Close Shaves

Well, it's a bit of a tense time here in me-land, and I've decided to deal with that by...avoiding it! At least on this blog. What I will say is that when I return to Otherhome I will suspend this blog and start another, intended to cover my time while in Otherhome (which will then become WhereIlive). So this blog will cease, but hopefully only temporarily.

Now, on to the avoidance! Yesterday I was moved to think about shaving. What, you ask, could possibly move you to think about shaving? A fair enough question. To which the answer is, an article I read at my beautician's that told men how to wet shave. And as a result my thoughts were about wet shaving. And here are my thoughts: I love wet shaving for men.

When I was little, my father wet shaved. On the one had this may seem odd, because my father has a beard, and at that time had a moustache as well. But even beard-bearers need to shave, and my father wet shaved. Specifically, he wet shaved over the sink in my parents' bathroom (which had tiles halfway up the walls, and the top line of tiles had little swags of flowers tied at each end with bows on them - and now I long for such tiles, my childhood impression that they were the most elegant tiles ever unmoved by any later tiles or tile experiences).

Clearly this early exposure to wet shaving, and on the only male model I had, set it in my mind that men wet shave: that is what men do. And for this reason I do not like electric shaving for men (or for women, I suppose. But that plays less of a role in my life). In my not-so-secret

heart I believe that wet shaving gives you a closer shave - well, what I really mean isthat whenever I see a closely shaved man I think to myself, A-HA! I bet he wet shaves! And I certainly find electric shaving unsexy. If I pass the bathroom while you're shaving and you have foam on your face and a manual razor, I'll stop and admire you, but if you have an electric razor I'll just think, Uck. But really what I believe, in my subconscious heart, is that electric shaving is unmanly. Wet shaving is just more masculine, dammit. And you have my father to thank for this belief.

Isn't that funny: when I was little my father was a, shall we say, not so good father. And he was scary. I was scared of him. But now that I'm grown up I adore him, and I discover repeatedly how, in ways I think are good or at least harmless, he's set my notions of manliness. He told me once that he was sorry: he wished he'd been a better model, because then I might have had happier relationships. I told him at the time that in fact I thought the problem was that my boyfriends hadn't been enough like him. But I wonder sometimes these days if he was right.