Esau is a hairy man

“Behold, my brother Esau is a hairy man and I am a smooth man.” 

It is from Genesis 25:11 and in the stage revue from the 60’s, Beyond the Fringe, it is repeatedly (and totally out of context), told by a pompous English minister (to great comic effect) twice. 

Behold!!  My brother Issseouoooo is an ‘airy man and oi(!!!) am a smoooooth man!” 

I bring this up because I am an “airy man”.

It shouldn’t bother me but it does.   

It didn’t at first.   I was sort of proud I could grow a full beard at 16 – (and did for the high school senior play).  And the fuzz on my  arms and legs (and shoulders and hands) that turned sun bleached in the summer was bearable.  I liked my full blown Fu Manchu as a college freshman. 

Was this a family thing?  Hereditary?  DNA encoded?   No, my father assured me.  The only thing I’d inherited from his side of the family was a bad disposition.  No, my mother said, somewhat baffled.   The beard perhaps but the fur coat?  Not from her Scandinavian family.  So obviously my brother – who suffered the same malady – and I were genetic mutations.  Perhaps the hair would keep growing and we would find something useful to do with it – become hairy X-men - cling to trees like caterpillars – bullets would bounce off us – we would start a human sheep ranch or a sweater factory. 

Behold I am an hairy man and my brother is an even hairier man. 

It didn’t bother me too much that thick brown hair had sprouted full blown on my chest by my early 20’s.  It was the time of the pelt chested Sean Connery as James Bond.  It was soon to be an era of shirts open to the navel and having to something show was considered manly.    Body hair, of course, is caused by androgens, the male hormones that confer masculinity and govern male sexual development and physique.  The more the hair, the more the masculine me.

But then as it began to be associated with cologne wearing gigolos at discothèques, it didn’t seem nearly so cool.  At least not to a Wasp from Connecticut who’s forebears gravitated more to madras shorts and spouting whale corduroys than to neck chains.

I think it was around this time that the hair began growing on my back.  

I decided to ignore it with the hopes that it would all go away.  A wasp from Connecticut would never think to do anything about body hair; even back body hair.   Such an action would suggest vanity; would suggest that one was concerned by such a trivial thing as one’s appearance in a bathing suit or a boudoir.   Surely there were women out there – and it all comes to women in the end, doesn’t it? – that were attracted to a hairy man.   Of course, they were.  They were also attracted to Sequatchie and to hairy knuckles. 

I date.  I co-habitated.   Somehow I got married.   I say somehow because I was now living in California and the male ideal in the national zeitgeist was becoming that of the dolphin slick surfer guy.  They were everywhere out here.  Perhaps being a hairy had something to do with being born and raised in cold climates.  And then of course there were the hermaphrodite male models staring out from magazine pages.  And the bodybuilders who seemed born with shaved chests. 

I felt like I should be living in a cave.

I think it was around this time that I started trimming my chest.   No big deal.  Take some scissors and wade through the forest.  A pinch here, a pinch there.  Even it out.   Nice!  I saw my nipples for the first time in a decade. 

I ignored my back. 

Around the end of the 90’s I started cutting my own hair.  I got some barber’s sheers and buzzed it all to the same short length.   I did it as a lark at first but it was so easy – no shampoo, no combing – it became the norm. It was around this time too that children, marriage, stress and age turned the lawn on my chest snow white.   I went from Sean Connery to Santa Claus over night.   This seemed like adding insult to injury.   Women - and it all comes to women in the end, doesn’t it? – might be able to abide a sleek otter -  well, not sleek – okay, not even an otter – panda bear maybe – but a grey one?   Not likely.  Thank God, I was married.    My wife was used to my body hair – or resigned to it – she didn’t care.

But what if she left me?  What would I do?  What, if in my fifties, I had to start dating again?   The thought was panic inducing but still, knowing how impossible it is to live with me, I decided I’d best be prepared.

And so taking my buzzer, I buzzed my chest and shoulders.  Not too short, but short enough.  My wife hated it and threatened to leaved me.   I was now prickly.  I was giving her entire body a razor burn.

There was no winning.

And there was still that hair on my back mocking me.   And ears.  And nostrils,   Even the hair on my head teased me as it left.

An on line website suggested I wasn’t the only man dismayed by his fur coat.   They suggested solutions.

Shaving.   Easy.  But lasting at most four days.    As one who could now grow a full beard in a week, I had no desire to shave my body.    Besides my wife finds it “prickly”.

Lazering.   Expensive.   Ridiculous.

Waxing.   Excruciating.   (Anybody seen The Forty Year Old Virgin? )  

Plucking!   Why what a good idea.  Tear each hair follicle out by the root.  It would only take about a month.

