A prickly situation

I  think I’ll grow a beard.” This is not what I usually think while gazing in the mirror during Holy Week, but when the mood struck me recently, I decided to roll with it.

Growing a beard in the Philippines can get a bit dodgy. You could end up looking like Dennis Hopper (may he convalesce in peace) in Apocalypse Now: round-the-bend loony from the heat and facial growth.

So I started growing it in Spain, where it blended in better with the typical European look. Scruffy face is very “in” right now.

Having not bothered with a beard since the ‘90s, I was not prepared to see my lower visage quickly become speckled with white and black, as though someone had tossed salt and pepper over their shoulder for good luck and it had stuck to my face. The last thing I expected to see when I looked at my newborn beard in the mirror was my father staring back at me. But there he was.

I got a wide variety of reactions to my bearding activities: double-takes were common, followed by comments in either the complimentary vein (“Al Pacino!”) or the not-so-complimentary (“Yo! ZZ Top!”). My wife immediately liked it, then had second thoughts, as did my daughter, who found it “prickly” when we returned from Spain. Someone said it made me look “tough” and “dangerous”; another said it made me look like “a Jack Russell Terrier.” Various people compared me to Tony Stark in Iron Man (is that a compliment?), Kenny Rogers (not a compliment), and — best of all — a combination of Brad Pitt and George Clooney. If that doesn’t encourage beard growth, nothing will.

But the Brooney comment (“Brooney”: Let’s face it, it sounds better than the inverse: “Clit”) made me realize people were reacting to my beard as a separate entity from me. It was as though I were wearing a mask, hiding my identity. My beard became my beard.

A beard, particularly in the Philippines, makes a kind of statement. Maybe it says “I’m tired of shaving.” Maybe it says “I’m a nonconformist.” Maybe it says “I enjoy scratching at itchy facial hair in tropical climates.” It draws a response, because few people dare venture there. Since it takes forever for me to even grow a mild crop of facial hair, it’s a place I’ve rarely thought about venturing.

But after a week or so, it seemed quite natural. I got used to stroking the scruffy chin, running my hand through its shag, almost like petting a prized canine. I started noticing quite a few Pinoy males sporting beards, and there was an unspoken camaraderie. I came to the conclusion that having a beard is what men are left to do instead of having babies, the way women can. Less maintenance, certainly. Or maybe it’s more akin to tending a garden, trimming the hedges. Blue-collar work, let’s say.

But what they don’t tell you is that maintaining a beard is a long-term contract. You’ve got to appraise the thing on a daily basis, make adjustments here and there. I’d gotten used to spending only a couple minutes in front of the mirror each morning. Now it was taking five extra minutes of beard time. This ultimately could be a deal breaker.

I’m also not blind to the fact that this beard arrives as I approach my mid-40s. The salt-and-pepper is a visual reminder of this life marker. So maybe it’s a mid-life crisis beard. Definitely cheaper than a sports car, though.

What a beard does, ultimately, is elicit a wide range of non-typical responses from people. Not unlike getting a tattoo or wearing guyliner. You’re forced to say something, because the beard seems to be saying something. Recall the “Dirty Man Competition” in Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up. Slacker Martin strives to keep a beard for a year, amid nonstop dissing from his friends. (“Was it weird when you joined the Taliban, being American and all?”; “Just watch your back, Serpico”; “Your face looks like Robin Williams’ knuckles”; etc., etc.) No wonder Martin eventually caves — and shaves — by the end of the movie.

Strangely enough, my father, who has worn a beard since the late 1960s (now in glorious monochromatic white), used to tell me the story of a celebrated nonconformist who turned our hometown of Fitchburg, Massachusetts topsy-turvy in the 1800s. His name was Joseph Palmer, and when he moved to the paper-manufacturing town of Fitchburg in 1830, he was immediately criticized because of his facial hair. No one in Fitchburg wore a beard then, but Palmer was obstinate: he went to work, prayed in church, and walked into town wearing the ZZ Top look. He refused to shave. People threw rocks at him. Eventually, some local hooligans tackled him and tried to shave his face; he responded by brandishing a pocketknife (which he possibly had hidden in his beard). He was arrested for “unprovoked assault” and thrown into a Worcester prison, several towns away, for a year. Even there, he refused to shave.

The press picked up on his story, and he became a national, if minor, cause célèbre. When he got out of the joint, he returned to Fitchburg to find many townspeople now sporting beards, maybe in solidarity, maybe just because they had become fashionable.

The moral of the story? If you stick to your guns and do things your own way long enough, people will eventually come around.

But it also helps to keep a pocketknife hidden in your beard.