#gaotee

I remember the specific moment I decided to wear a beard.  I'd experimented with beards a couple of times with varying success.  In January 1997, I left the worst job of my life and with no real job prospect--and as an act of rebellion against my boss who complained that I wore a red sweater instead of a tie to our office holiday party--I decided to quit shaving and see how my beard would turn out.

Since that moment, I've had a beard.  At least until yesterday, when I was forced to shave off the rest of my beard which is being destroyed by the radiation treatments. So now I have a very scraggly goatee and moustache which will need to fill in some more before I decide whether I like it.

It's strange seeing my face without lots of hair on it.  I'm not sure if it makes me look younger or older.  I keep catching glances of myself in the mirror, trying to figure out who that guy without a beard is staring back at me.  I realize I'm very fortunate since I am not going to lose the hair on my head--in fact, I desperately need a haircut--but it was still hard deciding to shave it off.  But the radiation was destroying the cells where the hair follicles were, which meant that my beard suddenly had big bare holes on the left side where the radiation was taking place.  There was also a hole on the right side where a single 30-second dose of radiation is pointed.

I'm not sure that my beard was my calling card, but it was part of my identity. It made me feel more masculine and interesting.  Little kids loved to touch it, maybe because I appeared to be like Santa Claus but with a red/brown/gray beard. I remember going to Zambia and the little kids staying in the orphanage being fascinated by my beard and wanting to touch it, because they said it felt like animal fur.

I know I went on dates with men because they were undoubtedly attracted to the beard. I often found myself absentmindedly stroking it since I liked the texture. There was a time when I was interviewing for a job at a law firm and I considered shaving it off so I could look more "corporate," but I ultimately decided that was a just a bridge too far.  I loved not needing to shave and having the barber trim your beard is one of the must luxurious things you can do.

So now it's gone. I've gotten mixed signals on whether it will grow back, but I'm not expecting it to but I'm also not giving up hope.  For now, I'll live with the scraggly until I figure out how it will all look once the radiation and chemotherapy are over.  And I'm lucky, of course, that the cost of losing my beard is that I'm receiving treatment for cancer that will be killed.