Electrolysis.  A combination of lazering and plucking. 

Depilatories.    Cream/chemical hair removers.   Like battery acid.

Alas.  My poor back.

All right, just to see it once.  

The other day I asked my dear wife to take my dear buzzer, take off the dear clipper and remove the plantation on my back.  She acquiesced if I promised never to do it again.

My back is dappled like a peach.  I have a mole beneath my shoulder blade.   Two sweet dimples above my belt line.  Several pimples that have seemingly have been hanging around since adolescence.  I obviously couldn’t reach them to pop them.

I look ridiculous.  My stomach and chest if trimmed, are still hairy.  My legs and arms are hairy.  I have eyebrows like awnings.   My back, naked and pale looks as if it belongs on another body.  

I am a bear, not a dolphin.   So it will ever be.

Esau is a hairy man.  And so am I.

Men live lives of quiet desperation.

Fish With Wombs

A friend sent an e-mail/blog recently (notes from zone ten - blayney colemore) that told about being on a flight from Sacramento to San Diego when, low and behold, when told they could move about the cabin, penguins, bound for Sea World, began to stroll up and down the isle.  He had pictures to prove it.   (Being in his sixties, he never talks on a cell phone but finds it a handy portable camera). 

I was immediately reminded of the can-do penguin commando team in the Madascar movies.   

“Mission accomplished, privates.  Not only are we going to Sea World easy street but we’re going first class.”

All the passengers were giddy with surprise and delight.   The penguins look relaxed and inquisitive and very much at home.  As a matter of fact, they look like house pets, cute and feathered.   I liked the fact that unlike dogs, they walk themselves.   I wondered if penguins shed.

Personally, I would like to see a walrus move about the main cabin of an airplane, begging for peanuts.  

(Wait, actually I have.   I was in the middle seat, Atlanta to Dallas and she sat next to me.   It was like sitting next to an overstuffed  mattress only you couldn’t sleep on it.)

I like walruses.

I like their size.  Their dignity.   At Sea World, which for the most part I detest – seen one fish, seen them all - they sit there like kingly Buddha’s, heads high, tusks forward, unruffled, dozing and wise.  In truth, of course, walruses are mean, territorial sons of bitches who will fight at the drop of a hat.

Walruses don’t seem to enjoy walking at all.  In fact, they look like they avoid exercise all together.   Good for them.

Walrus bulls maintain harems.  Good for them.

The time has come, the Walrus said,
To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings.

Sounds like a congressional hearing, especially when you consider the fact that walrus like to bellow, snort and blow.  When they get in one another’s faces, their heads move forward and back like seesaws.

A walrus’s scientific name translates as tooth-walking sea-horse.

A dolphin’s name, taken from the Greek, translates as “fish with a womb”. 

I mention this because I like dolphins even more than I like walruses.  Dolphins seem to be laughing and playing all the time.   The first time I saw real live dolphins was on a boat out of Miami bound for Bimini in the Bahamas.  We crossed the gulf stream, the water turned aquamarine and suddenly there they were, surfing off the bow.  It was as if they’d come out to escort us in.

The Cove might be saddest movie ever made.  It is a documentary about Taiji, Japan, where dolphins are corralled to be sold alive to aquariums and marine parks, or are slaughtered for meat.

Dolphins have been known to commit suicide  because of the stress of being in captivity.  They go under water, they don’t come up.

This, and because of the seventy dollar ticket price, is another reason I detest Sea World.   Dolphins should not be in a place that is half water park.   Let’s not even talk about the trick killer whales.

To be fair, I also detest Disneyland, Magic Mountain, Knottsberry Farms and Leggoland – all places I’ve been forced to go because of my children.

And also to be fair, one of the most moving things I’ve ever seen happened at Sea World.   They had created a short lived program for children on the autism spectrum where the kids got into wet suits and then were taken into the Dolphin pens by the trainers.   The dolphins, ever curious, came up to the children and allowed themselves to be touched and even climbed upon.   I’m not sure if they didn’t give the children quick rides around the pen.  I’d like to think they did. 

Children who rarely made eye contact with fellow human beings communed contently with the fish with wombs.

There was one boy in attendance.   Deep on the spectrum.  Non-verbal.  Disconnected.   When he saw the dolphins, his body and soul shook with ecstasy.    His parents and trainer took him down to sit at the edge of the pool and the dolphins approached and he reached out and he touched them. 

Dolphins, he cried!   Dolphins!   And he laughed.   It was one of the most joyful laughs I’ve ever heard.

Dolphins!!

It was as if he was recognizing and greeting long lost relatives.