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Awaiting the Fallout

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“I love you, but you’re going to have to shave that beard.” 

I was lying in bed when these words were spoken to me. Though it was not my own bed, I was naked from the waist down save for two pairs of socks, and had only met the man speaking to me the day prior. My wife was there, too, but she was just watching.

The sudden announcement was surprising because I was already prepped, and the CNA was ready to administer the sleepy-go-bye-bye meds. Truth be told, I was in surgery about two weeks earlier than anticipated because my surgeon, the man I had met one day earlier, had a cancellation. So, even though my beard was hard to miss, it had escaped any sort of pre-op conversations that would have otherwise been routine.

They brought me hospital clippers, and I raced from the pre-op room to the bathroom with my wife valiantly trying to hold my hospital gown closed from behind, ass cheeks flapping in the breeze nonetheless. A nurse lined the sink with a towel, and I proceeded to shave my beard. I’m not sure I felt reluctance so much as resignation. When I reemerged, the pre-op nurse shared her surprise that I took off the entire thing. I can’t imagine what her unmet expectations had been – did she suppose I might come out of the bathroom with half a beard, like some second-rate Batman villain?

I miss my beard. During the pandemic, it was both my companion and my hobby. Yet now, a mere six-weeks after its unexpected loss, I find it odd to see old pictures of myself in full plumage. How quickly we become used to a new normal, even if it isn’t a normal we sought. In the interim, I have grown a goatee to both entertain myself and annoy my wife. While it has a certain swashbuckling panache, I suspect I'll soon look more like a naked mole rat than a heroic member of the King’s Musketeers.


Though there are many side-effects of Chemotherapy, losing one’s hair is the most iconic. Baldness is the veritable Red Badge of Cancer. I’ve only had one Chemo treatment, my next one is three days hence, so while I am having some light shedding, like a coon hound in August, I have not yet lost all of my hair. Upon learning I have Cancer, I imagine people gazing quizzically at my still hirsute pate not quite sure whether to believe. ‘But you have hair?!?,’ I hear them saying silently to themselves.

Full-body baldness is coming. There will be no beard to balance a desolate head. I have added to my hat collection in anticipation, though I’m not sure wearing a fedora at a rakish angle will make up for a lack of eyebrows. I’m told that when I am Cancer-free, and done with Chemo, my hair could come back a completely different color, or texture than what it was before. It’ll be like the second-coming of puberty. I'm hoping for hair like Veronica Lake. I wonder how she'd look with a beard.

"... Veronica Lake" by x-ray delta one is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0



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Location: Charlotte, NC 28211, USA

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