8 MILLION STORIES: A HAIRY SITUATION
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
By Suzanne Zionts For New York Press

“I won’t shave the beard,” said David. “The beard stays.”

When my boyfriend of eight years said this to me, my heart filled with dread. Pimples around my lips and cheeks forever from trying to kiss the Brillo pad of whiskers that now surround David’s face—I didn’t sign up for this.

When we met, David and I were both 18. I loved him for his long hair and his ability to assemble makeshift bongs and always find a pot connection. Things have changed. To begin with, I’m sober. I’m also no longer a bleached-blond kid running around the Village with hemp necklaces and peasant blouses. I’ve sold out to corporate America to pay for my bohemian dreams of writing and living in New York City.

I love David because I’ve known the man since he was a boy who could not grow one hair on his face. We met two weeks into college at NYU when a couple of Trustafarians came to my dorm room with him.

Ariel and Tracy were rich girls with dreadlocks who followed jam bands. They had family money but took the subwaysbarefoot and sold sandwiches in parking lots at String Cheese Incident concerts over the summer.

These ladies introduced us in my dorm room. I was doing ab crunches on a Grateful Dead blanket while listening to The Disco Biscuits, a band I now loathe. I handed David a copy of Be Here Now, and out of the mist of my incense-filled dorm room, our love was born.

We went to shows at the Wetlands together and I stayed up until all hours dancing in circles. David took me home. We fell in love. It was simple.

But the real world makes this complicated. We’ve grown up together in New York, tamed the wild city and, over time, have grown tame ourselves. David has just stayed truer to his hippie image. He works for a non-profit and refuses to use his engineering degree to make weapons of mass destruction, no matter how much money he can earn. I wear blazers with tiny dresses underneath. I try to blend in.
His beard is a magnet for food and when David is enjoying a meal, you see it all over his face. He calls the leftover remnants “flavor savers.” The beard itself comes down past his neck and it has blond, red and black hairs. When David’s nose hairs get long, he thinks his beard hides them. He is wrong. When he eats seafood, Harrison, our cat, spends the rest of the night licking and kneeding at David’s beard.

I’m the one who’s changed: I dyed my hair brown, stopped listening to The Dead, stopped dancing at drum circles and started liking designer labels. Now, I would rather spend the night watching Top Chef and eating takeout than standing at a six-hour concert that you really have to be high to enjoy.
This summer, David and I saw Matisyahu, the Hasidic reggae singer, in Central Park. It was the only place I felt normal.

There were girls wearing nice outfits with cute bags and haircuts dating boys who were trying to look like Hasidic Jews. (There were also boys who were, in fact, Hasidic Jews).

That’s where it hit me: David’s beard is my beard to the world. Yes, I work in corporate America. Yes, I sold out. But, look at my boyfriend. He works for a non-profit. He obviously isn’t into the material world. His Stussy shirts, hand-me-downs from his brother and Dickies pants are all from another decade. He proves that I am still weird!

David’s style never changed. He doesn’t need to get back to the Woodstock Garden, Joni Mitchell sang about. He never left.

For better or worse, throughout all the hair colors I’ve had, the new gigs I’ve stuck out, David has had my back. Now, I have his beard.