And Thus I Enter the Pirate Phase of My Life

Let's do a quick recap:

There was the Time Before the Beard.  It didn't matter much, save for a few key scenes and plenty of nocturnal emissions.  It was sort of like the early Harry Potter books (from what I understand, seeing as how I've never read all the books) -- you have to read them only to get to the fourth book where things become interesting and exciting.

And then there was College, a.k.a The Time of The Beard.  What a glorious time it was.  Wrought with peril and danger, filled with scantily clad women all bursting through their clothes just to get to me, the Bearded One, and satisfy my every carnal desire.  Yes, it was glorious.  I remember the time that I left my spacious San Francisco dwelling to partake of a very healthy lunch of pizza and soda, because I take my nutritional cues, as well as religious motivations and political opinions, from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  Not long after I entered the pizza parlor, I was beset, beset, I say, with young, nubile, generously endowed women all hellbent on pleasing me.  In a sexual manner.  With their boobies and vaginas.  We partook of the sexual happenings, using skills I had learned from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

That story really happened.  

Then there post-college which, honestly, like everything else that entailed this post-college year, has been sketchy.  Let's call it: the Time of the Facial Hair Reconstruction.  Like most things in my life I can blame it all on This One Motherfuckin' MIT Grad and Ryan Gosling.

This One Motherfuckin' MIT Grad is not his real name.  I'm not using his real name.  Let's just say that his first name starts with T and ends with om Schilling.  Anyway, so This One Motherfuckin' MIT Grad and I were having lunch one day.  Over cheap noodles and fried wonton, the discussion naturally came around to my retarded post-graduate malaise.  I had no answers.  He had no answers.  The conversation didn't last very long.

I did, however, make a small (microscopic, practically) mention of my beard, my glorious beard, and how I had been kind of, sort of thinking about shaving it off.  I mean, I was so tired of buxom female (as opposed to buxom male which basically means the Meat Loaf character from Fight Club) beard-fetishists begging for my hot love action of sex and heat.  This One Motherfuckin' MIT Grad then said:

"Hmm.  You ever seen Half Nelson?"

"I haven't seen anything Ryan Gosling has ever done."  This was a lie.  I have totally seen Remember the Titans and I have probably seen the Are You Afraid of the Dark? episode he was in.  But that barely counts.  It's not like I've seen The Notebook.  And cried over it.  Twice.

"Well, Half Nelson is good, you should see it.  And the whole movie basically builds to a climax in which he shaves off his beard."

This struck me, for some reason.  It was like This One Motherfuckin' MIT Grad had given me a cryptic message that would solve all my problems: just shave the beard.  It was like that scene in every Nicholas Cage movie where he has to find stuff out.  It was like National Treasure 3: The Secret of Yosemite Valley, in which Cage and Vanessa Redgrave stumble across a book that leads them to the lost Incan treasure that is being protected by a series of puzzles carved into the walls of Old Faithful.  Or something.

The next morning, I did the deed.  I did the fucking deed hardcore.

And.

I.

Looked.

Like.

This:

Ignore the smile.  Focus on the eyes.  Those eyes are dead inside.  Those eyes are the eyes of regret.  Those eyes are screaming, "Are you fucking high, you double-chinned fuck?!?!"

It was a bad move.  Totally retarded, one that I am completely embarrassed about (and of course the internet is nothing if not a place for embarrassing tales).  I loved my beard.  It was more a part of me than anything else.  My beard was comfortable and safe and warm and I swore, once the beard grew back, I would never shave it again.

And then I shaved it again.  Fuck.

But this time I had no one to blame for myself.  It was shaving mishap.  A misjudgment of skin-to-hair and a too-deep setting on the trimmer.

At least it ain't all gone this time.

Now I look like this:

 

It's gotten mixed reviews.  I think I look like a pirate.  Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  Pirates can be cool.  Been a while since I been on a plundering or ripped a bodice.  Just sayin'.

I've also been told that it looks like I have a Bloatee.  Which I think is kinda cold.  But the world's a cold place.  And your face could easily get frostbitten.

Unless you have a beard.  Then you'll be fine.