My dad grew a beard when he was in his mid-twenties. I used to look at old pictures of him when I was growing up and imagine one day filling out a body that was similar to his. I expected a bushy mustache as if it were a birthright.
I waited patiently through college and into my early twenties, expecting an explosion of hair. I watched my older brother experiment with a pubic goatee and wondered if my facial hair would look similarly vulgar when it finally appeared. The hairs around my nipples grew longer and multiplied. I began to notice a long, slender nose hair emerge from my left nostril. The thick and burly hair I was waiting for never arrived.
I'm thirty-one now and I shave twice a week. My chest is a pale, barren plane. I want to imbue some kind of meaning into that, but since I stopped expecting my body to somehow change into something it won't ever be I don't see what meaning it could have. Body hair is another safe thing to fixate on when trying to articulate what you want. It's easiest to identify body parts that might be attached to any random person Chest hair doesn't have a face.
And still I wonder sometimes what my body might be like with more hair. The specter of a six o'clock shadow hangs over my entire wardrobe and some nights I'm a twinge disappointed to look in the mirror and see my flushed pink skin where coarse, manly texture should be. Waking up this morning, deciding to forgo a day of working out so I could wallow in sleep an extra half hour, I wondered what my chest would be like with hair. I wished for a few minutes that I could have given a lover the muskier version of my body, with a sultry matting of bed-warmed chest hair to nuzzle in.
Those are the kinds of thought experiments I would dismiss outright from a woman. I don't like hypothetical's about the bodies of people I'm sleeping with. I don't want to think of someone I care about in terms of physical aggregation. You don't fuck body parts.
With my own body, I have a double standard. It's ego. I want it to be everything, to be a vessel for every possible experience that my lover could want. Realizing it can't be, that I can't loosen out from the grip of that singular husk, is a concession to my own impermanence. I want to believe in a world where I could the giving center of everything for someone, but instead all I have is my hairless body. Elbows and shoulder blades, with some long nipple hair for irony's sake.
Previous Posts:
Date Machine: Macho Voce, or Women Who Sound Like Men
Date Machine: Sex in the Office
Sex Machine: Lying Lovers; or the Padded Bra
Sex Machine: Premature Ejaculation
Love Machine: Can You Be Friends With an Ex?
Sex Machine: How Soon, Sex Toy?
Date Night: Kissing in the Rain
Sex Education Machine: Abstinence, or Waiting is Easier Because...
Sex Machine: The Funny Thing About Handjobs
Love Machine: The Three-Year Itch
Sex Machine: Show Me Your Penis
Date Machine: The Gun Show or Is That All You Got?
Love Machine: Morning Breath Kisses
Date Machine: Making Your Online Dating Profile
Sex Machine: Sex with 19 Year-Olds
Love Machine: Making A Scene
Hooksexup Confessions: Oh Hai, You're Pregnant
Sex Machine: Don't Forget to Masturbate
Love Machine: My Mother
Love Machine: Thanks But I'll Pass, or Handling Rejection
Naked Machine: Buying New Underwear, or Sex in a Dressing Room
Date Machine: Look Ugly in a Photograph
Love Machine: On Your Own, or Moving On