Me and My Twelve-Year Shadow

Who's scruffy looking?

By Zach Hively

​I never planned on sprouting a beard.

In fact, for many years there, I went entirely beardless. Then I hit puberty. I continued to go beardless for several presidential administrations thereafter, but not for lack of trying.

Frankly, the best beard I grew between middle school and middle age* was the first one. An adult suggested I might try using the electric razor I had received for Christmas. The reason for my razor was not apparent to me until I locked myself in the bathroom and got close—real close—with the mirror.

There! And there! Actual hairs growing straight out of my neck!

I lopped them off and felt, maybe for the last time, like a real man. A man who had to shave. A man who did not yet realize how awful is the burden of shaving, but a man nonetheless.

Oh, I tried to equal that first beard from time to time. I sported chin bristles and minimalist sideburns for a little while in high school, but still I had to shave everything in between on the reg, as if with purpose, lest anyone realize that no actual hairs grew anywhere in between.

Otherwise, I went clean. Going clean meant calculating the upper limit of how many days I could avoid shaving my mug before that weird blank patch on my cheek became unavoidably apparent. Then I’d stall for another week before shaving.

Until one fine month in 2013 when I just … didn’t.

I remember it well. It was September, and the delicious scent of pumpkin spice was just hitting the air, which was still a novel marker of time’s progression. (This was back before autumn merchandising kicked off in earnest on Boxing Day for the entire year to come.)

An acquaintance, or perhaps it was my girlfriend, commented on my beard.

My beard?

I scrambled to the bathroom mirror like I was oblivious and thirteen all over again. Only I didn’t have to look so close this time. My face was, in fact, furry. And if I may say so—which I may—this incidental beard improved my face, primarily by hiding it.

My beard, approximately three weeks into its now-eternal existence. This was my long-time headshot for my column in the Four Corners Free Press.

Beards have come into fashion since then, and fallen back out, and probably come back in again. I couldn’t tell you where beards stand now, or what styles are preferred by the five or six men whose opinions are worth anything.

​I just know mine is not going anywhere.

Its length will always land between “clearly on purpose” and “saving up for my first Harley.” I will trim it as seldom as possible while still ensuring it can’t wind up in my own mouth in my sleep. And I will use it—never on purpose, but it happens—to make friends.

Guy friends, that is. We guy-like individuals are not notoriously capable of bonding over much more than, I don’t know, mustards? Whereas I have witnessed lifelong friendships form between non-guy-like individuals over—and I am serious here—laundry detergent. Laundry detergent is clearly far too substantive for us guy-like folks.

But. If you want the delight and wonder of hearing guy-adjacent people discuss essential oils and preferred fragrances, bring up beards. (Note: This outcome is more likely if everyone involved, no matter how much we don’t talk about it, has a preferred laundry detergent.)

Because yes: Even if it took a dozen years, this beard of mine is no longer just my least inconvenient headshot accessory. It is a style choice, and part of my physical being. I will write down other guy-like people’s advice on shea butter and argan oil, whatever an argan is. I will promptly forget ever to lookat that advice, but I will know it exists. And I will remember to use my specialty beard brush at least once per pumpkin-spice season.

It deserves my care and attention, my beard does. I’m grateful it finally came in, and that it has filled itself in by now. Even though it is turning salty, it still hides most of my zits. Which is really why it’s staying put.