December 13, 2021
Facial Hair
Dad 
Dad?
My father has always had facial hair. This meant, at times, he has covered most of his face with a beard and a moustache, and at other times he has simply sported either a moustache or a goatee. Regardless, my father has constantly covered at least a portion of his face with his thick, black hair. When I was a little girl, maybe six, I asked my father to shave his face. I had never really seen what it look liked.
Surprisingly, he did and he looked a lot more like Fred Flinstone than anyone else I can remember. I also remember feeling kind of scared about the whole thing, seeing this stranger who had hidden under all this hair, like a shield, revealed to me in his true form. He grew it back that next day.
For some reason, I have always been aware of facial hair, and because it was a part of my father's entire adult life, I said I wanted to meet boys who didn't grow any. I wasn't sure if facial hair meant a man had something to hide, so, instead of really caring or not making judgements, I only dated clean shaven men. However, when I became a junior in college I had my first crush on a bearded boy. I liked him for a long while before anything happened. Unfortunately, when we kissed it reminded me of my father's beard - not the kiss or the feel of his beard on my face, just the fact that he had a beard, and I was turned off.
I didn't date facial hair boys again for a while. Maybe I was traumatized, after all I just told you kissing a boy with face hair made me think of my dad, and that's not something you want to be thinking about when you're kissing a boy. So, for the next few years it was clean as a baby's bottom faces for me.
This past year started out with the clean shaven kind of boys being the kind that I went for, but for some reason, these past few months I've been attracted to boys with some hair on their face. Maybe I just don't care anymore, maybe I'm open to anything at this point, or maybe I've accepted that a man with facial hair isn't really my father, not that there's anything wrong with being my dad in a non-romantic situation.
I figure it's been over 20 years since my dad did the initial shave, and it's time to get over the hair thing. Because facial hair may have scared me off back in the day, but now, now you can't judge a man by how much of his face is exposed to wind, air and rain. You can only judge a man by his heart. I'm over the facial hair thing. Okay, fine...I have a massive crush on a boy with some facial hair, so I guess that gets me over any issues. That's the bottom line. The rest of this story, well, it's just fluff. True fluff about facial hair, but fluff nonetheless.