Sometimes I’ll soak my mustache in scotch before going out to a social event. Then, during conversation, I’ll suck on it and then make some pronouncement like, “This ten-year single-malt has an excellent bouquet.” Since nobody else wants to suck on my mustache, nobody can tell me that scotch and Scotchgard aren’t the same thing like they normally would.
I stick fountain pens in there. I can get three or four pretty firmly in, no problem, even though they cut up my chin pretty bad. Look, I’m a writer!
It puts me in the company of other famous thinkers with beards, like Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Eleanor Roosevelt, Yosemite Sam, and Denzel Washington some of the time.
When someone asks me if I shampoo my beard, I look them in the eye and tell them, “Not until we bring every last one of our boys home.” Then I put my head down and am silent until they go away.
I can weave different colored beads into it. People ask me what they mean, but I just smile and shake my head and tell them that they couldn’t possibly understand, since they have not passed the Trial of the Hawk.
People don’t question me when I tell them that I’m married to the sea.
People don’t question me when I tell them that the weather is soon to change.
People don’t question me when I tell them that I make my own jerky.
People don’t question me when I tell them that Darren Aronofsky’s absolutely made better films than this.
People don’t question me when I tell them that they wouldn’t last a minute on the slopes of Kilimanjaro.
People don’t question me when I tell them that to know a man you have to know by heart the taste of his blood.
Arabs and Mexicans trust me as one of their own.
People don’t question me when I tell them that I’m a gumshoe.
People don’t question me when I tell them that I’ve seen good land and I’ve seen bad land and this is a bad piece of land.
People don’t question me when I tell them that the problem’s in their brake pads.
People don’t question me when I tell them that this country needs health care, sure, but not Obamacare.
People don’t question me when I tell them that post-structuralism, as a movement, is nothing new.
Sometimes I don’t get carded in restaurants.
-DJA ’13
