My Mustache is My Hijab

How did I come to this, I often ask myself. How did the person I wanted to be diverge so precipitously from the person I actually am? I mean, am I really the sort of person who unironically wears a mustache?

It started, like so many things that turn out tragic, as a joke.

Har-har, shave the beard, leave a mustache tossed on your face like a hairy candy wrapper on a theatre floor.

I thrilled with anticipation at the responses this would engender. I especially liked imagining the abject horror and revulsion a furry caterpillar like growth would inspire in attractive women. They’d crinkle their normally smooth foreheads and ask me ‘why? why ever would you wear a mustache?’ and I’d insouciantly reply that it was ‘for kicks’ or ‘as a lark’ or even ‘to piss off my wife’.

It was supposed to be ridiculous, you see; something funny because of the discomfort it would cause me socially.

Now I don’t know who I am anymore, and neither does my mustache.

To be fair, I did (and do) receive my share of oddball double takes when I stroll into a shop or a restaurant or supermarket, but nothing like the behind-the-hand giggling I’d hoped for.

I eventually squeezed out a patch for the chin and another for just under the mouth, attempting a sort of an Errol Flynn effect, thinking that would seem even less legitimate a choice of facial hair, but to no avail.

Hell, Chiara likes it!

She balked when I recently shaved, telling me that my face sans mustache and friends appeared “puffy.” I then suffered the further indignity of having to grow the whole nonsense from the ground up - no mean feat for someone with blondish facial hair.

So now here I am, a man who wears a mustache.

Don’t call it a goatee - it’s three separate pieces of facial hair. I have some dignity remaining to me.

I’m calling it a D’Artagnan.

I can tell you that I might wear a cape or a porkpie hat and I’d feel less costumey.

I wonder if my upper lip will ever feel the warmth of the sun again, or the coolness of the pillow at night.

My mustache is the hijab of my mouth.