Facial Hair Issues

You shaved?

I did.

I almost didn’t recognize you.

I thought it was time to lose the beard.

No particular reason, besides time?

People kept asking me if I was doing okay. You know, like if I was mentally okay.

Interesting. Any theory to why that is?

Well, I always used o be clean shaven, kept my hair cropped and neat. Maybe once in a blue moon I’d have a five o’clock, chalk it up to indolence, but that length seemed acceptable to everyone. Once I grew accustomed to the look and actually gave the effort to grow out my facial hair people began asking me if I was doing okay.

Mm-hmm…

It may not have been the lead off topic, but the question always managed to slip into conversation, as if I were depressed or inferring trouble in my personal life. This has been a chronic development. I grew tired of it so I shaved.

A beat passes.

Just so I’m clear, you are still experiencing a depressive episode, correct?

I am. I just don’t want everyone I know conflating the length of my facial hair with my mental state.

I understand. Believe me ________, what you’re saying makes sense. Facial hair can play into how someone is presenting themselves to others. If you’re used to seeing someone a certain way, whether it be groomed or unkempt, whatever it is, it may give people who are conditioned to that previous presentation pause if that presentation changes suddenly, especially if that shift is drastic.

Sppft. Glug, glug, glug, glug.

Sorry. The line for caffeine was out onto the street this morning, I didn’t have time to wait.

No need to apologize, it’s no problem. I hit the soda machine every morning before I step into the office… You were saying?

I don’t know. I guess I woke up one morning and thought I needed a change. A big change. I was even tempted for a brief moment to completely shave my head altogether, but I figured that would be a notch too extreme. I wanted a big change not a drastic one. A drastic change would attract attention from people, which is the last thing I want. So, instead of my hair, I eighty-sixed the beard. But of course, shaving my beard is attracting an uncomfortable amount of attention in its own right… It’s not like my facial hair is my identity or anything, I didn’t even have it for all that long to begin with.

I understand but remember to put perspective into context. You’ve always had facial hair since you and I began working together.

I don’t like that my personal grooming habits are under a microscope. I can’t win. I feel stuck… And plus, now my face looks weird. I think I made a massive mistake.

I don’t think your face looks weird.

Thank you for saying that, but I only see you once a week. I stare at my mug in the mirror every single morning. It’s depressing…

Pen click.

Aside from shaving, how was the rest of your week?

Good.

Scribble, scribble, scribble, scribble.

Nothing of real note happened. Overall, the week was better than most.

That’s great. Good news. And the OCD?

Beat.

It’s getting there. It’s getting there…

Any episodes you’d like to discuss, either major or minor?

I mean…

Go on.

There was this old guy that recognized me from [occupation] when I was grocery shopping, who decided to introduce himself. He looked like he may’ve had some type of eye-related ailment. Maybe pinkeye or something, I’m not sure.

This older gentleman had pinkeye.

No. I don’t know, maybe he did. He had to had something wrong with him. Pinkeye would’ve revved my neurosis but once I dealt with the initial bout of being violated with contamination, I could’ve handled pinkeye. We have medicine for that. Pinkeye is curable.

If you could contend with the prospect of having pinkeye, what was troubling you about the interaction with him?

Well, okay. I guess the first thought is, I don’t want to have pinkeye at all. Even if it’s curable, it’s a massive inconvenience. I’d have to go to the doctor. People would treat me like a pariah.

Okay, granted. I more meant, why did you think that there was something wrong with this gentleman?

It was red and flaky around one of his eyes. It was kind of looked like a dried scab ready to bleed at moment’s notice.

He was bleeding?

Well, no. It looked like he could bleed, or at least had the capacity to bleed.

He had the capacity to bleed?

He wasn’t actively bleeding. I confirmed he wasn’t bleeding four separate time during the conversation with him.

I see… Where did you say this interaction took place?

At ________ … I got it in my head that he touched his eye then grabbed a gallon of milk or something. There was milk in his shopping cart already. It’s a reasonable hypothetical that if the first few gallons he handled had an undesirable expiration date, he’d understandably place it back in the refrigerator. Now in my mind, ________’s entire stock of milk was potentially contaminated because I don’t know what this guy actually touched.

