Bring Out the Goat

Women think they have a pretty easy solution for dealing with a skin blemish. All they do is apply some makeup, or strategically style their hair, and voila! the blemish is gone. (No, that's not a sweeping generalization or stereotype. Not at all. Ha ha ha.) Well, I like to think men have just as simple a solution. It's a game I like to call "Fun with Facial Hair!" (Yes, the exclamation point is part of the trademarked name.)

Take me, for example. Thanks to my latest sunburn, I've got a strip of pretty sensitive skin just above my upper lip. So how have I dealt with it? By letting my goatee grow in again. Now, you see, goatees and me have a funny relationship: generally, I don't like them — on me or on other people (especially women). And yet, from time to time I get in that lazy mode and decide to let my own grow in for a week or two. I'm told it actually looks quite good on me, so I tend to keep it on longer than I intend to.

But really, I know I just don't rock the goatee as well as, say, Ben Affleck, who lets his grow in all the time. (Hmmmmm ... does that mean Jennifer Garner likes 'em? Let me reconsider my thoughts on goatees for a minute ... Interesting. Never really thought too hard about that. Maybe I should keep mine permanently. Will that draw her to me? It's worth a shot. Hmmmmmmm.)

Anyway, so this week I've got a goatee. I wish I could say it was masking my entire sunburn, but thankfully I've got shirts that do that just fine. (And wouldn't it be scary if I was that hairy?!) Still, the hair around my mouth seems to be doing the trick. No more irritated skin in the early morning when I take a sharp razor to my face while I'm still half asleep. So even if growing a goatee is just a short-term solution to my problem, it's still a solution. And now that I think about it, if it brings me one step closer to Jennifer Garner, well ... who am I to complain? Maybe next time I'll grow one without having a sunburn.