Swept from the corners of my mind…
I was just a teen. Experimenting with plucking my eyebrows, I removed my glasses, focused the light, and leaned close to the mirror for the first tear-wrenching tweezes. To this day I can see those three dark hairs on either side of my mouth, just above the corners of my pursed lips. The culprits tried to blend into my sun-browned skin, but I corralled them with the silvery weapon and yanked, wiping the remains onto a tissue already spotted with coarse eyebrow hairs sheathed in the white of root and the occasional scarlet droplet of blood. Blinking away tears, I reconnoitered the three moles scattered on my face, each sporting a few sharp spikes of ebony whisker. It took several tugs and gasps, gripping and re-gripping as they fought for supremacy, but eventually the loathsome hairs were pulled out. `There’, I thought with innocent satisfaction, ‘that’s the end of those horrid things!’
Little did I know that the war had just begun. The encroachment was slow– a few persistent mustache hairs here, three or four sharp points on my chin there, or a long hair like the lead of a a mechanical pencil poking out another spot. I fought with them with every weapon at hand, getting more and more technological over the decades. I shaved–causing sharper points and the occasional infected follicle. I waxed–causing burns to my double chin. I used reeking depilatories–reddened skin and burning eyes. I even embarked on several months of trips to an electrolysis clinic. where two bleached-blonde, orange-skinned women giggled and gossiped as a fine metal thread was repeatedly inserted into sensitive pores and a trickle of electricity jolted both hair roots and sympathetically buzzed my metal fillings. I was surprised to find that this “permanent removal method” was not a one-time visit–each jolt merely “weakened” the roots, so regular appointments were required to cause their ultimate demise. Time and again I gathered up my fifty bucks of student cash, prepared the post-appointment coolant of witch hazel, and proceeded across town, determined to win the battle of my chin. But the enemy always returned. Two decades later, my forays onto the battlefield were with lasers applied in a spa-style setting by a licensed practitioner, and I left each engagement with renewed hope, a lighter wallet, and tiny rectangular “tan” spots scattered across my hirsute visage. But, alas, the hairs returned, oft-times with companions.
As time went on, I tried Acceptance. “Facial hair is natural”, I declared. “It’s more common with some cultural groups than others, but there’s not a woman in the world without a few unwanted hairs on her face. It’s no big deal.” I saw other middle-aged women sporting an incredible variety of facial hair, unfazed. I joked about how I had chosen my tall, lanky mate because I had heard that married people started to look alike, but instead of slimming and gaining height, I’d gotten greyer hair and grew a mustache. I even joked in later decades that God was kind enough to have taken all the extra hair from my legs, leaving them smooth, and moved it all up to my chin where it is easy to reach. Deep inside, though, I could not accept that this genetic twist had won the war.
My beard remains thicker than the average high school boy’s and sprouts new soldiers daily. Long dark hairs have been replaced by stiff silvery bristles that glint in sunlight, and patches flourish just out of sight of my LED-light-enabled twenty-dollar high-tech surgical-steel tweezers or resist the pull of the whirling blades of my latest epilator. Daily, I wage the battle. Nightly, I count the remaining enemy as I slide the sensitive pad of my thumb over my jawline and across my chin.
In my lowest times I imagine that I will eventually develop dementia and envision myself, balding, flabby and pale, tied into a chair, over-size Depends crinkling under a gaping gown, with grey, silver, and brown hair sticking out of my face like an angry hedgehog.
But there is hope, for I have made The Pact. If I die unshaven, some special friends have sworn to sneak into the ward before the officials find me. They are to shave off all my stubble, mustache and beard, allowing me to meet my Maker with a face finally as smooth as a baby’s butt. This is a battle I will, eventually, win.
Cathy Bendle finds humor in the quirks of everyday life, from training teachers to dodging housework. When not writing, she’s either laughing at her pets, frantically Googling for her work assignments, or playing on her iPad.