Mm-hmm…

My next thought was this guy didn’t drive all the way to ________ just for a gallon of milk. He already had steel-cut oats, marmalade – you know – various old man stuff in his cart.

You thought it was possible that this gentleman unintentionally contaminated anything that he came into contact within the store.

Correct.

What did you think was going to happen? Not necessarily the worst but the most likely scenario.

I’d get sick.

I see. With pinkeye? I thought that was a nonissue.

Something more like AIDs or Ebola.

A long beat passes.

You understand how remote that is, correct? Especially if you confirmed that this older gentleman wasn’t actively bleeding. And you did say you confirmed that, yes?

I did.

On four separate occasions, if I recall.

It’s just that when I was in your waiting room last week, I was reading an issue of Newsweek about the Ebola epidemic and the potential for it to spread in America.

And you thought this older gentleman at ________ may have had Ebola?

Not necessarily, I just thought there was the unique possibility that I would get it personally. The entire interaction with him put my vulnerability into perspective… I realized this whole thing is an irrational fear but that’s where my thought process was at the time.

I understand and believe me, I’m not trying to minimize your fear or how you reconcile the issue, but you do know that Ebola epidemic is over, perhaps save for a handful of isolated cases in high-risk areas of the world, certainly nowhere around here. As far as I know, the current concern of an Ebola outbreak in the United States is nonexistent.

Oh, I know. The magazines in your waiting room are extremely out of date. You should update your reading material.

We’re working on it.

And you should probably order something less alarming, considering your vocation.

Scribble, scribble, scribble, scribble…

Other than this interaction at [regional supermarket], anything else of not happen this week?

Long beat.

I was wondering, do you think it’s excessive to wash your hands before and after using the restroom?

Before and after?

Before and after you handle yourself – you know, your genitals. Do you know how many people in the general public don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom? I’m genuinely asking by the way. I don’t actually know myself. I’m only speaking in hypotheticals. Do you know how many people out there have STDs? They just go about their day after touching their own infected genitals without the decency to disinfect their hands, walking around contaminating every surface their touch. When you’re out in public spaces and have to relieve yourself, don’t your want to make sure you disinfect your own hands from any potential contamination before you touch your penis?

Well ________, there is certainly some legitimacy to your point. Is it more sanitary to wash your hands before handling yourself? Undoubtedly yes, but I challenge you to question if it’s actually necessary. My concern is that your fear of contamination is causing a disproportionate reaction. You do know STIs can’t just survive on any surface, yes? They need a specific environment to live.

I know that. I know I’m being irrational. I just think about catching something like that by chance and how it would completely eviscerate my life. The cataclysm of my entire universe.

How so?

The most poignant issue, I don’t think I could live with the prospect of my body being permanently infected with disease. I imagine the feeling of perpetual defectiveness would be overwhelming. I don’t think I’d ever feel clean or normal ever again. I don’t think I could carry that feeling. Then, there’s the consideration of my family. My ________ would never believe that I accidentally caught an STD from some random surface when I was out shopping. You said yourself, STDs can’t survive in just any environment. ________ would accuse me of having an affair and leave me. I would be shamed by ________’s family, likely shunned by my own. I can avoid this entire internal argument by just washing my hands before I take a piss.

May I ask, how many times do you wash your hands when you disinfect?

Four times.

So, that’s actually eight times total, before and after using the restroom.

And that’s only if I execute my washing process properly. If say, I come into contact with the sink, I start over.

So, we’re really talking upwards from eight times. You could hypothetically wash your hands twelve, sixteen, twenty times on any given trip to the restroom.

Beat.

I guess. Yeah.

Glug, glug, glug, glug.

That does seem excessive… How long has it been since you’ve adopted this practice?

You know, I’m not sure. A year or so? Before I would either wrap my penis in toilet paper or use the inside – you know, the hole flap – of my underwear. Anything I could use as a barrier, so the skin of my hands never made contact with the skin of my penis.

Scribble, scribble, scribble, scribble…

So, let’s say minimal progress on the OCD front…

I’m no where near where I want to be, believe me, but I think I’ve improved from where I was some time ago.

By how much, would you say?

