Self-Loathing: Hairlessness

I know I'm not what's considered a manly man. I don't hunt, I don't know shit about cars, and besides my knowledge of electrical equipment (thank you summer work in college) I'm not particularly handy.

But none of that fills me with shame. My lack of hair does.

Not hair on my head. Those of you who know me in real life no that I have no problem in that department. My hair doesn't grow long, it grows out.

Bald people hate me, because I have the kind of thick, out of control hair that they would love to take the place of their pale dome-skin, but alas, it isn't to be.

No, it's my lack of body hair, specifically on my armpits, legs and arms.

When I was in middle school, many of my friends began getting five o' clock shadows and hairy legs, yet mine remained covered with pale, transparent hairs.

I remember the first time I became aware of this. It was summer time, and me and several friends from my neighborhood were at the community pool.

As the mandatory 10 minutes break came on, we all ran to the hot tub, which only had room for eighty percent of us.

One of the older kids devised a way to decide who could get in the tub.

"Everyone with armpit hair can get in the hot tub," he said.

Slowly ten pairs of arms lifted up, and everyone began looking around to see which hairless wonder was going to spend the next eight minutes outside of the hot tub.

You guessed it. Yours truly was one of them. In fact, I had the least out of anyone, even the sixth grader that sat out with me.

I still hear their laughter in my darkest nightmares.

As the years progressed, My legs grew sufficiently hairy, my balls became groundhog-like, but my face never came around.

Even while in college, I never really had to shave more than once a week.

And then, a few months before my twenty-fifth birthday, I think I finally hit puberty. The number of hairs adorning my chest grew from one (literally, there was one hair. One.) to an even baker's dozen.

And finally, about a month and a half (okay, exactly a month and a half) before I turned 25, I went after a lifelong goal of mine: to grow a beard.

Supposedly you aren't supposed to shave at all for six weeks, and then you can trim your beard accordingly. So I did that.

Through most of the six weeks, I looked like this:


This is Gary from Team America, as he gets some sort of disguise to make him look Arabic. Notice the patchy-ass beard. That was me.

Though finally, I think my beard is semi-(read: not) respectable enough. It's still patchy below the jawline.

But I enjoy having a beard. Not only does it make me look hungover every single day, but it makes me feel like more of a man that I ever have.

You see, while some people get five o' clock shadow without shaving for a day or so, mine takes about a week.

And it quickly morphs into badass, Sonny Crockett-looking stubble, to Patches McGee over here. And that's no fun.

In the initial phase of not shaving, one of my roommates said he would do the same, After a week, he looked like fucking Grizzly Adams, and I looked like the above picture.

But hairiness is a mixed blessing I think. No one wants to be wearing a sweater, even when they're shirtless. I know people like that. In fact, I'm grateful for my lack of chest hair, and except for a little bit around my belly button, I don't have that much.

I'll pause to let all the ladies reading this pleasure themselves at that image.

..and we're back. That didn't take long.

As I was saying, I never wanted to have a mane of chest hair like Austin Powers.

This sort of thing isn't my bag, baby.

My arms aren't particularly hairy either. From a distance of not less than 20 meters, I appear to have no arm hair.

What's odd is that my feet are strangely hairy, especially from proportion to the rest of my body.

I'll let you ladies rub another one out right quick at the thought of that.

In fact, the other day, I tried using my beard trimmer on my feet, just to see how the hair would grow back.

If it's like my head hair, it will grow back thick and lustrous in a matter of days.

Otherwise, who gives a fuck? It's only foot hair.