On Bearding, Fashion, and Exclusion

I had a terrible thought this morning. I was reading the comments on a really great article about the double-standard faced by "people of colour" with beards versus white guys with beards (read here), and an astute commenter pointed out that viewing beards as a sign of masculinity is "a racist trap." As the founder and president of the Derby City Whisker Club, whose mission includes "the whiskerfication of the masculine image in the popular conscious," I suddenly felt that maybe I was being exclusionary, possibly even racist. Was I, by "promoting beardliness amongst men," stripping men who can't grow beards, whether due to ethnicity or other genetic factors, of their manhood or masculinity?

To work towards an answer and satisfy my conscience, I had to think about my past--something that, more as a habit than a rule, I don't really do. I grew my first full beard during my freshman year of college. I was 18, it was 2000 or 2001. For the next few years, I played around with various facial hair styles before committing fully to the full beard around 2004.

Do you remember 2004? At the time, "metrosexual" and "manscaping" were the buzzwords. "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" was winning Emmy awards. I lived in New York City, I was 22 years old, and I was everything the media told me men shouldn't be. I'm short, I'm not slender even when I'm in shape (which happened once, I think around 2002), and I have hair all over. I mean all over. Manscaping? Please. I'd need a four-man crew and industrial equipment. So, screw it. I grew a giant beard. In your face, fashion. Take your "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" and shove it.

So there I was, young, dumb, and full of, uh, hopes and dreams, in the greatest metropolis in the world, and I couldn't get a date to save my life. I was doing everything wrong. Sure, I played in a band, but we played loud, slow, ugly music that only other loud, slow, ugly, hairy dudes wanted to hear. And I did my thing. I owned it. I was louder, slower, uglier, hairier. Sure, I had a few girlfriends despite all that, because I am, after all, a pretty charming dude, but they griped about my long beard and my long hair, told me they "wanted to see my face."

"This is my face," I reminded them. "It goes down to here."

And so, for the next ten years, I endured knowing that most women assumed I was dirty at first glance. I endured being mocked as a leprechaun or garden gnome. I smiled politely when strangers told me I looked like Bin Laden or asked me if it itched, just like I smiled politely when other misfits and weirdos congratulated me on how "epic" the hair on my face was. I'm not a guy who likes attention, especially from strangers. I swear I wasn't trying to be some freak or oddity. I just like my beard. For me. When I look in the mirror, it makes me not want to punch that dude in the face. So I smile politely.

And all that time, I knew that the pendulum of fashion would swing my way soon enough. Metrosexual would give way to "retrosexual." Men who were manly would be attractive again, and this shaggy dog would have his day. Or at least maybe people wouldn't stare at me so much or ask me about my religion or personal grooming habits, as though that's any business of theirs. All of this was in the back of my mind when I founded the Derby City Whisker Club and when I wrote that mission statement: To promote beardliness and brotherhood amongst men and the whiskerfication of the masculine image in the popular conscious.

It would seem now that the pendulum has swung. Other men, and women, have figured out that a man can have a beard and still be well-groomed. No one's using the term retrosexual, thankfully, but a clear return is being made to traditional markers of masculinity. Just in time, too. I'm 31, a married father and teacher who cares less than I ever thought possible about being cool or edgy or hip or even sexy. And suddenly I'm concerned that I'm part of a growing bandwagon that might be marginalizing or emasculating some members of the male population.

So, to the tall, skinny guy who can't grow a beard and might feel less manly next to my effluence of face pubes, I have this to say: f#@k you. Get over it. Find your own manliness and own it like I did. Then come find me, stick it in my face, and say, "F#@k you too, little man." Then we can shake hands like people who are confident in themselves and ignore all the trappings of socially constructed gender roles or some such.

Most importantly, don't ever, ever, let anyone else tell you that you're not who you should be or that you're not a man because of some arbitrary bulls#!t that has absolutely no real-world, applicable value. Because the pendulum's gonna swing again, because it always does and always will, and the truest mark of a man, or a woman, is staying who you are no matter what this decade's "Queer Eye" tells you you should be.

You know what I can do because I have a beard? Nothing. You know what I can't do because I'm short? Nothing. So as I wrote when I originally shared the above-referenced article, "Love all beards, respect all people, and let yourself be guided by your better judgment, not manufactured fear or feelings of difference." Mass media is designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Rise above it and claim your personhood.

