It Ain't All That Serious

WARNING: This blog entry may contain TMI for some of my friends and colleagues.  :)  Read with caution.

For those of you who don't know me well or haven't met me, you may not realize that I am one hairy SOB.  Yes, God granted me the blessing of follicular abundance over my entire body excepting one very important location...the top of my head.  Call it unfair, call it a curse but no matter how you see it, the result is a considerable amount of time spent manscaping. 

It wasn't until my mid 20's that my body began to express its true  primate nature (though my sisters may say there were earlier clues).  As each day afforded me an ever thickening forest, I soon knew that I had to respond.  I didn't want to be that guy that all the women were talking about because of the hair on his back. 

I tried a variety of things, but the most extreme was the day I completely shaved everything but the hair on my head (of which I still had a little).  As do many young men, I imagined that going hairless would be sexy as it revealed the hard lines of my muscles.  For some young men, this is quite true.  Of course, not all of us have the muscles we believe we have worked so hard for and somehow magically see as we gaze admiringly into the mirror.  Reality sets in pretty quickly when all the hair shadows are gone, and for a guero like me,  light reflects so glaringly off my paste like epidermis.  And still, denial is a powerful thing.

Hoping that my time at the gym was finally showing up, I needed to test my newly shorn bod in front of the ladies.  A little voice inside my head was calling to me, telling me the painful truth but, as readers of my other blogs know, hope springs eternal.  I arrived at the pool, nervous but determined.  When the time came, I pulled my shirt off confidently and gave my pecks a squeeze, ever so casually of course. The simple reply from my good friend Tammy told me all I needed to know.  "Oh Mat" she said, "it ain't all that serious."  As right as she was, she also couldn't have been more wrong.  For me, it was far more than all that serious.  I was crushed but, at least, no longer deluded.  I knew what I needed to know.  Sometimes what we'd like to be is not truly what we are.  I was horribly embarrassed but at the same time, I understood that she was not being mean at all.  She was actually being quite loving and telling me that I didn't have to try so hard because she loved me for who I was. 

I was reminded of this event tonight, 20 some years later,  as I stood in front of the mirror, shaving off the excess hair into a pattern that better suites me.  As the hair fell to the floor, revealing my body in the largest size it has ever known (and I'm not talking muscles here), I was comforted to remember, "Oh Mat, it ain't all that serious."  Those years of self discovery have led to these years of self acceptance.  While there are things about youth I miss and long for, the self doubt of my teens and twenties is not one of them.