D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
August 2009
The Razor's Edge
Going from being a little shaver to my father's son.
I realize I've missed the boat on writing a Father's Day column, but maybe this can count as a very, very early contribution toward June 2010. It's only in the past couple of weeks, you see, that I've started to see my father in the mirror.
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What triggered this dj vu-like feeling was switching back to shaving the old-fashioned way, with a razor and shaving cream. (Not too old-fashioned, of course — no carotid-artery-slashing straight razor like Johnny Depp favored in Sweeney Todd. No, I bought one of those newfangled Super-Mach-Turbo-Sensor-Excel razors with, I think, 17 blades and supersonic moisturizing action. It may have Internet access, too, but after rinsing the razor in the sink I'm thinking not any more.) I'd been using an electric razor for some time now, which essentially just rearranges the little beard hairs on your face so that it looks like you've shaved (albeit, say, five hours ago). Before that, I sported a beard for many years; my daughter screamed the first time she saw my bare chin.
In short, it's been a long time since I last spread shaving cream on my face and nicked myself. I was, ahem, a tad younger then, with darker hair and that callow, unlined glow of youth that I'm told women find so unappealing compared to mature looks.
So suddenly seeing myself in the mirror, all lathered up and razor at the ready, with graying hair atop my head and a certain, um, experienced visage, I stopped in mid-nick: I looked like my dad.
This isn't the first time I've thought or been told that, of course, genetics being what it is. When I wrote about my dad's wartime experiences in these pages and published an old photo of him from his Army days, folks who hadn't read the column yet thought the picture was of me. (Me, wear a sleeveless T-shirt? Get serious, people.)
But there are certain images that spring to mind whenever I think of my dad, who died in 1988. I'll picture him on the golf course — if there's golf in heaven, that's where he is, and if there isn't, well, it can't be heaven — getting ready to take a swing or make a putt, his omnipresent cigarette parked in the grass at his feet. Or I think of him at home in his favorite easy chair (which, for reasons I can't explain, was always placed at a right angle to the TV), cigarette in the adjacent ashtray doing its work of discoloring the ceiling above his head. If it's after 4:45 in the afternoon, there's a martini on the side table, too, dotted with green olives. Sometimes I remember him sitting instead at the dining-room table, grading papers — he was a college English professor — with a red pen, the tablecloth protected by a thin, round-cornered wooden board. (We still have that "grading board," propped beside my easy chair, which faces the TV.)
Or I'll picture my dad shaving, which naturally was a fascinating process for any little boy to observe. He used a metal razor — probably Gillette — not the grip-fitting plastic gizmos sold today. The handle was straight and round, with little grooves in the metal. The replaceable blades came in a scary little box that seemed as though it might cut you just looking at it, and had to be dropped into the razor's head by hand. Though not Sweeney Todd material, dad's razor meant business.
He applied the shaving cream with a brush. The rest of the day, when not in use, the brush sat in a corner of the bathroom counter, bristles up and at the ready. I don't recall ever being tempted to try it, though, much less the actual razor, which slept in the top left-hand drawer.
My zeal for shaving experimentation was doubtless dimmed by my father's propensity to cut himself shaving — and to bleed profusely with every nick. I've inherited something of his free-flowing blood, but thankfully I'm not quite as slow to clot. Dad was a gusher. Mere daubs of Kleenex or toilet tissue weren't nearly up to the task of staunching one of his shaving cuts. I don't know how he made it to class some mornings without a trip to the hospital for cauterization.
Not surprisingly, given this gory example, when I started to shave, my parents bought me an electric razor. Some boys, I know, can't wait to shave; it's a sign of manhood, I guess, like puking after sampling your parents' liquor cabinet. I was in no hurry, imagining countless unkind cuts and having my face swathed in bandages like the Mummy. But my face and hormones failed to get that message, and soon I looked like what I imagine the teenage Richard Nixon must have, with five o'clock shadow by noon.
As I've already noted, electric razors seem to do more massaging of your face than actual cutting. So it's no wonder that, with encouragement from my wife (who married me despite that Teen Wolf look), soon after getting married and moving out on my own, I grew a beard. On my first bearded trip home, my parents reacted to my unshaven appearance roughly the same as if I'd gotten a Hell's Angels tattoo. They got used to it, though, and when I finally shaved my beard my mom confessed that she kind of missed it.
I was inspired to ditch the electric shaver by another mirrored reminder of my dad: I was starting to look like him before he'd shave in the morning, with that white halo around the chin that some might call "grizzled." If you've seen the animated movie Up, you know what I mean: The cartoon old man who sends his house skyward with helium balloons looks startlingly like my dad (for a drawing). After the old man (voiced by Ed Asner) has been adventuring for awhile, he starts to look as grizzled as a cartoon can look. That would be my dad, unshaven. It's not a look, frankly, that I envied. Obviously, my electric razor wasn't, well, cutting it.
I know, all these movie stars walk around with what looks like two days' growth of beard, and somehow make it look good. How, I wonder, do you shave so it still looks like you haven't shaved for two or three days? How do these guys keep from just growing a beard?
Another shaving trend that's sweeping the nation's male population, according to the New York Times, goes the opposite direction: Men are shaving their body hair. I'm not just talking about guys with gorilla backs or so much chest hair they can't button their shirts. No, men are shaving their perfectly normal allocation of chest hair — presumably to show off bodies sculpted by way too many hours at the gym.
But it doesn't stop there. Men are shaving their armpits. Men are even shaving — brace yourselves, guys — their groins. Gillette (what would Dad think?) has produced an online "How to Shave Your Groin" video in which, according to the Times, "a muscular cartoon with pixilated privates even shows how to get bare without putting 'your equipment at risk.'"
Sorry, no matter how grizzled I might look below the neck, that's just not happening. When I think about how likely I am to nick my face shaving. . . .
Besides, I don't think my dad would have approved. That lathered face staring back at me from the mirror doesn't look like somebody who needs smooth and sleek armpits, much less smooth and sleek anyplace else.
And it's still me under the lather, after all. With just a few zips of my Super-Mach-Turbo-Sensor-Excel razor's 17 blades and supersonic moisturizing action, there I am looking back at myself, clean-shaven and ungrizzled.
Best, I think, to stop there and not push my luck. I come from a line of bleeders, after all.