Voyage: A Stubby Note

The experiment has failed. Enough was enough. After two weeks of natural growth, I shaved off my facial hair. Please note, I did not say, “I shaved off my beard,” or “goatee” or any form of hair growth that we would recognize. The only thing I succeeded at in those two weeks was to grow long stubble. It wasn’t very uniform nor dense at all. In essence, it was ugly.

The plan was to go from California to England without shaving and to see what would happen. Somewhere slightly east of the Azores, I noticed each of the crew shaving off their beards, one after another. I took a good look at myself in the mirror and realized in horror what everyone else was seeing. I looked like a prickly pear, a badly mowed lawn, a porcupine in puberty. The crew must have been internally laughing at me. And so I shaved, eliminating from my face what was not meant to be.

Satisfied with my work, I went to dinner. I walked into the Officer’s Mess and to my bemusement, the third mate broke out in laughter. With food in his mouth, he said in broken English, “You got sick of your face?” He tried to hide his amusement at my change in appearance.

My attempt at preventing the crew from laughing at me had failed. I could only take consolation in no longer being a walking cactus.