When I first met my husband, I thought his beard was sexy.
That my husband is neither of these thingshe is a chemist and a Buddhistonly added to the appeal.
I loved my husband’s beard, the way it felt both soft and sharp against my skin.
I came to know his face by the particularities of this beard.
I was attracted to him in part because of this beard.
It would not be entirely wrong to say I married my husband based on his beard.
He looked like a lumber-jackor Moseshis lips barely visible, fully fringed with hair.
His beard made him seem crazed.
He got into the car, tossing his suitcase into the backseat.
“How are you?”
he asked, and he leaned over to kiss me.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said, hating myself for the lie and also for my superficiality.
We were mostly quiet on the way home.
He pulled on it and smiled.
“I think I kinda prefer it this way,” he said.
“I don’t think I do.
I mean, you don’t look like my husband.
You look…avuncular.
You should trim it at least.”
“It’s my beard,” he said.
“But I’m the one who has to kiss it,” I said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if a bat flew out of that beard some day.”
“Cool,” he said.
“A bat in my beard.
I like it.”
My husband then swung launch the car door and bounded up our front steps.
The dogs were ecstatic when they saw him.
When he glanced up, his beard had some slobber on it.
I was grumpy then.
Days passed and the grumpiness would not leave.
And then, one week later, my husband came home and his beard was gone.Poof.
I had never seen the lower half of his face in plain light before.
There it was: stark, white, pale, naked.
He looked young, very young, the shaved skin red as a diaper rash.
I hate to say it, but I yelped.
“You like?”
“Why’d you do that?”
“You asked me to,” he said.
“I meant trim your beard, not strip it.”
“You know,” he said, “you look a little scared.”
“You should have warned me beforehand,” I retorted.
“You don’t look anything like yourself.”
“It’s me,” he said, and of course he was right.
It was him, and that was precisely the problem.
Everyone likes to think that looks are secondary in love.
We pick our partners for their talents, their brilliance, their ambition, their wealth or social status.
At least, that’s what we tell ourselves.
As human beings, we know beauty, and we love beauty.
I did not find my beardless husband beautiful.
He had no chin.
What happenswhen a partner gets too fat or too thin or too…something?
I felt as if I were falling out of love or out of attraction.
I did not want to have sex with this man.
I wanted, more than anything, to feel the click of connection, but it wasn’t there.
The difference was subtle, like a slightly out-of-tune piano.
I wanted to learn to love beardless Benjamin.
I decided I needed to desensitize myself to his new face, force it into neutrality.
Then, perhaps, I could learn to love it.
Therefore, I needed to look at him beardless as much as possible.
“What are you doing?”
“Studying you,” I said.
“You hate the way I look without a beard,” he said.
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m not going to grow it back,” he said.
“Not right now.”
So stubborn, my husband.
“I don’t think I can adjust,” I said.
Even as I said this, I was not sure it was true.
“Maybe I would have that right,” he said.
“But I wouldn’t exercise it.
Besides, I like a little real estate on a woman.”
An acquaintance of mine is married to a man who started out trim, then began gaining weight.
Eventually, his stomach was lapping over his belt, then he was obese, plain and simple.
“Are you still attracted to him?”
“No, not really,” she said.
“Does that bother you?”
“You know, we have kids.
I’m tired at the end of the day.
He’s tired, too, more so because he’s out of shape.
We’ve stopped having sex.
I get more sleep.
If I had to choose between sex and sleep, I’d pick sleep.”
He was lucky; the surgery stopped the cancer.
Except it left him disfigured.
“What did you do?”
“We broke up,” she said.
“Because of his appearance?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way,” she said.
“The cancer illuminated ways in which we weren’t compatible.”
“So it had nothing to do with his face,” I said.
“That’s what I tell myself,” she said.
During the beard crisis, I also learned I could not feel eros toward a man I found odd-looking.
I knew my husband, whether he shaved off his beard or let it grow long.
But his surface sheen temporarily blocked his inner beauty, at least when it came to sex.
Sex is superficial, but as it turns out, the superficial can be pretty profound.
Clean-shaven Benjamin looked decidedly more weak-jawed (and, presumably, less manly) than he did when hirsute.
I was not a corrupt product of advertising culture.
“Honey,” I said to my husband over dinner that night.
“So are you saying I don’t have a strong jawline?”
“Why won’t you grow your beard back for me?”
“Maybe if you stopped asking, I would,” he snapped.
So I stopped.Weeks passed.
I ceased being shocked, but in shock’s place was a sort of dullness, a certain reserve.
Then a college friend of Benjamin’s came to visit.
“Hey, Benjamin,” he shouted as he came in.
“You finally shaved off that beard.
God, you look so much better without it.”
“You think so?”
“I met you with a beard,” I said.
“That’s obvious,” Benjamin replied.
What we call lovely is actually solace, home.
So the first face we see may always be the most beautiful face.
Six years have passed since that beardless time, and my husband is bearded again.
(I stopped asking, and he stopped resisting.)
We now have two children.
“Will you love me when I’m old and bald?”
“Yes,” I said, and somehow I knew I would.
Which of course contradicts everything I’ve written here.
And he won’t need mine.
Photo Credit: Cedric Angeles
