That'll be Two Bits

Perhaps I am odd (my, but I am setting myself up now) perhaps I am odd but I really do love shaving. At one time I enjoyed having a beard and the beard I had was a fine one. Sadly, though, I had to sacrifice my fine facial shrub to my love of dragging a razor over my sober, soaped-up countenance. I attempted to reach some sort of compromise with my persistent stubble. It obviously really wanted to be there. I attempted goatees, chin curtains; for the longest time I sported a moustache given that I could shave nearly all my visage while still respecting my facial hair’s right to exist. It was not to be. After a time it too was subjected to hot lather and fell before the razor’s keen edge and my satisfaction was marked. With the shaving of each and every part of the face, one is presented with different challenges, joys, and sensations. A mere application of suds and repeated dragging of the razor will never truly invoke the pleasure to be had from this most venerable of masculine undertakings. There have been men of my acquaintance who have told me how they simply shave in the shower as a mere afterthought. I can remember a chap, though such a person is barely worthy of being called a chap, who proudly proclaimed to me that he was ambidextrous, that he shaved in the shower with a disposable razor in each hand. He was obsessed with efficiency, he said. I resolved from then on that I was obsessed with inefficiency and sought his company no more.

I can have a grand time of shaving in the morning equipped with a mere plastic razor and an aerosol can of shaving foam. I have had to make do with as much so many times that it is better that I learned to take it in stride. As I advance in the world, however, I have seen no reason not to treat myself to what the glorious world of hair removal has to offer. I have now a mug, a badger’s hair brush, round cakes of scented soap, and dark amber aftershave of a spicy, sweet fragrance in tall, narrow-necked Victorian style bottles.

Allow me to here sorrowfully confess that I do not have a straight razor. Many would assume that I do, and I feel like something of a humbug that such is not the case. I have been in the midst of casual conversations, more than one, in which I do not recall shaving being before mentioned only to have people say, “I bet you shave with one of those old-fashioned folding razors with the leather strap.” I quickly change the subject. I have no wish to disappoint. Yes, three inches on keen Sheffield steel being gracefully drug over jugular is indeed an arresting possibility, but even I will knick myself once in a while and I would rather that be the height of my blood loss in a day. I’ll have my young fogey membership revoked now and they’ll ask me to turn over all of my tweed jackets and Trollope novels.

I once liked to think that I could trust the services of a professional. As a birthday present some years back, my wife made an appointment for me at a full service barber shoppe with the understanding that I would be given the works. After my haircut I enquired into a straight razor shave. There were multiple black and white photographs on the walls of portly men having their soapy faces seen to by smart looking barbers wielding gleaming blades. The young lady-barber who had been seeing to me took a step back. She had never done such a thing, never been asked for such a thing before. They had covered it in beauty school, made everybody shave a balloon with a straight razor, sure, but she was under the impression that it was all some sort of antiquated hazing ritual. She acted as though I was being unreasonable. By then I was resolved, however. It was my birthday and I was going to make this nervous woman give me a goddamn shave and I didn’t want anymore of her lip. Before I had to resort to mockery and name calling, she conceded.

She first draped a hot towel over my face. I thought for a time that she would leave it covering my eyes while she lathered me up and faked the rest, but no. After dispensing a pile of foam from a hot lather machine into her palm she began to daub it over my cheeks and neck, all the while with a look of pleading in her eyes. From a drawer she took the straight edge, that tool that she had always seen as nothing more that a thing used to clean up a man’s neckline after he had had a good, Christian haircut.

“Don’t worry,” I tried to reassure her, “I’m not going to pop.” I settled back and closed my eyes. She began to draw the blade lightly over my cheek. I detected nary a quiver. Then I realized that all conversation in the barber shoppe had ceased. Even the scissors of the barber working on the customer in the chair next to mine had fallen silent. Looking around, I saw now that all eyes in the establishment were on me and none of them seemed approving. I was being confronted with the same looks of shock and confusion bordering on the violent such as I had not seen since I took my children to story time at the public library wearing a three piece suit and a paisley bow tie. Such, such are the perils of living in a ski resort town populated by so many California expatriates. Steeling myself against anymore steely looks, I settled back once more in my chair intent on not rising until the last bit of lather was scraped from my face.