What do you mean?

If you had to put a percentage on your improvement.

On my OCD?

Mm-hmm, from where it was before. Ten percent improvement? Twenty?

I’m not sure… Fifteen percent, maybe?

Scribble, scribble, scribble, scribble…

I see… And was double washing, for lack of a better term, your hands evidence of this improvement? I’m just trying to determine if you graduated or regressed from using the inside of your underwear to washing your hands in stages. You intimated in past sessions that you used to use toilet paper as well.

Penises are unpredictable. They leak. They dribble. The stream goes wayward sometimes; never when you expect, you know, once in a while you have those mornings where it’s like someone is holding their thumb over a garden hose nozzle, and you practically soak the ceiling. There’s a good chance urine is going to seep through your barrier of choice and leave a mess. I imagine every male has done this at some point in their lives, where you splash water from the sink on the front of your pants to camouflage the one true urine spot. You then begin building this alibi or some convoluted bullshit story as an excuse, something along the lines of a water surge from the sink while you were washing your hands, or the bathroom was out of paper towels, so your only recourse was drying your hands on the front of your pants, which I always found problematic because water spots always seem to dry much quicker than that dime-sized urine spot that you began with. I’m sure everyone knows what happened. It’s not a common occurrence to see people walking around with water splotches on their clothes, and when you do it’s immediately noticeable. But, I mean, what else are you supposed to do? What recourse is there in this hypothetical? Then there’s this entire other subproblem of exiting the restroom, which ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time requires you to touch the door handle to pull it open, which has been touched by every single person who visited the lavatory, therefore recontaminating the hands you just finished washing.

I assume you have counter measures.

I used to use the inside of my shirt sleeve or paper towels, so I didn’t directly touch the door handle, but after a while, this began to catch the attention of my co-workers. There were rumors going around the office of me being a germaphobe. If I don’t want people asking me about my facial hair, I sure as hell don’t want anyone inquiring about my OCD. So, to avoid this entire bathroom quandary, I took to this whole ‘double washing’ process when I have to relieve myself. After I complete the process and exit the bathroom, I apply a dollop of sanitizer, then go about my business.

You apply hand sanitizer as well?

Well, because of the door handle… Restroom doors tend to open inwards. There’s no way to exit without risk of recontamination, unless someone enters the bathroom at the same time you’re leaving… I mean, if the door opened the opposite way you could just shoulder your way out, but in actuality you have to pull open public bathroom doors in almost every instance.

I’m by no means an architect nor design buildings, but I can’t help but think the doors open the way they do due to building codes and regulations. Maybe if the doors opened the opposite way they would accidentally knock into unsuspecting people or cause congestion in adjacent pathways.

Maybe public restrooms should put, like, a little toe-hold apparatus on the bottom of the door, so you can pull the door open with your foot instead of your hand.

If you’re just going to use hand sanitizer immediately after exiting the restroom, why not just use the door handle?

I began eating meat again.

That’s interesting, I didn’t realize you were… a vegetarian? Vegan?

Vegetarian.

I was. Four years.

Four years? So, this was well before I made your acquaintance.

It was. I never brought it up in our sessions because it never seemed relevant to the context of our conversations.

Interesting, so you refrained from consuming meat for four years, now it’s worked its way back into your rotation. Was this a moral decision, health?

An OCD decision.

Okay, an OCD decision. And now you’ve progressed past this?

Beat.

I always like to barbecue, you know, as a hobby, I guess. I just found it relaxing. I got it in my head that meat, poultry mostly, is contaminated somehow. My mother used to tell me, she used to eat raw ground beef with salt while she used to roll meatballs. People also eat rare steak, and I mean fucking bloody rare, so, I never had much of a hang-up with red meat, besides knowing it’s not all that great for your colon. Chicken however, raw chicken, will fuck you up.

My grandmother used to do the same thing with raw hamburger, I think it may be a generational thing. I think many of us have moved on from doing things like that, societally speaking.

I noticed that when I’m barbecuing my OCD got to the point of forcing me to wear gloves and disinfecting every inch of space I touched. I only noticed the problem because of the contrast. Grilling used to be a relaxing activity for me, but then I’m outside wearing yellow rubber chemical gloves so I can fire up a few hotdogs.

