let's have a smile for an old engine driver

I wrote the following on August 02, 2006:

moustache magic: so i'm growing a scumstache. it's an exercise in vanity, true. but you can't put a price on coolness and i'm totally down to look like a jerk for a few weeks while it spreads its wings and contaminates my facial on its way to unparalleled glory. basically, i'm super cool and i'm about to wreck the game for all the mark-ass busters hating on my masculinity and throwing rotten fruit at my life. so taste that magic.

Flash forward to the present. That moustache is long gone. People laughed. I laughed some too. But I still liked it. I liked it enough to try it again. You see, I'd been lifting weights and engaging in more testosterone-fueled (and fueling) activities. I felt more manly than ever. Why not exhibit my manliness? Put it on display, I thought.

So with encouragement from a bearded friend, I decided to stop shaving. As my facial hair grew, my neck became itchy. This would soon pass as the beard slowly filled in. After more than a month with nary a trim, I admired my beard. It was uneven and really hadn't grown that much. It was confined to my neck and it refused to climb up my cheeks and connect to my moustache. It almost looked as if I were wearing a mohair scarf. I started to feel embarrassed. This pitiful excuse for a beard was now garnering stares and strange looks. My pride effectively damaged, I resolved to shave it off. As I released myself from the stranglehold of the stifling marmot, forcing it to relinquish its grip on my neck, I felt a sense of relief. Down the sink went the hideous blight.

When the steam dispersed and my visage appeared in the mirror before me, I was struck by what remained. The moustache. It was slighly fuller than the last time I attempted to grow one, in the summer of 2006, and now, with the absense of the beard, it really stood out. Knowing that this fuzzy caterpillar would likely garner more stares and strange looks than the beard that begat it, I considered shaving it as well. But then I thought how rock and roll it looked, how utterly old-fashioned and trashy. I remembered that the band had a show on the horizon and that my moustache could and would complete my stage appearance. So I opted to keep it. Damn the stares and giggles! I'd rather look like a turd with a crappy moustache than a dork with a horrible beard! I'm in a rock and roll band, I'm supposed to look this way! No clean-cut square ever convincingly rocked a room!

As the date approached, the jokes came more frequently... "What is that thing on your face?" "When did you become a child molester?"...and I heard whispers...

But I weathered that storm and the band rocked the show. I went to work the next day, still sporting the 'stache. It was attached to me and I had grown attached to it. It was only when I learned that a well-respected man who I'd seen in passing mentioned it later to my girlfriend that I realized the moustache had become too powerful. It was just too much and I couldn't be taken seriously with it on my face. Resting quietly and unobtrusively below my nose, it nonetheless overshadowed me and it had to go.

So it is with sadness that I bid a fond farewell to my second moustache. I'll cherish the times we shared. May we meet again.

The best part about having a moustache is slurping the beer foam that it collects.