quitting the mirror

my earliest memories of my father are of his glasses. with rotund frames and brown temple arms, I remember one morning finding them on the kitchen counter, putting them on, and wondering if I would ever need them, if I would ever grow a mustache, if my young voice would come to resemble his steady baritone. and it was a few years later that I found his old straight razor in the bathroom vanity. it was silver, painted with a tinge of rust, and still sharp enough to bite; it had gone unused for years. my father had -- long ago -- transitioned to disposables, those tiny plastic devices that look too delicate to hold something sharp.

then there was my razor: an electric remington. when switched on, it issued a soft buzz, a distinctly hollow vibration. it was blue and almost rectangular and it was in sixth grade that I attended to the peach fuzz that cropped beneath my chin. I was the first in my class to take a blade to my face.

I cannot say I was proud. as the first in my class to shave, I was also the first to use aftershave. dad persuaded me to use the stuff. it was a thick gel -- cool to the touch. it came in a small bottle that was itself, I think, aqua green. dad bought it for fewer than 3 dollars from the drug store down the street.

my twin brother, the owner of an identical remington, also started shaving at this time. however, I was the first to actually wield the thing. yes, I was the first to look into the mirror with a face distinctive, I think, to men who shave. it's a look that is no more distant than it is intimate, no more despondent than active, no more ambivalent than horrific. it's the closest I've come to being consciously aware yet wholly withdrawn. it's an abandoned gaze.

the gel was supposed to hedge off razor burn, an irritation of the skin -- a rash synonymous with a red hue that is itself nothing short of unsettling -- something that could occur esspecially after using a hot electric razor. the lotion acts also as a sort of antiseptic. but it hurts. after applying it to the face, it's common to feel a pulsing tingle, a steady and ineradicable throb in the space between each ear. and it smells. I often attended school reeking of alcohol and menthol as the odor refused to dissipate until mid-morning. it didn't last long -- the application of the viscid stuff to my cheeks, the dampening of a bath towel in cold water, running the rag across m face in order to calm the pulse. I soon preferred the heat of the razor to the violence of the aftershave. and until I bordered facial indecency, I quit shaving altogether.