If raw chicken was the genesis of all this, why not remove it from the equation completely? It sounded like the potential was there for you to be happy grilling red meat, albeit concerning health issues.

Well ________ was never crazy about the idea of eating cow anyway. Something about how intelligent they are.

Chicken is fair game, however?

I guess. I mean, I don’t know this for fact, but chickens seem pretty stupid to me. Plus, they’re everywhere, at least by where I live. They’re always walking across the road, road congestion and such.

This is an argument for population control?

Maybe… But I digress…The entire process of grilling was becoming intrusive. I began seeing raw meat as an obstacle, so I removed it from my life altogether. Up till that point I was appeasing compulsions to get by. An example being having to rewash my hands another four cycles because the back of my hand accidentally grazed the sink. If I don’t wash them again, I can no longer continue with my day. I realized that I’m no longer in control of the situation. I was cleaning my grill, with the intensity of a hazmat worker on scene with a biohazardous agent, when I had this acute feeling of being watched. The sensation of being observed was strong enough to break me free from my salmonella hysteria. I realized my neighbor was watching me, atop of his green and yellow ride-on lawnmower, wearing this strange expression, that I can only describe as a mix of pity, confusion, and concern.

You realized then that you were behaving irrationally.

I had the thought a few times prior, but I’d always end up rationalizing everything.

Well, you are still human, ________. You still have to practice hygiene and due diligence to protect yourself from germs and bacteria. Yes, raw chicken contains bacteria. A surface in contact with raw chicken would not be safe to eat from. Take that hypothetical scenario, what would your response be?

I would probably disinfect the area, wipe it with a paper towel, maybe even an additional round if I wasn’t confident that I properly cleaned the surface.

If you wash your hands properly, once should be enough. Once the germs are gone, they’re gone. Using excess amounts of soap doesn’t make them more gone.

I know that logically but there’s always the thought that I missed something, and it nags at my thought process. Like the fear that you left the coffee pot on when you get out on the road. Sometimes that fear is so absolute that you may even turn around and return home to double-check that you turned it off.

Do you regularly have fears about leaving the coffee pot on?

No… I mean, who doesn’t to a degree? I wouldn’t say it’s a problem. I think there’s probably a large segment of the population who have a fear of house fire and losing all their possessions. It may even be more important if you have loved ones at home.

Beat.

Could you wash your hands only the one cycle the next time you use the restroom?

No.

Why do you think that is?

Because that will be the time I get sick.

Sick how?

Stomach bug… Norovirus…

Norovirus is survivable. So, we’re not speaking serious illness, not Ebola.

Granted, but who wants to have a stomach virus?

When did you first notice all of this being beyond your control?

Two events stick out in my mind. I’m not sure if the first qualifies as an actual panic attack or a preview.

Fair enough.

The first time was at the town dump, naturally. A windstorm was rolling into town later in the day. The last thing I wanted to have to do was pick up trash that spilled out from my barrels that toppled over, so I decided to empty everything at the dump that morning before the wind really hit. So, I grabbed the trash, it was already windy but not anything too crazy, and drove to the dump. I backed into an empty parking spot at the transfer station, opened the door, and the moment that I stepped out of the car this gust of wind howled around me, kicking everything into the air – sand, paper, and this errant white plastic trash bag… SLAP… just fucking slaps me in the mouth.

It actually made contact with you.

Fucking right it did! No warning or anything. My face was wet from god-who-knows-what and there was this grit on my molars, sand or cat litter, who the fuck knows what, in my mouth.

And your reaction?

It felt like the world was collapsing on me. I dry heaved outside my car for a minute, but then I wanted seclusion, so I climbed back inside my car, dry heaved and gagged for the next five minutes before my senses came back around.

And then?

Then my stomach problems abated enough for me to drive home.

What did you do when you returned home?

I took the longest shower of my life, wore the bar of soap to a nub. I was convinced I had AIDs, or at least something terminal.

Scribble, scribble, scribble, scribble…

I understand. The second event?

