A Meditation on Mustaches

Quality of Life - Episode 135

“Want me to cut you?” 

How do you answer a question like that? “No,” would be the obvious choice in almost any situation. But frankly, I was shocked he even asked. My father, who we call PhD, was always free with his hands, pinching and swatting my siblings and me with the back of his hand if he felt we were disrespectful or slow. PhD smacking me in the shoulder or pinching my stomach was so common that even into my 30s, whenever he walked by me I’d flinch. 

In this moment I am not in my 30s. I am 10, and I’m learning how to shave. Well, I’m being shaved. PhD had no confidence that I’d be able to do it correctly, even with his instruction, so instead he grabbed a fistful of my hair to keep my head still, and shaved my face with the same worn and jagged disposable razor he’d used on himself that morning. 

Yes, I was all of 10 years old for my first shave. I started puberty preposterously early, shooting up to 5 feet 8 inches tall in fourth grade, and boasting my first mustache by the beginning of fifth. 

PhD saw that I was growing, turning into something his narcissism couldn’t control, and he hated it. He’d mock my pre-teen mustache at the dinner table, telling me over and over again to wipe my mouth, only to feign surprise when it wasn’t spaghetti sauce on my top lip but, as PhD put it, “whatever you call that thing.”

This went on for months, so long that my mother had to remind PhD that since he was, ya know, my father, he was the one who should teach me to shave. I wasn’t rebelling or questioning his authority, I just didn’t know.  

“I asked you a question,” PhD said, holding the razor a few inches above my right cheek.

“Want me to cut you?” he repeated.

“No,” I said. 

Silence. When PhD goes silent, it’s a sure sign that things are about to get worse. Silence could mean he’s angry, it could mean he’s sad, it could mean he’s embarrassed, or bored, or not paying attention to you at all, but it never ever ever means “you said the right thing” or “I agree with you.”

 “No,” I repeated. “Please don’t cut me.”

With a huff and an eye roll, PhD flicked the razor and left an inch-wide swipe of red on my neck. 

“See? It isn’t so bad,” he said, dropping the now bloody razor in the garbage can. 

I remember bleeding for a long time.

Back On Track, I Mean Trek

Sam, what does any of this have to do with Star Trek? Well, for the very first entry of Ekphrastic Trek, the all-powerful Random Number Generator selected season 6 episode 9, “Quality of Life.”

As the episode opens Worf, Riker, Geordi, and Dr. Crusher are playing poker, which is a normal thing to do when you live in space. Geordi is growing a beard but hasn’t decided whether he’ll keep it. Riker and Worf, bearded gents themselves, encourage him, while the doctor freely admits that she’s always been wary of men with beards, feeling that their furry faces might be hiding something. 

The three bearded men immediately start babbling about how normal and cool they are for having beards and how actually she’s the weird one for not seeing how cool and normal it all is. Riker says his beard is part of a proud tradition, a sign of strength. Worf claims Klingon facial hair to be a symbol of courage. Geordi…Geordi seems like he just gets bored shaving and wants to streamline his morning routine. Dr. Crusher continues, stating her opinion that “after the razor was invented, beards became mostly a fashion statement.”

The boys in matching jumpsuits do NOT like this idea. Worf, president of the Enterprise D chapter of the He-Man Woman Haters Club, insists he is “not concerned with fashion.” (My brother-in-Kahless, you wear a sash to work. C’mon, man. C’mon.)

Geordi puts a name to the doctor’s theory, asking Crusher if she feels beards are “nothing more than an affectation?” 

“I do,” she replies, going on to compare men who grow beards to women like her who wear lipstick and paint their nails. “There’s nothing wrong with that!” she adds. “I just think it's time that you men admit it.”

The boys get, like, weirdly worked up about this, and to show how not worked up they are they bet that if Crusher wins this hand of poker, they will all shave their beards. BUT, because they are so normal and not worked up, if they win then Dr. Crusher has to dye her ginger locks brown. Before they can finish a round of betting the captain Slacks them a reminder that, actually, they are all on duty and need to get back to work. The bet is never revisited, though Geordi does shave the beard a few episodes later, and Crusher never goes brunette. 

Let It Grow 

From 12 to 35 I studied, lived, and worked in the theatre industry as an actor, educator, director, producer, and writer. I clung to theatre for so many years as evidence of a personality, proof of persondom. But theatre, particularly acting, requires you to empty yourself of yourself, and fill yourself with someone else. 

In that pursuit I would learn to speak like someone else, move like someone else, dress like someone else, and shave like someone else. Starting as far back as 7th grade I grew mustaches, goatees, mutton chops, just about anything except a full beard (even now my cheek hair only grows in patches) to portray whichever character was assigned to me. Accordingly I would grow my hair or even shave my head, if the role called for it. Once a show closed, I would often wear a character’s haircut, including their facial hair, for weeks after. Why? Because when I wasn’t in a play, I didn’t know who to be. 