I Was a Teenage Swamp Monster

Around the time I was 21-22, I did a lot of unconnected writing, short vignettes that I was hoping to someday make into something, or not. Here's one:

Everything I know about rock & roll and a lot of what I know about life, I learned from Bruce Springsteen by the time I was ten years old. Sometime in my seventh or eighth year of life, I took to falling asleep every night with a Springsteen cassette playing on my Panasonic boom box, the volume low and my head literally pressed against the grills of the speakers. There was more than music coming through those speakers, and I was doing more than listening. It was an education by way of rock & roll, and I absorbed it, let it run through me. The black metal grating against my ear was an IV needle feeding my soul. I became it. To this day I have vivid memories of events I never experienced except behind my closed eyes with “Born to Run” or “The River” pumping softly into my head. Many times, the things I was learning weren’t even apparent to me until years later, when some twist or turn in my life would call to mind a lyric or I would find myself unexpectedly prepared for an unfamiliar situation and realize it was because Bruce already told me that this was coming, that this was how life would be.

One of the two most important things I learned from The Boss in those formative years of my rock & roll life is that in rock & roll, as in life, what you say is rarely as important as how you say it, or more accurately, how you make it feel. The second is that in life, as in rock & roll, everybody has a story, and more often than not, it’s a sad one. And I do mean everybody—every scruffy, dirt bike riding high school kid working after school at the gas station; every fat, grey old man at a liquor store, looking at your driver’s license with his squinted right eye while his left stares straight at you, open so wide you think it might jump right out of his flabby head and you’ll have to catch it; every clean cut Wall Street yuppie with a can of beer in a paper bag on the 6:27 train back to Jersey; every fresh-faced college girl lifting her shirt on Bourbon Street for Mardi Gras beads even when Mardi Gras is months away—they all have stories, if you give them a chance to tell them.

Sometimes the stories come out easy, the first time you meet someone. Standing by your open window while your gas tank fills, the attendant will tell you about how he moved here from Turkey and works seventy hours a week. He’ll tell you that he’s tired, that he stands out there in the cold and the rain, and he’ll let you know what he really wants when he starts asking you questions: you work with computers, don’t you? In an office? Forty hour weeks? Yes, of course you do. Other times, the stories are harder to figure out and need to be teased out a little bit at a time. You’ll ask a pretty girl that you just met to tell you about her family and she’ll tell you she doesn’t really have one. You’ll ask what happened to her parents. They left. Fucked off. Abandoned. Three days later you’ll find out she’s staying at her father’s house to get away from Aunt Joan’s menopausal rampages, but she won’t give a hint as to how she really feels about Dad—or Aunt Joan. It might be months or years later when you’ll be laying naked in the dark with the twisted sheet pulled halfway over you and her head on your chest, in that moment of post-coital vulnerability when you feel so exposed that the only ways you can combat it are to voluntarily open up and spill your most private thoughts or to try and make her, and so you ask, quietly, listening to your voice shake off the walls, “Do you love your father?” After a pregnant but not uncomfortable pause in that timeless darkness where seconds are eternities and eternities are never long enough, where between one thought and the next, you’re never sure if you’ve stayed awake or fallen asleep, she’ll say, simply and matter-of-factly, as though you had asked whether she’d gotten the mail that day, “Yup,” and in the first movement either of you makes in what seems like so long that you’re actually surprised by its ease, she’ll tilt her head slightly to kiss your jaw before you both fall asleep.

Finally Free

This is another scrap from some forgotten time. I just came across it, and although there's a lot I might change about it, it once again captures a moment and feeling in my life just as it is.

I grew from your shadow like a monolith--
a dark thing of mystery and potential.
--power for progress. or destruction.

The strength that you taught me always forced me to smile:
A scared child inside, to the world a conqueror.

And you were finally free, unchained and wild.
And I, alone, left behind.

Even in absence, you were a model.
"Don't look back," cried your silence over miles.
Let past lives be buried. Move on from old weaknesses.

And you were finally free...

I don't miss your shadow or its shelter
from cowards' eyes or the burning sun.
But you were larger than your shade. You also cast light.

Times when I burned to cry to you, you made me too strong to cry.
When I wanted to feel flesh, you taught me to make myself stone.
Bodies accomplish by the power of wills. A man is as strong as his mind.
I learned from you that limits are just what you let them be.

I Got A Job!

I had my first interview last Thursday morning at a small county high school. I met with three out of five of the other English dept. members and the principal, who was starting her job that same day. The interview was great, and I was really impressed by the dynamic among the ladies of the English department. Monday morning, I had my second interview, and although I liked the folks there as well, it really added some contrast and brought into clearer focus what a rare find the first school was. At about 6:30 Monday evening, as I was on my way out to play Viking riff-sludge with my heathen pals, I got the call and offer. Tuesday I called back and accepted.