________ was running this ridiculous sale on barbecue ribs, so ________ and I bought a bunch of them to freeze and eat at our leisure. We don’t usually buy in, either, bulk or advance but it was that type of sale. We couldn’t pass on it. We’d have ribs once or twice a week, maybe even more if we had nothing else to eat at home or didn’t feel like going out to pick up dinner. Sometimes even if we weren’t hungry, we’d throw a rack on, just because maybe we’d be in the mood for them later.

Understandable. I used to do that with baked potatoes.

One night, I took a rack out of the freezer, took off the plastic sleeving, which was essentially a vacuumed water balloon of swine blood. It’s fucking disgusting how they package these things. I put the ribs on a baking sheet, put on some barbecue sauce, and wrapped them in foil. When I went to put the ribs in the oven, there was a half-rack of ribs decaying in the middle of my oven tray…

…

What happened was, my dog will eat anything left unattended, even on a reasonably high surface – counter, table, he’s going to get it. I don’t care how far you pushed your food back from reach, ________ will find a way to get it. The dog is fucking Houdini. If you turn your attention away, even for a nanosecond, your food is gone. Our best solution to this problem was to put the excess food in the oven while we ate and would store what we didn’t finish for leftovers after we cleaned dinner. The dog can’t open an oven door, right? Fast-forward, ________ and I completely forgot that we left the ribs in the oven the last time we ate them. I guess during that period of time, the season transitioned to the summer months, and we began eating exclusively off the grill, completely neglecting the oven. I have no clue how long they were rotting in our oven, but it was long enough that I felt as if I happened upon a crime scene, I imagine discovering a bloated body floating in a river would have a similar feeling of violation. Time stopped for a moment. I think it was the smell; the smell demanded the kitchen. ________ took notice and said, ‘Christ, how long has it been since we last opened the oven?’ Evidently it was long enough that neither of us were able to recall. This was essentially a DEFCON-1 scenario in my book. My entire thought process was highjacked and sent into hyperdrive. I’m completely oblivious to what was going on around me, just standing there vacant in front of the oven. I snapped out of it when ________ told me to throw the rancid ribs in the outside trash barrels, and since I’m typically the one that does trash duty, I oblige. I don’t want anyone to know that I’m on the cusp of shutting down, so in my urgency, I forego my usual hazmat protocol and hastily pick up the ribs with some sort of eagle claw entrapment, because the decomposing meat barely held shape. I brought the rotting meat outside, in the trash, then realized that I was too consumed with internal alarm that I forgot to track everything I physically touched.

When you say ‘track’ you’re meaning the process you’ve described in previous sessions? Remembering every surface that you physically touched so you can remember what you have to disinfect.

Right.

You where too consumed by the ordeal to remember to mentally track what you touched.

Correct. How many things in my home did I unintentionally contaminate? I had no clue.

Beat.

You know, there’s this therapy that I subscribe to, where a patient would eat a sandwich in a public restroom. During the next stage, the patient would eat the sandwich in a bathroom stall. After the patient became comfortable with eating in the stall, they would graduate to placing a place on the surface of the toilet seat. In the final stage, the plate would be removed, and the patient would eat directly off the toilet.

That sounds like a terrible idea. Who would do that? There are health codes in place to prevent food being in contact with unsanitary environments. If you were a restaurant, the government would shut your ass down.

Scribble, scribble, scribble, scribble…

What happened when you went back inside your house?

I threw out the ribs I intended to cook, along with the entire inventory in our freezer.

Even though you had no suspicion of them being contaminated?

I didn’t foresee being in the mood for ribs in the near future.

Okay.

