Glabrous Tidings

When last seen...

I understand you can have your eyebrows dyed now, either to make them show up better or the opposite, depending on which affliction you imagine you're suffering from. I'd be willing to try it but my eyebrows entered the witness protection program years ago and I don't know where they are.

I know, I know. I whine about this too much, and nobody else cares about the availability of my eyebrows for viewing. I can already sense some of you delicately suggesting that I move on, that this particular ship is over the horizon, that there are other things to attend to here at the dock. Which causes me to doubt myself: am I that guy in Tiananmen Square, standing alone against the tanks of unsightliness? Or am I that ragged soul clutching a Confederate flag and pouting about heritage?

I will move on.

In general, hair grows at a rate of about a centimeter a month, or a bit more in the United States, where we round up to an inch. The way body hair works is it grows to a certain length according to its aspirations, and then it falls out and a whole new one pops up in its place. It can do this sort of thing over and over for years and years and then at a certain point the futility of the whole proposition becomes evident to the follicle, and that's that. The follicle has been stuck on the same career path and never getting ahead and never retiring its debts, and once the kids are gone it pulls the plug. In some dramatic cases, the entire scalp decides to start over, ditch the knick-knacks and move into something shiny and easier to clean.

The fur enterprise has been going on for a very long time. Even well before the rise of mammals proper, there were critters with hair. We know this because some was found in a fossil turd dating back to the Permian. This is the earliest indication yet that mammals, when they eventually arrived, were destined to be delicious. Most mammals nowadays have quite a thick pelt of fur, with a few exceptions that include pigs, elephants, and me.

I used to have more of a pelt. I distinctly remember appreciating my own arm hair, and being grateful that I'd taken after the arm-hair side of the family and not the bald-armed Norwegian side. But now I can hardly see my arm hairs. I used to think maybe the hairs on my body got farther apart as I grew up, but this can't account for the sparsity, because I never got all that big. So I guess they just fell out.

Now I have virtually no arm hair, or leg hair, and also one other place I recall having had a bit of a patch. That would be an area that hasn't been all that busy of late anyway. If there's not a lot of activity in your inbox and outbox, you can keep your desk pretty clean.

Another thing you can do with your eyebrows is pluck them, to remove eyebrow hairs where you don't want them. I'm going to get right on that as soon as I finish mowing the sidewalk.

In the meantime, I haven't given up on the prospect of rounding up my missing eyebrows. If I get one more chin hair, I'll have me a posse.

Patriots of Yorktown

Note eyebrows

I'm sorry I couldn't make it to the high school reunion--you all seemed to have such a good time catching up. Some of you have been kind enough to email me and ask what I've been up to for the past 45 years. So let's see. As many of you may recall, I wanted to be a writer. I was young, and didn't realize that isn't a thing. Also, you're supposed to write what you know, and I didn't know anything. And the things I was starting to learn were not things I wanted to write about as long as my mother was alive. So it took me a little time to find my calling.

I went off to college intending to be a psychology major, only I'd figured out psychology was pretty much bullshit by the time Mom and Dad dropped me off at the campus. So I threw myself into the liberal arts, until I took my first science class and realized my mistake. In four years I'd ricocheted into a biology degree and then scored an exceptionally low-paying job in my field by wearing a low-cut dress to the interview. I spent two years torturing about a billion white mice in ways you don't want to know about for chump change and then I moved across the country just for the hell of it and eked out rent and beer money doing Art. Which means I was like any other kid coming to Portland, Oregon today, except that back then we could afford rent.

By this time I discovered that a surprising number of my college classmates, who by all appearances were carefree hippies like myself with majors such as Comparative Religious Holograms and Medieval Basketry, had quietly gone off to get law degrees and were pulling down six figures and didn't have furniture made out of cinderblocks and planks. This troubled me for a while until I satisfied myself they were miserable, and by then I was taking my first steps toward my dream job. I became a drunken mailman for fifteen years. After that I was merely a moderately lit-up mailman for another sixteen years. And all of it was in service to the great plan, and culminated in the job I'd been meaning to have my whole life: retired mailman who enjoys a good beer or two.

That pretty much covers the picture. There was probably other stuff in there, but I don't remember it. For instance, I don't know precisely when my eyebrows went away. I'm as curious about that as anyone.

