The Beard
Uncle Al Schwartz
Outrageous On-line Uncle Al - WARNING: Toxic URL! Unsafe for children, Democrats, and most mammals

Nature provides advertising of the male human being's reproductive prowess, or at least preoccupation, at puberty by the installation of a beard. Society, obsessed with the unnatural configuration of the human body and establishing rules that only a small subset of the population can achieve, immediately requires that the beard be removed via any number of unfortunate modalities, reestablishing the smooth, infantile face that does not threaten the chastity of the otherwise hot-to-trot distaff remainder of humanity. We thus come to the three questions faced by the average male when confronted with a serious relationship:

"Why don't you grow a beard?"
"I don't like your beard. Shave it off."
"I changed my mind. I like you better with the beard."

The removal of facial hair cannot be achieved without the male making a bloody mess of himself, even after decades of practice. The drawing of a razor blade, which is flat and linear, across chins and Adam's apples, which are curved and non-linear, leads to the rectification of the anatomical interface. Steel is strong and flesh is weak. This is accentuated by a sharp curse and the desperate search for a styptic pencil and some toilet paper to staunch the flow of rich, red biological broth thereby released. An electric razor merrily rides above the flesh, ignoring the bristles, or may be pressed firmly against the hirsute skin, removing a thin surface layer of hair and meat alike. Slap on the alcohol and feel your hair stand on end as millions of outraged nerve endings lodge a protest vote. Facial hair can be dissolved with a chemical depilatory if you enjoy brilliant red skin inflamed to three times its nominal volume. However it is done, eight hours after hair removal that barbed wire entanglement will have grown a third of a millimeter, 90% of the hair shafts poking above the skin to put an end to evening smooching and the remaining 10% embedding their chisel- sharp points back into the skin to foment a bounteous crop of zits the next morning.

"Why don't you grow a beard?"

(Continued on page 13)