. And I saw absolutely no difference in how my hair looked before and after she enacted this torture. I couldn’t ever tell her that, though, or it would have been smart mouth. I said it enough in my head, though, especially when my head was still tingling from a fresh brushing.

As I got older, I began experimenting with lengths. During my first year of high school the style was the box cut (see the side picture if you don’t know what I’m talking about), so I had to have it. The only thing was I always seem to be late with my style choices, and I did it again when I got my box cut during my sophomore year. By then the style was a shaved head (which I didn’t get until it too went out of style my senior year). Being a step behind the times made me revolutionary, I thought, but I’m sure everyone else was thinking I was just lame. Nevertheless, I liked my box cut, and I wore it proudly, sometimes with those all-important sideburns, and sometimes without.

That’s when I began to realize that my facial hair wasn’t all it could be (the army wouldn’t have wanted it, that’s for sure). I mean, I was seventeen years old and I hadn’t shaved once, yet my face was almost as smooth as a baby’s behind. I was able to grow halfway respectable sideburns, but there was absolutely no beard or mustache action. Some fellas my age were sporting thick beards and mustaches, so naturally I was jealous. It also wasn’t like the ladies were knocking down my door, so I drew the correlation that no beard equaled no “game.” It became a daily rendezvous between me and the bathroom mirror. I would have grabbed a magnifying glass if I could, to try and capture the little hair follicles as they were growing, but that too would have been no use. I began to despair that I would never have a proper beard or mustache.

It was during my Afro phase, circa 1996, when I finally began to see some progress on the beard front, which was a cause for jubilant celebration (yes, I know those words mean the same thing — I was really excited). I got a pair of clippers and a nose-hair trimmer (you never know) that same year so I could do things with my facial hair. However, it was still growing at a glacially slow pace, so I didn’t cut it. I couldn’t deal with it. If anyone had told me then that the more you shave the faster and thicker it will grow in, I would have been shaving every hour on the hour, but no one offered up that information. Hooray for living in a house full of women. Eventually I did figure that out, and the beard became more expansive. Then, ironically, I realized it wasn’t as cool as I thought it would be, you know, after I had the beard for a while. So I shaved it off.

And once in awhile, like now, when I get lazy, I tend to re-grow my ‘fro, get those sideburns rocking again, and tell everyone I’m growing my winter beard. Because I can.

Sam