My Comfort Zone

One December 40 years ago at the office party, I accompanied a lovely co-worker into an empty room and we clinched; she said wait til after the holidays. Wow. During the time off I grew a beard which was fairly well along when I returned to work. My new honey ignored my smiles. The electricity was gone. I was confused. A few years later I ran into her, now married, and got up the nerve to ask why the cold shoulder. She confessed she didn't like beards. Well darn.

That evening I picked up a razor. Looking in the mirror I imagined hidden beneath the bushy growth a square-jawed ruggedly handsome guy with a mysteriously appealing smile. I shaved and found staring back at me a jowly-cheeked chubby little baby face with a droopy mouth. I grew my beard back and didn't shave again. There are pictures from the 70s of me like a wild Moses holding in my arms, not the famous tablets, but my baby Christopher.

A few years ago my children, now 31 and 23 began complaining they'd never seen their father's 'real' face. Shave again? A terrifying thought. But persistently, with subtle guilt-imbued digs they slowly eroded my defenses.

So I did it. My daughter and I converged on my son's house (he has the razor). I couldn't believe how giggly they were, patting me on the back with condescending words of encouragement, treating me like an eight-year-old about to have my tonsils out. We partook of a few canapés that hardly substituted for the 'last meal' I felt I deserved.

With cameras snapping to document the razing, I began my sacrifice, pressing the canister button and depositing a glob of blue gel in my palm.

"Dad, you don't need that much."

I watched my face blow up with a Santa-like beard of white foam. "Wow. How long have they had this?"

"Since before we've been shaving, Dad." I felt like an anachronism.

I was shocked as hair dropped into the sink. The stranger looking back from the mirror was not even vaguely familiar, with jowls now drooping like turkey wattles, trench-like wrinkles, and a smile that looked like Goofy when it tried to keep the mouth from curving down in an awkward solemnity. The skin, baby-like because it hadn't seen the light in forty years seemed grotesque on a 64 year old man.

I scrunched up my nose, stuck out my tongue, and made silly faces but the mirror image copied me precisely. My worst fears were realized: I was staring at me.

"Oh Dad it looks GREAT! You look so young." Traitors. Traitors both of you.

As I'd planned I hopped a plane to Mexico the next morning where no one knows me. I'll return with a fair growth so I don't meet the world with that goofy grin.
 

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