pyroguysr's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VANITIES OK, so I�m gonna be a professional rennie (that�s a renaissance fair/festival participant to all you non-believers out there) so I have to look the part. So what am I doing? I�m growing my hair long and my beard out. When I was in my 20�s, my beard was 6� long and I could part it in the middle by brushing. It also curled like the King of Id�s beard and one girlfriend I had back then liked playing with those curls� You know those curls. Like the ones on playing cards? My beard did that then. I don�t know what it�s gonna look like now because it�s been almost 30 years since it was that long. I�ve got more of a Tsar of Russia thing going with it now. I may still be able to do the handlebar moustache though. But to have a handlebar moustache, you need moustache wax. So I went in search of the only moustache wax I know of� made by a company called "Pinaud�s." I know where to locate it in my town of in Lowell, IN. It�s at the Wilco as well as in the Walgreen�s there, right in the shaving section. Little silver tube with a mini comb. Right around 2 bucks for the whole shot. I went to five stores up here and looked. At the Walgreen�s down here in Florida, the clerk lady in cosmetics asked what I was looking for and I told her. She looked at me like I was nuts or from another planet. I mean, no one but the old hippies here have beards (I suppose I'm one of them now). It�s too damn hot for facial hair I guess. Or wait. Maybe it�s out of style! Anyway, I went looking for the Pinaud�s moustache wax in virtually every grocery and drug store I visited. Not finding it in either of those, I headed to Target. I had to go to either Target or Wally World to get some other items anyway. And everything from Henry�s house is a 10 mile jaunt, dammit. "So," I think to myself, "maybe Target has the moustache wax?" I searched. Nothing is in the shaving section other than cr�me, gels and razors. OK, I�ll try the hair care section. I looked at every shampoo, conditioner and hair product they had. I was tempted to buy the goopy waxy stuff that punkers use to spike their hair, but I don�t want to spend $6 on something I�m not sure will work or even taste good� I mean, you gotta eat through that hairy food filter, so the wax better have a nice flavor cuz the strands are gonna go in your mouth no matter how hard you try to keep them out� that and I suck on my moustache hairs - yes, I was a cat in a previous life and I gack up hairballs every so often! � So during my search, I kept trying to avoid another aisle of hair care products. However, when you get older, you start going into places in a store that you wouldn�t normally visit. Today I looked down the aisle that I swore� I SWORE I�d never lay eyes upon, but it called to me. It lured me. It sang a siren song. Hell, it screamed and yelled at me all day long. And the damn place had a mirror in that freakin� aisle! Bastards! And yes, it made me do something really vain. I gazed in that mirror and looked. Do you have ANY idea of how bad blondes look under flourescent lighting? Especially old blond guys? Christ. The color looks all washed out� but I digress. My beard once was a riot of color. I�m blond on top and that hair is a nice shade of white-gold. Not platinum, mind you, but white-gold. And when it was long, it was VERY good looking. I lost girlfriends over it because they�d spend piles of money to stop frizzies, make their dull, lifeless hair look shiny, healthy and full (that�s what the box said, right there, in black and white and you know the people that design those boxes don�t lie!) and they�d look at my hair (which is very fine, but there�s LOTS of it) and ask me what I did. �I wash it,� I�d tell them. �With what?� �Prell.� Now Prell had to be one of the harshest shampoos on the market. Green, stinky stuff that really stung the eyes. Didn�t really bother my hair though. �You use PRELL? What else?� This was always followed by a skeptical look. �Um, I brush it? Wet.� Now, every woman will tell you that you don�t brush wet hair. At least, not LONG wet hair because it �damages� it. It made mine shine and develop a really neat wave. When I said that, I�d usually get this response: �You Bastard!� Then they�d break up with me. They couldn�t stand the thought of the guy they were dating having better looking hair than they did. Especially when he didn�t use $20 (then) shampoo and conditioner treatments! Anyway, that has nothing to do with this other than to say I have healthy hair. Now, my beard was a riot of colors from my mom�s side of the family. Ya see, my mom has wonderfully thick red hair. Natural red. Even at 81, with all her grey hairs, you can still see the red. My dad had really dirty dark blond hair. So dark, it looked black when he put pommade in it. My beard had blond, black, brown and red hairs. It sparkled in the sun. It was a GRAND beard! That old girlfriend I talked about early came over one day in 1976 (gee, should I put that in here? I mean, I was 22 then and she was 14� but it dates me horribly!) Anyway, she came over and wanted me to help her put something on HER blonde hair (blonde blonde) called �Sun-In,� a hair streaking product. We did that (didn�t do anything for her hair) and she put some on my hair part on my chin and followed the curl around (Dawn loved those curls!) and it bleached out all the red hairs there! (Boy was I pissed!) But it looked neat. Well, now it�s 30 years later and I�ve had a goatee for the better part of 7 years because my son said that goatees were in and it made me look younger. It did. Most of his friends (mainly female-type friends) though I was 10 years younger than my actual age. God, I loved every one of them too! But that was five or six years ago. The past two or three years have been rather stress filled, as many of you may know. Stress causes what? GREY HAIR. Where does mine appear? Just below my sideburns and along my jawline. How do I know that? I grew my beard back last year and then got disgusted and shaved it back to a goatee. There weren�t any grey hairs in the goatee then. But lately, they�ve been creeping into that area as well. So I walked down THAT aisle and did something really vain. Something I swore I�d never do. Yes, I bought it. I bought that damned product that is the vanity of vanities for young looking, old men. My hand shook when I picked it up. The fuckin� thing was on sale too! Goddamn chemical companies! Damn advertising companies! Damn youth-oriented culture! They made me do it! They made me buy it! Grecian Formula 5 for beards. Yes, I used it. Makes me look 10 years younger! Whoohoo! 12:42 a.m. - 2004-03-16 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||