A Close Shave With a Hairy Subject

Being semi-retired, and not obliged to shave every day, I don’t.

Consequently, I often look like a bum, or like a man who is beginning to grow a beard.

There is a fashion among certain types of men for looking unshaven. They often have a two- or three-day growth of beard that gives them a manly, rough-hewn sort of look. This was often affected by Humphrey Bogart and lately by Mel Gibson.

On them, the unshaven look fits an image of the rough-and-ready he-man and evidently is thought attractive by certain types of women.

A beard is, of course, aside from other obvious physiological differences, a phenomenon that sets men and women apart. Men have beards, women do not. Or not usually. The Bearded Lady was a feature of the Barnum & Bailey Circus for decades, though I don’t know why she was such an attraction. She certainly had the dullest job imaginable, and one that required no talent whatever. That she was a woman with a beard made her remarkable.

When I don’t shave for two or three days, I develop an unsightly growth of gray stubble that does nothing to make me look manly, like Gibson, or sinister, like Bogart. I don’t look glamorous. I just look like I need a shave.

The longer one lets a beard grow, the harder it is to get a clean shave. When I look at myself in the mirror, I can’t believe that I have been shaving that face for 60 years. I don’t even remember how I did it. For years I have been using an electric razor, not as efficient as the old straight edge that I have never used.

Lately, I find the electric razor is not efficient in cutting a two- or three-day growth. The stubble has become too long and too tough. Consequently, I tend to go a day or two more, which makes the problem all the more acute.

Consequently, I have had to go to a barbershop and get a shave--something I had done only once or twice in my life. I had been going to my barber, Rudy, for 15 years or so, but he had never shaved me. The other day when I asked for a shave, he was taken aback. He said he hadn’t shaved a customer for at least five years, but he would try. The result was adequate but not prepossessing.

The next time I let it grow even longer. Long curly hairs were growing out of my neck. These either slipped through the teeth of the electric razor or got caught in them and were painfully ripped out.

Then, as my wife and I were driving in Glendale one Saturday, we spotted what appeared to be an Armenian barbershop. I decided to get a shave. It seemed to me an Armenian barber from the old country would know how to give a man an old-fashioned shave.

He did. After a few flourishes of his towel and the application of certain powders and lotions, he set to work with a straight edge. I remembered the story of Napoleon’s barber, who held the little colonel’s life in his hands. The Armenian barber finished in half an hour, with no accidents. It cost $6.

The next time my beard grew out, I tried shaving it myself. I used one of those throwaway razors my wife had bought for me. They come several in a package, and you discard them after one use. It was a sloppy job--and tedious.

I decided there must be a better way. “Maybe I could shave you,” my wife said. She is always volunteering. Well, why not? She did almost everything else for me. Since I broke my wrist, she has learned to button my shirts, tie my neckties and fix my nightly vodka tonic. Why couldn’t she shave me now and then?

I lathered my face up for her and she went at it--not with the Armenian flourish, but with a certain French stolidity. It couldn’t have been easy. We had no barber’s chair. We both had to stand in a cramped space beside the wash basin. When she finished, she said, “ Voila! “ and stepped back to admire her work.

I found she had missed rather large patches of beard and abraded the skin in two or three places. All in all, though, I looked fairly presentable. When I went out that evening, only a few people said, “What happened to you?”

I’m hoping she’ll get better as she has more practice. I may suffer a few wounds now and then, but at least I won’t look like a second-rate Mel Gibson.

And it will save me six bucks every time.

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Jack Smith’s column is published Mondays.

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