This past week I've taken advantage of the fact that I'm staying at my parents' house isolated from my usual work/art/social/public persona world, by not shaving.

(my face)

I figured, I'm only going to be around my family, and they'll love me no matter how ugly I am, so what better time than now to see what I look like with a beard?? So over the course of the past five days I've been cultivating my slowly protruding stubble much in the same manner that the Wicked Witch of the West groomed her flying monkeys. Oh chin hairs, my pretties.

Today being Christmas, I was sure that I was going to receive my dosage of high-pitched Chinese auntie comments at the family party about the man-stache that I'd accumulated, but much to my surprise, not a word was peeped about it. I caught myself glancing at my astounded face in a dining room mirror, shocked that no one had noticed my extravagant testosterone shrub. When I got home tonight, I decided that I don't really care for mustaches to begin with, and reflected on the roster of mustache-having celebrities that I don't care for either (i.e. Tom Selleck, Burt Reynolds, Yosemite Sam). So after not much contemplation, I shaved it off--but only the mustache. But studying myself in the mirror for awhile, I decided that I wasn't going to be able to pull off the beard-but-no-mustache look unless I planned to grow it out and dye a stripe across it like a raccoon tail. So now I'm back to fresh-faced Drizz. So smooooove.

During my past week with somewhat of a beard, I was able to reflect (beards provide excellent grounds for reflecting, as they exist for you to caress while deep in thought) on the dynamics of facial hair and hairstyles. I sometimes feel like I'm kind of copping out, being one of the many many many Asian males with shaved faces and shaved heads. I swear I could rob a liquor store and just run into a Tapioca Express and the police would never be able to track me on my description. I've pretty much kept this look for the past two or three years, it hasn't done me wonders but it's also pretty safe. Junior year in college I used to trim my mustache down to a thin line above my upper lip, á la Clark Gable from Gone With the Wind:



And my hair was combed flat forward with emo-style crocodile teeth bangs just above my eyebrows. It was one of those looks that makes me almost glad my computer crashed shortly afterwards, deleting all of my digital pictures from that era. Or whenever one of those horrid snapshots do surface, viewers smirk not unlike they would if it were a picture of me in turquoise gym spandex. One morning after I had managed to mess up cutting my hair and shaving, opting to just go bare and bald, my friend Arcy stopped me on campus and said, "Wow, Adriel...you look...clean...!" Seeing that apparently I must have looked...unsanitary...beforehand, I haven't been able to step outside of my comfort zone since.

Every once in awhile I'll get ambitious, like this week, and try to mix it up a bit. Most of the time I end up wearing a hat for a few days. You'll be surprised how many ways there are to mess up a haircut even if your jumping point is a shaved head. I suppose at this point, I don't have much to worry about in terms of finding a look to settle on. I'm young, no indication of a receding hairline, I think my jawline is still debating whether or not it wants to be able to grow sideburns. But I do sometimes find myself worrying, especially when I'm left to ponder for long periods of time, as to what I'll do when I'm like...46. Somebody PLEASE let me know if you've seen a middle-aged Chinese man with an awesome haircut, because Lord knows I've been keeping my eyes peeled! It seems the majority of older Chinese men I see either have that 2/3 comb-over or no hair at all, and I'm not very ecstatic about vouching for either of these fashion statements. If these are my options, I think I'd rather resort to the long white manes the emperors have in the period kung fu flicks, but that probably means I'd have to start growing mine now.

So what to do? It's not extremely urgent, but I've been feeling the inkling to flip it at least a bit, plus I don't think it's going to go over very well with the ladies in a couple of years when I'm in my mid-twenties and still peach-fuzzing. Maybe I'll just go nappy for a couple of decades, and when I'm 70 and nobody expects it...the gumby...ohhhh yeah...