Lord, but it was the worst shave ever. Wanting to be gracious, I gave the woman a large tip as I left. To be fair, she had splashed bay rum on my cheeks and neck when she had finished. Outside on the sidewalk I ran my hand along my jaw. Tracts of stiff stubble still bristled out in various places; bumps of razor burn were beginning to pimple out at sensitive areas. I cursed that woman, suspecting that she was probably a snow boarder on weekends or that she would probably not have known the slightest thing about the history of the Royal College of Barber-Surgeons. I stomped off to spend the rest of the afternoon browsing through antique stores.

Just as with tea brewing and tobacco blending, this experience taught me that if I am to get anything out of life in this blithering age and blighted place, I must do so on my own initiative. As such, I have gotten to the point where I can shave my face as smooth as a marble statue and become moody self-doubting should I fail at it. It is hard to imagine my joy a few weeks ago at having come across instruction in a barber’s manual from the early nineteenth century on how to work up a rich, buttery white lather that causes the razor to positively swim along the contours of the face. Such pleasures, though, when so fervently pursued can become inhibiting. It is interesting how anything taken to the point of art and artifice can lead one into situations where one ends up feeling awkward, silly, and even vulnerable.

When I was attending college in Washington state I shared a large dorm house with two other guys. One of them was an art student with aspirations toward being a photographer. As an impromptu project the second day after we had all moved in and unpacked our gear he was going around the dorm snapping pictures of things that caught his interest. We heard him laughing in the bathroom and he called us both in. “It’s like the perfect representation of culture clash,” he said, pointing to the bathroom counter. The two of them used electric shavers, both of which sat on either side of my mug, brush, and turn of the century Gillette safety razor. This kind of razor requires disposable double-edge blades that I had always been able to buy from a friendly drug store in my hometown. The drug stores of Olympia were apparently not as friendly and I found myself without any blades in a matter of weeks. Readying myself for classes one morning, I bemoaned my plight to one of my roommates, not the one who had taken the pictures. He graciously offered to let me use his electric shaver. It was simple, he told me. Just turn it on and move it around the parts you want to shave. Had he not bought so much beer I would have thought him a truly harsh, uncaring sort. I switched the device on and began to work it along my jaw. The vibrations of the motor sounded along my teeth, setting them on edge.

My grandfather, the man who raised me, worked for the state building highways for forty years. He rose in the morning before sunset. Shaving seemed to be the last thing he did before leaving, an afterthought, really. He had no time for the rituals of masculinity I would later come to affect and used a battery powered electric shaver. I would wake up shortly after he did and eat breakfast with him in my pajamas. When he went into the bathroom to shave I would stand dutifully next to him, gazing up at his crinkled, brown face. Before he would turn it off I would always say “Shave me, Grandpa,” and he would turn the razor around and run the vibrating butt end over my cheek. He would tousle my hair or pat me on the back then walk out the door to his truck. Grandpa contracted cancer while I was still young. He hated to quit working and still rose at the same hour every morning with me. His skin had gone from brown and took on something of a translucent pallor. His hands shook more and more over the years. One morning I was standing with him in front of the medicine cabinet. He switched on his electric shaver, but could not hold it steady, his hand tremoring severely every time he brought it to his face. He wouldn’t look down at me, wouldn’t even look at himself in the mirror. A trickle of blood fell from his nose and onto his hand. He swore and walked past me out of the bathroom, into his bedroom and shut the door. When he died straggling, sickly white hairs had sprouted out all along his jaw.

When I think of my grandfather, I often develop a warm feeling at the base of my stomach and a tightness at the back of my throat. I think of it as a good feeling, an effect of pure, unguarded sentimentality. I had it then as I stood in the bathroom of my college dorm using my roommate’s electric shaver. It never occurred to me before then how akin this feeling was to nausea. The warmth in my stomach became an ache and the hand holding the shaver began to tremble. I switched the thing off and decided that it was time to grow my first beard.