The Cops Would Never Think to Look in Burma Shave

Straight Razor from the Art of Shaving

I’m really bad at shaving.

I started when I was around, I think, 13 or so. I never had anyone really teach me, but I’d seen enough shaving on TV to get the general gist of it.

Problem was, then as now, my need was kind of… shaky, at best.

You see, I have what we call The World’s Saddest Beard™. It’s a patchy, multicolored mess; if I ever let it grow out, it would be the most ironic beard of all time, especially the long strip under my chin where no hairs grow.

I blame my mixed heritage for my sad beard situation. I’m multicolored like crazy in the beard area because of my Pan-European roots; how the Irish, English, Scottish, Germans, and Spanish ever ended up all mixed in, I could never tell you. As for the pathetic patchiness, well, I’ve got a lot of Cherokee blood, as you can tell from my skin tone. (Native Americans are pale and freckled, right?) The explanation is simple enough: you’ve never seen a photo of a warrior chief with a headdress and a beard, have you? They just don’t really, you know, do beards. So neither do I.

My brother, who shares my sad beard situation, does not share my sense of self-respect, nor my sense of shame. He has repeated gone long periods of time without shaving, growing a “beard” that almost passed for human on a couple of occasions. However, the first and only time I saw him in person with said beard, I told him that I will punch him in the face if it ever happens again. And I mean it.

So far, so good.

(For the record, he promised to break my nose if I ever dunk him under the water while we’re swimming again. I believe him. So, if I come home from the pool or the beach with a broken nose? I probably earned it.)

So: my beard is really sad. Like, hilariously sad. So I go clean shaven. It would follow, since I’ve been doing it my whole life, that I’d have gotten good.

But as I said: nope.

I frequently rake the blade across my skin, leaving small pockets of blood spreading across my chin. I’ll miss spots, places that I should be able to shave by reflex by now, simply because I forgot to contort my face some way or other when passing the blade over the hair.

I’ve improved my methods over the years, going to using whatever was available to buying my own, better blades and shave gel, to realizing the shave gel was murdering my skin, to realizing that I got better results if I used a sharp blade rather than conserving the spent ones as long as I could in the interest of saving money.

It’s never been pleasant for me. I’ve frequently gone a week or more without shaving, right to the point where I start to look like maybe you should keep your kids away from me. Once, I was at work and made a joke to another coworker about our relative scruffiness.

“Sure, but I haven’t shaved in three days,” he said. “You just didn’t shave this morning.”

It had been over two weeks.

That’s my situation. I have, at this point, graduated to a sharp blade, a layer of baby oil (recommended by a friend of mine who shaves his head every day), and a lather applied with a fake badger brush. It’s without a doubt the most effective shaving method I’ve used, as well as the most work intensive and time consuming. It’s a process for me, and one that I don’t necessarily enjoy.

Still, I want to go further. I’ve explored the Art of Shaving, and would like to learn it. I want to shave with a rich lather from a real brush, soothing pre and post shave oils over a sink full of steaming hot water. I want the closest shave imaginable.

I want to shave with a straight razor.

I would not shock me if those nearest and dearest to me would rather I never took that step. As mentioned above, I frequently draw blood with blades that are ostensibly safe. I can’t imagine anyone wants to clean up the saddest accidental suicide of all time, then have to arrange the funeral and queue up that Queen song.

The worst part? This would be my eulogy: “I don’t know why he was shaving; he could barely grow a beard.”

A Song That I Want Played at My Funeral | And Another One Gone

I admit right up front that I stole this particular usage for this song. It wasn’t my idea, but my best friend’s, and all due credit goes to her.

Still, it suits me, and I’ve been joking about it (SO not joking) for as long as I’ve been considering my own mortality enough to recognize that I will, in fact, someday have a funeral.

I have curious ideas about death, mostly stemming from my complete lack of religious belief and my feeling that one of the better uses for a newly dead human is donation to science.

I’m not especially reverent, such as it is, to the ceremony of a funeral. I do understand the need for closure; I am personally largely unable to process death if I don’t go to the funeral.

However, I don’t see a reason for it to be a spectacle. The big room, the casket set up under the glowing lights, the pretty verses read from the book… I get the appeal, if you are that way inclined, but I’m simply not.

For that reason, I’d like my funeral to be a fucking party. I know it would be a tragic event for those closest to me; death is not something the living tend to handle well, in my experience. Still, I am fairly certain an open bar would go a long way in assuaging that grief. Plus it would be a good legacy to leave.

But what’s a party without a good DJ? It wouldn’t take much, I don’t think, to find one with a suitably morbid sensibility to play the party, and I would think, nay, hope, that any DJ worth his salt would play “Another Bites the Dust” in that situation. It would seem to me to go without saying.

I would prefer a celebration of life, such as it is, to be my legacy. I can’t think of a better way to set the mood than with this song.