But that's just hair under the bridge. Now I'm old enough to have perspective instead of eyebrows. There's no shortcut to perspective: it takes time. Perspective is what allows you to be happy maintaining a weight that horrified you when you first approached it from the other direction. Thanks! You all look great too.

And with perspective and seasoning, I get to be a writer after all, so it all worked out. Plus I never had to be a whore about it. I'm the pure kind of writer. The unpaid kind.

Yes, that means I'm free.

Don't Whack That Mole

I don't usually read articles about Beauty. They can be hard on your wallet. Still, the one in the paper recently about achieving lush brows caught my eye.

There are lots of beauty articles. They're there to keep the ads for beauty products from running together. I ignore them. Play Up Your Cheekbones! Not applicable. I'd need joint compound and a Sharpie. Best Swim Suits For Your Body Type! Got it. Something in a split-level, with an awning and good foundation plantings. A Firmer Bottom In Ten Steps! No thanks. My bottom is plenty firm and it took way, way more than ten steps.

But I read the whole lush eyebrows article. I never had lush eyebrows, but at least I had eyebrows. My mom told me I was lucky to have them, because she didn't. Since I take after my mom, I should have taken that as a warning.

Because one day I noticed they had gone away. No note or anything. I don't  know if they got paler, fell out, or just rode the last estrogen bus out of town. One day they simply weren't there; I looked like Mrs. Potato Head between renovations. Now obviously it couldn't have happened overnight, but I hadn't noticed. That's kind of normal, that lack of attention. It's why some men spend more time on their hair the less they have. Bit by bit their hair falls out and doesn't come back, and day by day they attempt to patch things up, until after a few years they have a routine that produces an effect everyone finds highly comical. But they keep doing it. Don't they realize how it looks? They do not. When you're coping with hair loss one day at a time, every day requires a new affirmation that you have things under control. I used to work with a guy who parted his hair just above his right ear and glued the longest strands over the top of his head. It's his last battle. He parted his hair a little further down the mountain every year and sent the troops charging up, but in time the forces were depleted. Now they don't even make it to the top of the hill. One day all he'll have to send to the fight is mercenary ear hair.

Another fellow on my mail route was well into his dapper nineties and still spent the better part of each morning creating his coif out of optimism, red dye and back hair. He had eighteen long strands at the base of his neck and he motivated them with antique hair gel and sent them up his nape and over his crown, where they sat curled up on his forehead like a thin, damp rat. I admired him, I really did. He just wanted to look nice, and everyone who looked at him smiled back, hard, so he knew he was doing a good job.

I, too, for a while, was able to imagine I still had eyebrows, because if I rumpled my brow into little hills, the shadow they cast mimicked the original equipment. As a woman, I don't have that much of an eyebrow ridge. It's the men who have a prominent jutting forehead, part of the original gorilla kit they still enjoy. I've only got enough of a ridge to fluff my remaining eyebrows. For years now they've strung themselves out up on that hill, brave, thin little soldiers peering out over the landscape, only to be picked off by sniper zits from below. Who were probably tipped off by a mole.

And I know just which mole. It's hunkered right up there on the eyebrow ridge, and I've had it all my life. There was always a little nubble under the skin, but it wasn't anything anyone noticed. At least I don't remember it casting a shadow before. I don't remember it getting in the way when I watched TV, or sending out for its own pizza. The only thing I can conclude is that the mole ate my eyebrows. If we sliced it with a lancet, fur would fly. I'm afraid to have it removed.

So I read the whole article hoping for a revelation. Apparently the key to achieving lush eyebrow growth--you'll want to jot this down--is to quit pulling them out. You need to get all your brow hairs on the same growth cycle, because otherwise the ones you want will stay underground in case you were planning to tweeze them too. They're very sensitive that way. Mine are presumably so sensitive they react to other people's eyebrows being plucked, because I've certainly never done it. Also, in extreme cases, you can have a transplant of your own hair into your brow. This could work out. You know, depending on the source.

As far as I'm concerned, we missed a genetic bet not crossing Frida Kahlo with Martin Scorcese. Their descendants would have to mow their foreheads, but for the sake of humanity, it would have been worth it.