After that, I washed my hands like a fucking lunatic. Because I wash my hands so frequently, they’re usually all chapped, and they begin to bleed. And now I’m struggling with the thought of my blood mixing with the blood from the ribs. At this point, ________ realized that something was seriously wrong. ________ may not have known what was going on, but ________ knew something was up; and how could ________ not? I’m throwing away hundreds of dollars of meat and preforming endless cycles of washing my hands. I tell ________ that I threw out our stock of ribs because I thought there was something wrong with them, like they spoiled somehow, something like that. I kept the conversation moving fast, because I’m not sure ________ buys it or not. I’m vague about everything to prevent further discussion and managed to shift the topic of conversation to us no longer having anything for dinner. ________ ordered a couple of pizzas, which sounded like perfection at that point. I went into the bathroom and did a few more cycles of washing my hands in private, attempting to recompose myself, until I finally felt normal enough to pick up supper. Everything calmed down a bit during my ride to ________. The reprieve in my contagion free car was enough for me to get my head straight and begin to function again. I get to ________, everything was going great. But on the ride home, I glanced down and spotted a splotch of blood on my pants. That’s when my brain shifted into hyperspace, I don’t even remember the rest of the car ride. How many times did I unknowingly touch that exact spot on my leg? My irrational broken thought process was valid. I told myself that my surroundings were sanitary, and I was wrong. I couldn’t trust my own objectivity. I made it home, when I realize that I can’t open the door without intentionally contaminating the car’s door handles, which if not properly disinfecting could potentially infect ________ the next time ________ uses the car. To add to everything, I also couldn’t pick up the pizza boxes without contaminating those either. So, I was effectively trapped in my car, idling in my driveway, trying to muster the resolve to escape. I became aware, once again, of my neighbors penetrating gaze, while he was riding his John Deere. I then realize how populated my neighborhood was at that exact moment. How long had I been sobbing and verbally berating myself in the driveway, because I have some sort of blood-borne pathogen and being stuck in my car, for everyone to see? I felt like such a fucking loser, having a tantrum reserved for a toddler. If I didn’t get out of the car, if I waited any longer, the pizzas would be noid. I know that’s a minute point given everything that’s going on, but the objective was to get dinner on the table without anything being amiss. Delivering cold pizza would sort of fly in the face of that. The palpable judgment of my neighbor finally motivated me enough to exit the car, albeit sans pizzas. I get inside, operating purely on primal instinct, not able to convey any of my problems to ________. I’m yelling at ________ to stay away. I yell and scream it at ________, ‘Leave me alone!’ I sprint down the corridor and locked myself in the bathroom, stripped my clothing, and put the shower at the highest allotted setting. I got in, grabbed the bottle of liquid soap, and went to town on that spot on my leg, scrubbing as hard as I could. ________ was pounding at the door, trying to figure out what exactly was going on, but I’m still unable to articulate any of this to ________. The only thing I can evidently say was ‘leave me alone.’ I never experienced such a pure feeling of contamination. I used soap, scrubbed, more soap, more scrubbing; I didn’t even believe the fucking soap was doing anything. I was scrubbing to the point of me audibly grunting. ________ was still pounding at the bathroom door, yelling. I’m yelling. My dog was barking. The house was fucking chaos! I don’t know how any one of my neighbors didn’t call the police; I would’ve if I heard that racket coming from someone’s house. During all of this, I actually scrubbed through the top layer of my skin. I was bleeding. My blood was now infected, in my mind, so I continued to scrub harder and harder. Eventually, I ran out of soap, so I considered dousing myself with the gallon of bleach in the cabinet under the sink, but luckily the thought was so outlandish that I didn’t placate.

Long beat.

What did you do then?

I cried. I sat down in the tub and cried… It’s embarrassing… Fuck me, I’m embarrassed…

Could you tell me about your relationship with the number four?

What about the number four?

It continually appears in your accounts.

I didn’t realize…

Washing your hands in cycles of four. You checked the older gentleman’s eye, at the grocery store, four times. Four pumps of soap…

Glug, glug, glug, glug…

I’m not sure. I find the number four comforting, I guess…

Comforting, how so?

It’s the only number whose numeric value is equal to the number of letters that it takes to spell.

Beat.

I hadn’t considered that.

Long beat.

I don’t know, I feel like four is a balanced number.

Balanced in what way?

Think of a roll of four, with a six-sided die, it has on dot in each corner. That’s what I picture in my mind when I think of four. For me, it’s the perfect visual representation of balance… I don’t really know what to do with that information. The number four is balanced. What kind of revelation is that?

You said yourself, that doing things in sets or cycles of four is comforting to you. Maybe consider your subconscious is compelling you towards this number because you associate the number with balance – at least on a visual level – the roll of four – yes?

Beat.

It was also my favorite number to wear in sports, especially in baseball.

