Requiem for a mustache

So. That's that. It's gone.

It was grief-stricken, clothes-rending, hair-pulling sort of gesture--imagine me at a funeral, throwing open the coffin for one last look, falling to my knees, tearing out fistfuls of grass and howling unspeakable agony.

Now that I think of it, that image is a bit morbid. It wasn't all that horrible, really. Mostly I was a little sad 'cause the best weekend in the history of people resting from work (which is a long history: "And on the seventh day, the Lord rested") had just come to an end. So I did it.

I shaved the 'stache.

Sorry.

I know, it was beautiful and sketchy and real and fake and marvelous. And now it's somewhere en route to a wastewater treatment plant, about to be filtered and sent to a landfill somewhere. Someday it will become part of the earth, and end up in my food (again). This is the circle of life of facial hair.

And now my face is nearly as nude as a ten-year-old choirboy's. I feel way too young again--I'd card me, I think-- and I'm looking drawn from lack of sleep and a mild case of alcohol poisoning (not the kind that lands you in a hospital, but the kind that you get from drinking a lot with people you love so much and having so much fun that when you stop, it hurts) and seasickness (not the kind you get from the motion of the ocean, but the kind when you have to leave a beach after the most stunningly gorgeous day and heart-stoppingly refreshing seaside experience ever). So, I stared at myself in the mirror, rubbed the 'stache for the last time, and made up my mind: it was so gone.

And I did it. It felt good in a way, the way picking a stab does. But then you're left with this situation, and only time can stop the bleeding--actual in the case of the scab, spiritually in the case of the moustakion.

The Asian kids are about evenly divided on the change. Some say, "Mr. Rubberband, your lip is now very more handsome." Others are less impressed: "Mr. Watermelon, you now are young look now." The faculty digs it, on the whole.

Me? Well, I've long thought that change is a necessary part of any facial layout. And since destachifying is a relatively cheap, painless and temporary alteration--way more so than, say, plastic surgery--I guess it wasn't too grave an error, if indeed it proves foolhardy.

And who knows--before too too long, this 'stache may ride again. There are some temporary changes that change you permanently, and I'm not prepared to count this mustache out.

We won't say goodbye, my lovely mustakion. We'll just say, 'till we meet we meet again.

Wave a wistful farewell with me,
TR