Red Dye 2 Much

As a guy, I am finding aging is not a bowl of strawberry sherbet. Well, unless you are 19 and are using a fake I.D. to get into a bar. That is not only fun but exciting. It is also good to be male and enjoy your 'Jesus' year: age 33. If you look swell the year of the double 3; it's a bonus. It is supposedly the high point in attractiveness if you sport a penis. After that, things start to careen down the slippery slope of added birthdays. The hair falls out. You wake up with diagonal ditches across your forehead. Wiry, hoary hairs sprout in places like your ears, nostrils and back. Eyebrows can suddenly look like John L. Lewis'. Musculature shrinks. The libido gets a headache more frequently.

I can only speak for the male population. Women generally don't worry about things like unwanted back hair unless they are of certain Mediterranean persuasions or possibly weight lifters. There are the usual aches and pains and increased disease susceptibilities. Lower energy comes into play...loss of eye sight, hearing and of course, memory. Patience starts to stunt. Curmudgeon mood swings surface more frequently. That "Get off my Lawn!" kind of attitude can infiltrate more easily. Easy breezy begins to dry and the smallest speed bump can ruin your day.

Yeah sure, the 'wisdom' thing is just great. You can pontificate about all you have learned and sit on your laurels (but not too long because the back goes numb) and sooth say until the cows come home. There can be a dignity and graciousness with your advancing years if you are lucky enough to keep your health and not need too much lypo.

Considering I am almost in my mid 50s, things could be worse. (That was a terrifying sentence I just typed.) The body is mostly intact and if I fall down I can usually get up. My wrinkles aren't cavernous and I can stay on the elliptical for 1/2 hour without having an asthma attack. All of that curly, dark hair I used to have is long gone so I shave my skull and it looks OK. Fortunately my head isn't shaped like the Hindenburg. The only particular that kind of bothers me and has become a challenge, is my beard. (Well, that, and uneven dry face patchiness, knee wrinkles and trying to remember why I just parked, walked into Publix and am standing in the bread aisle without a clue.)

In recent years, my beard has definitely gotten more and more gray. What used to be a beautiful auburn has dulled with speckles of snow and well, dirty snow. I allow the grandpa effect only up to a point. When too much white appears, I have to rub on the dye. I feel I have to because my opinion is that I get too washed out looking. If I was as tan as Charlie Crist, well, then, maybe....Raphael and a few friends like the salt and pepper but I am not ready to live with it just yet. I listen to the "Dye, baby, dye!" crowd....So.....

Usually I get a medium brown that I basically 'paint' on and leave for about 6 or 7 minutes. I then go and shampoo my face and hope I haven't left it on too long. There is that tricky period where if you go a minute or two over, it looks like you have dipped the lower part of your face in ash. One can end up looking like a pageant actor portraying one of Jesus' disciples in a Passion Play. I vary the 'depth' of darkness and often will leave some white here and there to make it less obvious that I am, indeed, dying my facial hair. If anyone is paying attention at all to my age they have to know that my beard is unnaturally dark. I do it anyway. It just makes me feel better (even if I end up looking like Billy Mays.)

Well, yesterday I thought I would be adventurous and try something different. Like I said, my original beard color was a rich auburn. After searching for a reddish/brown in the the 'Just for Men' beard dye aisle, I came up short. I settled on a woman's Clairol hair color that I thought would work. It was a deep sequoia color that looked believable on the box's picture. My friend Mookie had done something similar and said it sufficed. The directions indicated it would cover gray so I was set. I got home, put on the see through plastic gloves and started mixing up the concoction. It was way more complicated than regular beard dye. I had to squeeze a gooey solution into another bottle and shake it. Next came a slow, squirting process where I dabbed. It was runny and clumpy. Beard dye always has a brush that makes it easier to manipulate. This stuff was designed to be spread all over your head and rubbed in with your hands. It would also possibly plug the gulf oil leak.

Very quickly it became apparent I would have to be swift in my application. My artistic side would need to be tapped. While simultaneously blotting on an increasingly alarming burgundy, slightly red radish-like color combo, the dripping picked up steam. Skin bordering my hair follicles also was staining rapidly and turning crimson. I had to wipe with a wet cloth to remove the pigment from my skin while trying to even out the color throughout the beard. My juggling fingers somehow worked and I peered into the mirror. My beard appeared black raspberry and glistening. The trim line was even and clean from smears. The box said I was supposed to wait 10 minutes but the color was going Kodachrome / High Def in a way that was making me very nervous. After a minute or two, I jumped in the shower and washed it off. When I emerged to dry, it took all my courage to take the first peek in the mirror. Finally I looked. It wasn't horrific but the gray areas were lighter and kind of an eggplant/red licorice hue. The consistency was pretty even but it wasn't really a dense brick/brown. It was more like that beautiful deep burgundy/garnet mix that is seen on the fancier pillows at Target. The ones that are satin with tassels and are tossed into a harem. Not feeling that exotic, I decided to deepen the shade with some of my regular brown, beard dye and stepped back in the shower.

After my second attempt, I determined my appearance normal enough that I could go out in public and do a few errands. I would wear a baseball cap so the contrast of my shaved head wouldn't look so alarming. I stopped at a UPS store to fax some documents. No one seemed to look at my face with alarm or amusement. So far so good. I stopped for a coffee. I ran into a friend. We chatted a bit. At first he wasn't looking directly at me as he conversed and perused a hook up website on his computer. Later, he gave me his full attention and I caught a quick widening of his eyes. Though subtle, I could tell he had done a quick visual intake of my lower face...kind of like when you notice a person has a piece of sun dried tomato caught in between teeth. He didn't say anything but it was apparent something gave him pause. Yet, no one was talking in hushed tones and looking my way. It was hard to say what the truth was. Perhaps denial had settled in. The real test would be what Raphael says when he gets home.

The door opens an hour later. I am at my computer. Raphael appears and walks toward me, smiling and carrying some stuff from his car. ( seven chocolate cupcakes to be exact, but I digress.) As he nears me, I can see his expression stiffen, then stretch back as in a wind tunnel and then finally fall. There is that 'Oh Christ...what have you done?' look. Immediately I say "Is it too much? I was trying for my original coloring......" He just sighs and looks away and says "Yes. it is too much. It looks like you applied henna to your face." All I could think of were those Indian girls with tattoos on their fingers and suddenly felt a spiritual link.

I immediately knew I would have to change the color. I trusted Raphael's opinion on this one. After a few "It freaks me out when I look at you" comments it was time to cover it with my usual dye. The first attempt didn't work and it just took it down a shade. The second time I plastered on a kind of chocolate mud concoction and it seemed to do the trick. Of course, now my skin was burning from several applications and the beard would be so intensely dark that its appearance might possibly be more obvious than the red. I didn't care. This was my fourth application of dye in 6 hours. My face felt like a hot sidewalk and I was looking rather sinister but the Leaf Erickson look had disappeared.

The beard ended up the color of raw umber mixed with dried blood. All I need is a powder blue leisure suit and a lot of gold jewelry and I could sell watches at a flea market out of my mini-van. It seems a lesson was learned. If you are going to amateurishly betray youth, at least have a back up plan like two weeks in Costa Rica where no one will know you. Maybe I should try extensions next. They would at least cover the creases on my ear lobes and distract from the gray that will eventually reappear in my beard. A monocle might be a nice touch. I could add a tam. Either way, I would welcome some white hairs back on my jaw line. It is distracting as Raphael talks to me while his eyes dart back and forth from my eyes to my blackened facial growth. I feel bad for him. For the next several days he will be waking up next to Kevin, the community theatre actor face. Aging be cursed!