And that concludes the thrilling story of how Austin got a job. Now Austin has to go mow the lawn.

Small Comforts

I wrote this poem when I was observing the classes I would later student-teach, as an example of the assignment they were doing (based on a poem by Nikki Giovanni). It pretty much came right out on the spot, but I like it.

"Small Comforts"

I like the possibility presented by a fresh blank page in a brand new notebook
I like my warm bed on a cold morning just after the alarm goes off
I like bent-note blues guitar solos and Muddy Waters moans
Deep slow John Lee Hooker rumbles and
Crackin’ cacklin’ Howlin’ Wolf shouts—
‘Cause I’m built for comfort I ain’t built for speed

I like wearing hoodies on the beach at the deserted Jersey Shore misty cool mornings
Just before spring
(Where Springsteen used to walk his talk between boardwalk hot spots that are cold now, Sandy)

I like hot coffee in my cupholder on long drives across the open eastern American spaces
that stretch between my place and my home
I like my baby’s big soft purple couch and tired Friday nights at home
watching movies
Worn out from the week’s work and knowing there’s nowhere
—and no way—
I’d rather be.

(10/28/08)

The only Boss I listen to...

At the request of an old friend, I'm trying to put together my very own "best of" Bruce Springsteen compilation. So far, it's a two-discer with each disc clocking in over 70 minutes, and I still feel like I'm leaving out some really important stuff. More problematic, it seems that far too many of my favorite Springsteen songs are the down-tempo sad ones. Mixing in the rockers strategically has been quite the challenge.

Here is my tracklisting:
Disc 1:
1. Kitty's Back [from The Wild, The Innocent, and The E Street Shuffle]
2. Further On (Up The Road) [from The Rising]
3. Back In Your Arms [from the "Tracks" box set]
4. Worlds Apart [from The Rising]
5. The Promise [from 18 Tracks]
6. Spirit In The Night [from Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ]
7. My City of Ruins [from The Rising]
8. Point Blank [from The River]
9. For You [from Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ]
10. Drive All Night [from The River]
11. Meeting Across The River [from Born To Run]
12. I'm On Fire [from Born in the USA]
13. Prove It All Night [from Darkness on the Edge of Town]

Disc 2:
1. Thunder Road [from Born To Run]
2. Adam Raised A Cain [from Darkness on the Edge of Town]
3. New York City Serenade [from The Wild, The Innocent, and The E Street Shuffle]
4. Independence Day [from The River]
5. Cover Me [from Born in the USA]
6. Paradise [from The Rising]
7. Lost in the Flood [from Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ]
8. The River [from The River]
9. Tenth Avenue Freeze Out [from Born To Run]
10. The Fever [from 18 Tracks]
11. When You're Alone [from Tunnel of Love]
12. Stolen Car [from The River]
13. 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) [from The Wild, The Innocent, and The E Street Shuffle]
14. Backstreets [from Born To Run]

No, there is nothing from Nebraska, because I don't like Nebraska, except maybe for "Atlantic City"and "Reason to Believe" (but if I were going to put "Reason to Believe" on there, I'd use the version from Live 1975-1985). This is my best attempt at succinctly compiling my favorite Springsteen tunes into a listenable compilation, and you'll probably learn more about me from listening to it than you will about Springsteen--although I did try to pull some things that might make people go, "I didn't know Springsteen wrote songs like this!"

Anyway, I don't think anyone actually reads this blog, and the entire track listing is subject to change, but I needed something to do while I was listening back through the mix and blogging about it seemed like a good idea. If there are any readers out there, please don't comment to me about what I forgot or left off or what you would have done differently. Just make your own mix and send it to me. I'll listen.

On Rock 'n' Roll and Danger

I just found this neat little blurb I wrote a long time ago, in my former life as a rock star. The circumstances surrounding its conception are no longer relevant, either to my life or to its meaning. Still, I enjoyed it and wanted to put it somewhere where I wouldn't lose it again.

On Rock 'n' Roll and Danger:

Living out tired cliches is not revolutionary, no matter how hard you throw yourself at them. But here's another one for the list you live: The empty can rattles the most.

You are not dangerous if you pose no threat to anyone but yourself. Self-destruction is neither beautiful nor glorious, neither glamorous nor stunning. Like self-aggrandizement, it is only sad and ugly, and people only pay attention until it's over. Then they shake their heads and walk away.

I'm walking away.