I wanted a change — a small one. Nothing too extreme. I didn’t want to disappear into Witness Protection and reappear with a new name in a new city with a new job. I was not looking for a new beginning.
I am reasonably happy with my life. There are good days and bad days and “meh” days and days when I whisper “yes!” to myself. I think that’s pretty normal.
But I was feeling impulsive, so I gave myself a makeover. Specifically, a mustache. A ‘stache. A nostril broom. Not a waxy, old-timey barber’s mustache or the kind fussy vice-principals rock. Not a biker’s handlebar, either. Just a mustache. Simple.
People treat you differently when you have one. You look like someone who knows how to do things, like grill a burger (which I can do).
The mustache represents masculinity in all its diversity: Einstein, Twain, Groucho. Plumbers wear them. Firefighters, too. Freddy Mercury, the angel-voiced lead singer of glam rock band Queen, sported one.
(Yes, many of history’s monsters have mustaches but their crimes are not the fault of the ‘stache.)
I had a boss long ago who smoked the foulest cigars in his office, and the stench would creep into the kitchen and had a mustache shaped like a boomerang. My local deli guy has a gray mustache and makes the best chopped cheeses in Brooklyn.
Burt Reynolds wore a “Chevron”-style mustache, which is full and slopes down towards the corners of the mouth. If you don’t know him, Reynolds was a movie star in the 70s and 80s, a charming, macho rogue. His movies were never too serious, he seemed fun. I don’t think he was born of mortals — God touched a side of beef, and the side of beef smiled and winked at him.
Do you know who else had a fine mustache? Billy Dee Williams. I’m no Lando, but a man can dream.
Growing a mustache is something I was able to do with minimal effort, thanks to testosterone. I already had a salt-and-pepper beard — a wizard’s whiskers. The next step was to remove most of it, while carefully leaving enough facial hair to trim.
The decision was instantaneous. I just woke up one recent cold winter morning, pulled out the clippers, and — bzzzzzzzzz.
In romantic comedies, there is always a scene, usually halfway through, when the main character gets a “makeover” — a sassy and flamboyant friend is sometimes there to help with the transformation. Our hero marches in and out of a fitting room, wearing new dresses, chic and fabulous. Voila! She is a whole new person.
The closest movies made for men get to a makeover are the scenes in any action movie where the hero picks a shiny new gun from a wall of guns inside a secret gun vault.
That’s what I wanted. A new gun. But not a gun because I am not a gun person, and I know this because I have shot guns before — I’ve shot targets and bottles and skeet and, drunkenly, and stupidly, into the air. Gun people have looked at me and said, out loud, “You’re not a gun person.”
But I wanted a makeover for me, a middle-aged man, that didn’t require a sassy and flamboyant friend. God, what I would give for a sassy and flamboyant friend. The closest I got to that was my wife staring at my mustache for a minute and then saying, “yeah, okay, you can keep it.”
Men have few options when it comes to making a superficial change. Women can go out and buy a new tube of lipstick to make their kisser pop. But the best men can do to freshen up their look is buy a hat. The world is full of too many unhappy men wearing fedoras.
But I do believe every man should have a lucky baseball hat. That is a different essay.
I briefly considered Botox. I have friends who have gotten Botox. They look the same as before Botox but feel new, and improved, the freshest produce in the produce section. Botox is not permanent, and neither is facial hair. I do not judge my friends who get Botox. One of them is an executive, and he wants people to think he’s a millennial (he’s not.)
So, I grew a mustache. I watched a YouTube video about grooming mustaches. Then I trimmed my mustache. I looked in the mirror and there I was, same old me, but with a curtain of hair pulled across my upper lip.
When I turned twenty-five, I announced I was having a “quarter-life crisis” to my father, who was just exiting his own crisis. He dealt with the turmoil of his fifties by buying all the new video game consoles and playing games in his underwear. This is not a terrible way to manage one’s mortality and the dread that comes with saying goodbye to old dreams and hello to newer, more attainable ones.
I didn’t know then that my “quarter-life crisis” was just “life.” Twenty-five is when you learn that life is both longer and shorter than you thought and the hard-and-fast rules you were taught about the adult world were more like suggestions. My dad told me not to think of twenty-five as a “quarter-life crisis” but, instead, think of it as “halfway to fifty.”
Scott Woods
Well, dad, I’m almost there. I hope you’re looking down from wherever you are and chuckling the way you did when you told me that my mid-twenties were just a preview of what would be coming very soon.
I don’t think I’m having a mid-life crisis. I’m not quite there. Fifty looms, but at a distance. Boy, we all get there (if we’re lucky.) But I grew a mustache, just in case. It’s a fine mustache. It gave me the change I wanted. Nothing too radical. I’m still John DeVore. I just walk with a little more swagger, a private investigator’s gait. Like Shaft.
The patch of hair amused and horrified my friends. To their eternal credit, most of them did not comment on my appearance. I saw one guy about my age with a mustache at the deli — I was ordering an egg and cheese, and he was buying too many bottles of Gatorade (that’s three, if you’re curious.) We both nodded at each other approvingly. I texted my mom a photo and she seemed pleased that I had finally gone through puberty.
I love my mustache. I’m still me, but just a little bit different. When I catch a glimpse of my ‘stache in a car window or a bathroom mirror, I get to play in an alternate reality briefly. I can pretend to have a mustache-appropriate profession, like an astronaut or undercover cop or Dr. Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts. My mustache makes me feel a bit more confident, too, like I’m a union boss or one of those old-school newspaper editors who is always screaming. I’m even considering growing my ‘stash out so it looks more cowboy, more Wyatt Earp. Grow it out even more and I could even learn to twirl it, like a cartoon villain.
One of the great things about a mustache is that if, for instance, you’re slurping lentil soup, you will be happy to discover, a few hours later, a bonus lentil or two caught in the hairs!
I feel more confident with the ‘stash. I think I get more smiles from strangers than I use to? Or maybe I just feel friendlier? Maybe strangers smile at me all the time but I just don’t notice. I don’t want to suggest that my mustache has suddenly made me more attractive or approachable. I do not think I have a magic mustache. But, I suppose small changes can work small wonders.
I don’t know if I’ll keep my sweet ‘stash. It has done its job. That’ll do, small strip of hair under my nose, that’ll do. I’ve loved the makeover so far but, I think, men who are really suited for lip rugs are born with them. Like four-star generals or Village People impersonators. Another type of man who looks natural wearing a face ferret are 19th century generals, especially European ones. That’s a hard look to pull off today. Like a monocle.
But I have no regrets: I wanted un petit transformation and I got one. A tweak. For the past four or five days, I’ve just felt a little different. Not better, necessarily. There is an old saying that goes “the only constant in life changes.” That is one of those old saws that is best never said out loud. Yes, we all know life is neverending, slow-motion change. It was nice to get ahead of the inevitable for a few weeks. Take control. I recommend it. If you can grow a mustache, do it. If you can’t grow a mustache, buy a fake one like a master of disguise. I won’t tell.
Or get Botox. Or a makeover. Buy that new blush. Shave your head bald. Bring back cravats! Own your own change and be the one, true, real, you.
Just, whatever you do, don’t grow a goatee. Those are cries for help.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of John DeVore's work on Medium.