I had what you might call a small mishap this morning.
I trim my beard every Sunday, which is only mildly annoying considering that I grew the thing initially just so I wouldn’t have to shave. I had to be clean-shaven throughout high school. If you weren’t, you would be handed demerits, along with a cheap electric razor to remedy the situation — as I once was — in front of a mirror in the men’s room. But laziness finally overpowered me my senior year of college, free from the shackles of Catholic high school. I let five o’clock become stubble, then beard, and aside from a brief madness that overtook me right before graduation, when I shaved the first beard off for reasons that now escape me, I’ve had a beard ever since. That’s some twelve years now. Laziness is a mighty powerful force.
My beard trimmer has different settings, depending on how close a trim one wants. I invariably go with seven out of nine, which isn’t very close at all, but which seems to work well enough for me. (The lower numbers don’t seem like a trim at all, actually, and I think are designed less for guys who wear beards than for guys who just want their chins to look slightly dirty.) It’s not perfect, and heaven knows a barber could probably do a better job, but along with a pair of scissors and an electric razor, I can emerge from the bathroom each Sunday looking at least mildly less scruffy and mountain-mannish.
The trimmer was not set on seven this morning. It’s always a good idea to double-check these things first. You can maybe see it better in this picture, but after just one quick pass with the trimmer, the right side of my face is looking a little patchier than usual. It could be a whole lot worse, I suppose, but it’s definitely not the look I was hoping for when I woke up this morning.
Rather than try to even it out on the other side, or go crazy and shave the whole thing off, I’ve decided to go the let-it-grow-out-and-hope-nobody-notices-between-now-and-then route. It’s not terrible looking. It’s not a bald spot, and the beard will continue to grow, just as friends and co-workers will continue to awkwardly notice it without saying anything about it. If I were actively dating, out and about on the singles scene, it would probably hurt my chances with the ladies. (And considering how little game I have otherwise, how awful I am at flirting, it’s maybe best not to chance that.) But you know, it could have been worse.
Now that I think about it, I’m thinking maybe that first beard got shaved off because of another trimming mishap. One wrong move and all that refusal to work can go right down the drain.
Other than all of that…it was a pretty ordinary Sunday. I did the crossword puzzle, and I joined my weekly writing group. I managed to write nothing about beards that entire time:
She was not a torturer by trade, only by happy accident.
The knives she had smuggled aboard when they refueled at Gethsemane, kept them well sharpened and out of sight of the Captain and XO, or any of the other crew who might eagerly report her and confiscate the contrabanded weaponry. They were holy relics, for one thing, to be removed from the space station only under penalty of death — or so she had been told during the ship’s brief and uneventful stay in its port. She cared little for the Gethsemans’ superstitious ways, had only admired the gleaming curves of the blades, the cracked leather stitched around each hilt. Crew aboard the Alexus were supposed to content themselves with a simple service-issue stun pistol, but here were weapons that could be truly useful. No, here were tools, she had thought, gorgeous and priceless in their utility, and she was amazed at how easily they slipped from the glass case in the alcove of the station’s temple. She had kept them hidden all these months, kept them ready, knowing that eventually they (and she) would be needed.
And now here was the prisoner, shackled to the far wall of the brig, unwilling to talk until the glint of sharpened steel had loosened his tongue, the words finally spilling as effortlessly as his blood on the prison cell’s floor. She would not kill him, she was sure — she had too much control for that — but she had come close, a knife’s edge away, in fact. But a body would lead to questions Captain Barton wouldn’t want to answer. He had not officially sanctioned her to do this, to undertake this interrogation; he was as easily shackled to the Corps’ regulations as the prisoner was to the bloodied wall. But he had not looked away when she stepped forward, seemed at first surprised, perhaps, but then gladly accepted her help. She could do what he could not, what as an officer he should not be expected to do.