Not long after my mother filed for divorce, PhD made it clear to me that, without her around, I was now in charge of his emotional wellbeing. It would be my responsibility to regulate his emotions for him, listen to his hysterical diatribes, indulge his narcissistic delusions, support his conspiracies, spread his lies, and do anything in my power to keep him happy.

It’s humiliating to admit that my trauma response to my father’s abuse was, most often, fawning. Trying to please PhD with a complete lack of boundaries, of personal identity, trying my best at all times to appease him. 

I accepted my new responsibilities with the grim understanding that this was going to be a tough job. PhD had significant needs, requiring constant attention, but at the time I was a grad student in New Jersey. Back in Kentucky, PhD did not let the fact that I had a life (and was 700 miles away) deter him from expecting my full focus. 

He would leave fuming voicemails if I failed to answer my cell when he called during class. He’d threaten to cut me off financially if I didn’t drive the 11 hours from New Brunswick to Crestwood whenever he needed me to reach something off the top shelf. He even threatened to have me committed, saying if I couldn’t keep in constant contact with him I was clearly “a danger to myself.” 

After a year of failing to satisfy his needs, I’d finally come up with a plan to convince PhD that I loved him, and that I was on his side. Unfortunately for PhD, I bear a striking resemblance to my mother, and an even stronger appearance to her father, my grandfather. This was a problem, because my father took any indicator that his ex-wife, my mother, even existed as an insult to his manhood. (“Do you think she’s a lesbian?” he asked me more than once, assuming she couldn’t have been unhappy in their marriage because of him.)

My mother wears her hair quite short, and my grandfather has been bald most of his life and always clean shaven. In an attempt to prevent PhD’s potential misery at their memory, I resolved to grow my hair as long as possible, and to not shave until my face was fully obscured behind the best beard I could muster.

Every time I was forced to visit from New Jersey my hair would be a half-inch longer, my goatee four weeks thicker. After a semester, I no longer looked much like my mother or my grandfather or myself.

“You look like a serial killer,” PhD said to me one night at dinner while I was home for summer break. 

“It’s awful,” his fiance Wutsername said with a snort. “How can you stand it?” 

At last, my big moment was finally here. For months I did the right thing, slowly and intentionally covering my face, hiding that half of me which PhD hated. Every day for weeks and weeks I put my father before myself whenever I looked in the mirror and now, finally I could reveal my plan.

“I did it for you, Dad!” I said with a smile. “So you wouldn’t have to think of…”

His silence made me silent. The three of us sat in it for a long time. Eventually he started to eat again, but when I picked up my fork he threw his down, stuck his finger in my face and said:

“How am I supposed to enjoy dinner when my son looks like a pervert?”

I left the table, drove to Fantastic Sams, and spent 30 dollars on a 3 minute haircut.

“Take it all,” I said to the barber. 

Returning home with a naked face and a very short buzz cut, I asked PhD to forgive me for trying to please him. He looked me up and down and sighed. 

“So what, now you’re some sort of monk?” He rolled his eyes and walked away. 

Oh My God, He Admit It!

Identity can be a very slippery thing to those who suffer from severe mental illness. As someone who was not recognized as significantly neurodivergent until well into adulthood, I can safely say its hard to develop much of a Self when you are dealing with hallucinations, mood swings, suicidal ideation, and alcoholism. For years I lived like an NPC in a AAA video game, hiding in my mostly empty apartment with a bottle of bourbon and a Netflix subscription, waiting for someone to save me and complete their quest. But since being diagnosed with bipolar disorder in December 2021, I have developed into what might be considered a Real Person. 

Dr. Crusher accuses bearded men of hiding something. She says facial hair is a fashion statement. She says it's an affectation. And she says that’s alright! She just wants men to admit it. 

I think of my mustache as something as unavoidable as my nose, my eyes, the birthmark on my hip that looks like a thumbprint left in brown ink. After all, I’ve been growing facial hair since before I learned my multiplication tables. But I have to admit, Dr. Crusher is correct.

I admit my mustache is hiding something. It’s hiding the Me that drank a fifth of bourbon every day. It’s hiding the Me that couldn’t control his emotions. It’s hiding the Me that is afraid of this world, unequipped for it. It’s hiding the Me that my father made.

I admit my mustache is a fashion statement. That statement is: I am still here. Insanity could not stop me, my father’s abuse only delayed my ascension. I am not going anywhere.

I admit my mustache is an affectation. If an affectation is a display, I hope my mustache advertises my willingness to be myself. For all my insincere mannerisms, poses, and studied attitudes, let my mustache be the unpracticed me, the me that grows whether I want it to or not.

Dr. Crusher says one other thing of note in this scene. As they arrange the rules of the bet, instead of simply saying “I’ll dye my hair,” Dr. Crusher uses transformative language, and says she will “become a brunette.”

Perhaps, she seems to imply, if one makes a large enough change, one might “become” the change itself. If my identity can shine through the affectations, the fashion statements, the hiding to which my facial hair attests, then let me admit proudly:

I am a mustache.