The first shave of the season can be a traumatic event. Removing a full winter’s luxurious growth is no easy task, but sometimes my good friend Eugene‘s body hair grows through the weave of his long-johns and it’s the only way to get them off. Don’t worry, he’s fine; most of the trauma is suffered by those who have to hold him down.
Taking off the winter beard used to be a fine April Fool’s Day joke but I don’t always make it to town for anyone to see. At home, it just seems to scare the cats (and me, every time I walk by a mirror for the first day or two) but it’s become a rite of spring around here and it’s best not to mess with tradition.
I am naturally intrigued by new possibilities in drastic hair removal. Men have used clam shells, Bowie knives and multi-bladed monstrosities over the years to scrape their faces clean but the other night I came across a show featuring two handsome young men who struck me as the type to be completely hairless below the neckline. Admiring themselves in a mirror, they gave grooming tips that a man like me could certainly use.
It Took Forever and Hurt Like Hell
I couldn’t hear everything they said about the importance of tweezing but I’d like to watch that show again because it might be possible they were talking about their eyebrows.
Fish in a Barrel Pond, April Fool’s Day, 2016
The View from Fish in a Barrel Pond 
Where’s the before and after shots?
Tweezers…
The “during” shots would have been more interesting but there are none of those, either. It’s bad enough that I thought to stage a photo of a big old pile of beard hair.
They say if you tweeze hair it might not grow. So far it hasn’t worked on my back.
Especially in those hard to reach places, I bet.