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There were about 20 people in my kitchen and everyone was having a good time. Looking around, there were only a few people throughout the room I didn’t know. One of them sat quietly at my kitchen table for a while.
I didn’t pay him much attention. But after about an hour, my jaw dropped. I suddenly recognized this guy, and felt guilty for not having done so sooner. He was my friend Ryan, and he had shaved.
This is a big deal. You see, when I first met Ryan, he was 18 years old and had one of the biggest, greatest beards I’d ever seen.
The kid was pretty hardcore to begin with. When we met, he regularly sported thrashed jeans, bullet belts and T-shirts with band names like “Toxic Holocaust” or “Cephalic Carnage.” The fact that he sported a thick, black Castro-esque beard only added to the metal mystique.
The kid became legendary for his beard. Even though he was one of the nicest guys you’d ever want to meet and played guitar better than most of us could ever dream to, most people remembered Ryan for his epic beard.
After my non-recognition guilt subsided, I told Ryan that I would write about him in this column sooner or later. I wanted to know what it was like to go from monstrous beard to smooth skin so quickly.
Ryan said his shave happened by accident after letting his girlfriend try to tame his beard.
“I got a really bad trim from my girlfriend, so I decided to just go full-on and shave it off,” Ryan said. “Then I found out she had trimmed it badly on purpose so I would shave.”
What he found under all those whiskers surprised him. After shaving, Ryan found that his face had changed a lot since he last saw it unadorned. His chin was a different shape, for example, and he hardly recognized himself. And he wasn’t the only one.
“People don’t even recognize me anymore,” Ryan said. “The people I’ve met who are more acquaintances than they are friends sort of feel like this person they knew has disappeared.”
Not that blending in to a crowd bothers him a bit. Ryan said that being so easily recognizable was not his style, and that the beard was becoming such a big part of his persona it was almost too much to handle. He said people felt like they had a right to his appearance.
“Any kind of trim was met with resistance,” Ryan said. “It was almost like ownership of the beard was not mine. It became a sort of social thing.”
While he’s happy with the decision to shave, Ryan said he only remembers his beard fondly.
“Having a beard is pretty sweet,” Ryan said. “It’s a way of expressing masculinity without being overbearing.”
