I’ve got nothing to really write or talk about tonight. I’m forcing myself to just sit here and do nothing, look at the blankness of the screen, and try to piece together a coherent thought or idea. This was a day that sucked all motivation straight out of me, like so many of them seem more than capable of doing. But i spent most of it not looking backwards, and not forwards. I just.. sort of did what I needed to do.
I find that I’m trying to create something to look forward to in my head. One of the things that’s happened with quarantine life and working from home, I’ve grown what I call the “completely given up” beard. I haven’t shaved, even a little, since I stopped going into the office, and I look a dreadful mess. But Erin loves it. This giant tuft of white hair (my facial hair has lost almost all semblance of color over the last couple years, even if it was never consistently toned to begin with) coming off my chin and cheeks and neck. Not making “chin” plural is a nicety by the way. My hair was already too long again back in February, then roughly a year since I’d last got it cut (for my job interview at the place I now work). It’s easy enough to wear it up in a sloppy pony tail. But the beard is a constant annoyance. It’s not itchy so much as so long and unkempt that it gets tangled to itself, to my hair. It pulls back behind my ears. It gets hot when I sleep and I pull it when it drags across the pillow-case as I turn my head. When I go out and have to wear a mask to grocery shop, it creeps out the sides or bottom or top.
So I have always wanted to get a professional beard trim. I went once, shortly before we moved out of California, to a barber around the corner I’d never been to. But the person who usually did beards wasn’t there that day, and the very nice woman who said she could do it was a dirty liar it turns out. She “shaped” my beard by basically shaving it almost completely clean from my face. If I had the kind of face I wanted to show without the ruse of facial hair to make it seem like I could possibly have a jawline under it, I would’ve been fine to do that myself. But much like haircuts, I often can’t articulate what it is I actually would like to have done, and I wind up offering a thousand thank yous and a generous tip because that’s the sort I am. A for effort, here’s all my cash, better luck next time for me, but we all know it’ll go tits up once more when my ass hits that chair.
Maybe Michigan will have a different level of facial hair recognition. There’s a lot of beards out here. Manly, ugly, wretched beards. Not boy bands grown up developing dad bods and the first hints of testosterone mustaches and goatees. Not hipster smooth beards that go to a narrowing point of almost shaved clean at the ears and temples. Lumberbeards. Paul Bunyon-esque facial hair. I should be carrying an ax and wrestling a blue ox if I’m to live up to the examples.
Actually I’m being very giving again. It’s more like those duck people who grew out their facial hair to fit the stereotype to better sell their program. Halfway to giving up. But not quite. Because we still might be on a t-shirt at the Wal-Mart.
I’d love to land on the pretty-boy scale, or even the hipster, roadie for the Arcade Fire example of face foliage. I’d like to graduate to the 80’s hair metal band singer or bassist who maintains their edge and cool-factor (with their original audience, let’s be fair) now with shorn locks instead of the long tresses teased to the Heavens by 30 odd cans of Industrial AquaNet. When the 90s taught them that image, in fact, was everything, but the images they’d been wasting their time and mousse on was the wrong one. Dial it back. It’s cool to wear pants that don’t show a pulse through them. Flannel kept your nipples warm way better than that t-shirt you cut to ribbons. It was weird that Kip Winger used to sing anthems to 17 year old girls, but he could do a Playgirl spread and actually improve his image. The times they were a changing. Except for Mick Mars. He just kept looking the like same 80 year old he always did, somehow surviving with less blood in his veins year after year.
I don’t have the eye for style that it would take to make me someone I’m not. Let alone the drive. Certainly not the budget. The beard is a symptom of me giving up, sure, but the extra hundred pounds of weight I’m carrying was there way before it. I also don’t contain what my wife refers to as “fashion irony.” If I actually somehow own anything that could be addressed as “hipster,” it loses its magic as soon as I don it, because I don’t have the attitude or wherewithal to evoke anything considered a “vibe.” If I were to wear a hat that would normally be on tour with Jack White, it would be slumming so bad on my head it would be the equivalent of a great white shark being mounted and forced to animatronically sing like a Big Mouth Billy Bass. And no, again, these references aren’t meant to make me seem coolly retro. I just have no idea what’s going on in the world today. I’m still watching Firefly reruns for god’s sake.
But yeah. That’s my big, happy goal. A haircut and a shave. I might as well be trying to conjure a cartoon rabbit so I can drown him in Dip.
I do also have a birthday coming up. The year before The Year. This October I turn 49, and it brings with it all the dread and anguish of turning 50 but not the relief of, “Well, it happened. What’s left that Life can do to me that it hasn’t already done?” It’s like watching your own foot about to stub itself against a table leg, but in slow motion. A year’s worth of slow motion. You know it’s going to hurt. You know you’re probably going to lose a nail. You can’t stop it, you just stare at it in horror.
The problem with having Fucking Loved Ones who care about you so much that they want to celebrate you for any and all occasions is that you can’t just duck your head and hide from shit like this (and yes, I’m painting it this way knowing fully how lucky it makes me so FUCK YOU). I’m trying to get my mind prepared for it. Trying to come up with things that are simple when I get asked “what do you want for your birthday, why haven’t I gotten your list yet?” I’ve had some stuff on my Amazon Wishlist for ten years I think. You don’t need any more suggestions. You have decided what you DON’T want to get me. Although, yeah, maybe those old DVD sets make no sense any more with streaming. Same with the CDs. I still like books, but i hardly ever let myself read.
My dad and stepmother (I had the distinction. She’s my mom. But it shows which set of parents I’m talking about) tend to take their birthdays and go away for a couple of days. Not together. If it’s mom’s birthday, she leaves the house and stays… I don’t know. A hotel maybe? They’ve got a cabin they’ve been working on lately, I’m sure that’s changed things and given them more of a destination. Dad would run too. Granted, three of their kids live with them and one grandkid, so peace and quiet may be the most valuable thing in the universe. Spice worms would be throwing on noise-cancelling headsets with a hoodie and sunglasses to just close off if they were in my parent’s shoes. I sometimes think about running off to a quiet space too, but I really don’t have the need like they do. Erin contents herself so much of the time to her art. The only thing I really feel the need to escape from is me. Being in the same place, wondering why I haven’t done more, why I’m not currently trying to do more. If I went to a place where doing nothing was actually the assignment, maybe I’d be more okay with it.
I most likely would nap. When I nap too much, I feel judged. Not in a mean way, more of an, “Are you okay” way. And no, obviously I’m not okay. But I feel less not okay when I’m asleep. And then I wake up, look at all the not okay that’s still going on, and it just fucking exhausts me again. Give me some Oreos and another four hours of Good Eats episodes I can slip back into unconsciousness with.
I did look at getting some new strings for my Ovation the other day. It hasn’t been touched in a decade, so the strings on it, having been safely nestled in its case, may be perfectly fine. Or I could try to strum one sad chord progression and have the thing crumble to dust in my hands (penis metaphor!). But that I thought about it, and actually priced them, and then decided, no, not something I should waste money on right now, but maybe that hits the wishlist… That’s something, right? Like I actually selfishly thought of something I kind of wanted for a whole five minutes. Not to say I’m not selfish a lot. But it’s more Oreos and naps. This actually had more substance to it, creatively, and less lard. Delicious sugar lard.
Being that this is now my fifth night of journaling in a row, I should maybe offer myself a prize if I make it a full week. Perhaps the strings. Something I can talk myself into when I can’t make the words appear, so that I don’t feel I’m both not writing AND not doing anything else worthwhile. I mean, “worthwhile” is a much a kindness as the singular “chin” from earlier.
