On the Face of It, This Seemed Like a Good Idea

I’m growing a beard. This is not a matter of great significance to anyone but my wife and my dog, but it’s what I did on my vacation.

Growing a beard, like sleeping on the couch, doesn’t require a good deal of either physical effort or intellectual attention. One just lies there for a sufficient amount of time and hair automatically appears.

I was on a working vacation, polishing a new book, and rarely left the house, which meant that though getting up in the morning was a necessity, shaving was not. I did, however, shower and change underwear, a condition my wife requires if she is to remain married to me.

My beard is presently in the old-bum stage, meaning it is the bristle often found on elderly winos sitting in doorways drinking Night Train from a bottle in a paper bag.

I wouldn’t qualify as one because sipping a martini from a bag wouldn’t work, due to the awkward shape of the glass. Anyhow, not in all my years have I ever seen an old bum drinking anything but red wine, although once I did see one drinking cheap wine and reading the Wall Street Journal. I was so impressed, I gave him a dollar.

Before the old-bum stage, the growth down the side of my face and around and under my chin was in the Brad Pitt stage, a slight facial shadowing that young Hollywood males affect as a manifestation of their manhood. I suspect that in many cases it’s makeup and not hair, but who am I to question anyone who makes $20 million a shot for being able to read and smile?

My wife likes the beard, although she has some hesitation about comparing me to Brad Pitt. “I think,” she says very diplomatically, “he’s a bit taller than you, dear.”

Our dog Barkley views me with suspicion. When he first noticed the beard, he backed away, bared his teeth and barked furiously. He’s an English springer spaniel and smarter than most people, but sometimes overly protective. Like Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, he is always on guard, but not always sure who the enemy is, so he has a tendency to bark at anyone whose identity he questions. This simultaneously makes him (Barkley, not Ashcroft) a terrific watchdog and an utter nuisance.

One night about 3 a.m., he heard a woodpecker outside pecking away and went to Condition Red. He ran through the house barking and howling, a combination of noises equivalent to a thousand car alarms going off at once.

My idea of dog training is to scream and threaten in tones that even a quadruped can understand, techniques I applied to Barkley when I discovered why he was barking.

“Stop hollering, for God’s sake,” my wife said. “He was just doing his job!”

“Barking at a werewolf is doing his job. Barking at O.J. Simpson climbing in a window is doing his job. Barking at a woodpecker is overdoing his job!”

“Go back to bed,” she said, “and sleep assured that no woodpecker will harm you tonight. Good boy, Barkley.”

The growing of beards goes back to the time, probably in the early Pleistocene, when man discovered that he had full control over the hair on his face. This was no doubt after he discovered marriage and became aware of the fact that he had control over very little else in the cave but the hair on his face.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica points out that the wearing of beards has been a matter of controversy throughout history. For instance, the ancient Romans considered beards to be the epitome of barbarism, but Jews regarded them as symbols of virility.

It was during this angry difference of opinion that Jesus emerged. I’m not saying that he was put on Earth to determine the rectitude of whiskers, but who knows? Various depictions show him both with and without a beard. Perhaps, like many of us, he let it grow while on vacation and shaved to perform his miracles.

There are Internet Web sites devoted to beards. One favors us with a link to “super” beards, i.e., facial hair that is pretty much out of control. Among those pictured with such a massive beard is one Kai Cofer, described as an actor living in L.A.

Kai’s quest, according to the Web site, is to grow the longest beard on record. Though that may not seem the most challenging of ambitions, bear in mind that actors don’t get a lot of work, and growing a beard is something to do while lying on the couch watching Buffy kick the hoo-hah out of neighborhood vampires.

The Web page that really astounded me features women with beards. “In the 21st century,” a caption declares, “female facial hair will be the ultimate of sexual seductiveness.”

Though that may be a turn-on to some truly peculiar men, I doubt that it will ever achieve any degree of general popularity. To prove how desirable a whiskered woman can be, the site features a full-length, frontal photograph of one Poppy X with a Vandyke beard, wearing only an open shirt. She is described as a television producer, which, somehow, doesn’t surprise me. I showed the picture to Barkley. He went crazy barking and howling. I think he thought she was a woodpecker.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. He’s at al .martinez@latimes.com