I didn’t know you played baseball.

I played from tee-ball until college.

Scribble, scribble, scribble, scribble…

So, consider that there may be some deeper meaning or value you associate with the number. When did you stop playing ball?

I played college ball but didn’t have the bat to make it any further. I was tremendous in the field but could never get the barrel of the bat on the ball at higher levels of play. I played beer league softball after college, which was familiar, but wasn’t the same. I haven’t played in years now.

Any reason?

I’m worried about being in large numbers of people. I have general anxiety whenever I’m around people. I don’t like leaving home much.

Do you still experience anxiety when you leave home?

It’s gotten better over time, but it’s still very much present.

By how much would you say?

You mean, if I had to put a percentage on it?

…

I don’t know. I think that’s a weird question, putting a percentage on something like the improvement of anxiety. I find that anxiety ebbs and flows.

…

Maybe like forty, fifty percent.

Scribble, scribble, scribble, scribble…

Mm-hmm… Forth to fifty percent is significant, about halfway to your norm. Do you have plans to further improve?

I hadn’t even considered a number until you prompted me…

Pen click.

I see… Did you have any high goals or aspirations in baseball, or was it more of a hobby?

I wanted to play professionally, that was the dream. I’m not sure when I came to the realization that I’d never make it to The Bigs, but I thought I could even swing the minors or some independent league as late as my college years.

So, you must’ve been reasonably good if you thought you could extend your career past your academics.

Yeah, but a lot of that was bullshit. I probably was never that good. I mean, I know I was somewhat good, playing collegiate ball, but I was delusional thinking that I’d make it professionally.

Why’s that?

Well, I think a big part of it, and this is probably true of most sports, was that you had to buy into the delusion to be successful. Baseball has a tiny window of success. You hit one ball out of ten, you’re successful. In the real world, one out of ten is abysmal, but not in baseball. Also, I’ve read something like hitting a ninety mile-per-hour fastball is the most difficult feat in sports. If you don’t buy into your own delusion of being talented at it, you’re never going to succeed. I don’t care if you have some faded journeyman at the plate against the best the league has to offer, when he’s at bat, he thinks he’s going to drill the ball every pitch. So, yeah, I know I was good to a degree, but how good was I? I couldn’t honestly tell you.

Well, you had the mindset of professional aspirations in college, I’m sure it affected you greatly.

It did. I met ________ in school. We’d have these arguments about my playing career… Christ, that seems so dumb now.

What kind of arguments?

________ would ask me what I would do if the Yankees wanted to sign me, you know, hypothetically.

And?

I’d tell them to fuck off, of course. Can you imagine the audacity of that? We’re trying to build a life together, just starting out, and the Yankees offer me wheel barrels of money… As if I’d be lucky enough to make it to the professional levels, and I turn down the biggest team in sports due to regional and moral obligations.

What’s wrong with the Yankees?

They’re just so corporate, and that’s not me. They have the most money, the highest payroll, they don’t let you play music in the clubhouse, you can’t have facial hair lower than your mouth.

Is that true?

I think so. At least, it was that way before Steinbrenner kicked the bucket. They just seem to be this inevitable destination; a player becomes skilled enough, New York becomes the only realistic option because of the financial considerations. When a player goes to the Yankees, I can’t help but think of when indie bands sell out to the mainstream, sell their entire identity for cash. Do you remember Johnny Damon?

The name rings a bell, but I don’t remember any specifics.

He played centerfield for the Red Sox, had long hair and caveman beard. Johnny Jesus, fans called him. Then he left Boston and signed with New York, the Sox’s direct rival. Johnny Judas, fans called him. He had this complete makeover before that next season began. They even had this photoshoot for it because of how poignant the signing was in the sports world. It was practically in every magazine and national morning talk show, even outside of baseball. They cut his hair short, shaved off his beard. He looked like he was in the Backstreet Boys, or something, and they plastered his Joey Fatonne looking ass everywhere. Can you believe a professional sports franchise caring that much about facial hair, to the point of having rules and measures against it?

Johnny Damon shaving his facial hair is an issue for you?

Honestly, I never looked at him the same way again.

//30//

Facial Hair Issues

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