Goatee

I had long hair and a goatee for a long time growing up. I kept the goatee for almost 10 years, and the long hair from middle school until my second semester of college, one semester too long. To make matters worse, since it was the late 90s, I had one of those Kurt Cobain, shaved underneath, overgrown bowl cuts. I grew the goatee a few years after growing my hair long, when I was 15. There are a couple of reasons for this decision. In middle school, I would occasionally meet people who were unsure of my gender. I wouldn’t meet them as much as respond to their vocal “criticisms” as I walked down the halls of my school. I was a few years past the age where the telemarketer on the phone would ask if I was the “lady of the house,” and I had no desire to relive those experiences.

The main catalyst in my decision to grow a goatee came when I was 15. I was playing in a jazz group that met and rehearsed at an assisted living group home housed in an apartment building in northwest DC. The people who lived there would come to watch us each time we met. They’d saunter or limp in to the best of their ability, assisted often by a walker, or sometimes they’d be wheeled in by one of the nurses. They brought with them the smells and sounds and complaints of old folks. They thought it was a concert, and would clap when we stopped in the middle of a tune. They must have wondered why we often played tunes several times in a row. It must have been about the second or third rehearsal that we had an especially crowded room and the only available seat was next to an elderly woman. After a minute or two, she turned to me and said, “Are you a boy or a girl?” in her thin, raspy, old lady voice. I was pretty used to this kind of question, so I said, “I’m a boy,” and she replied, “Then show me.” I was shocked, and decided to point at my somewhat shaggy sideburns. I didn’t realize at the time what I might have shown her to prove my masculinity. The thought didn’t even cross my mind until at least a few hours later. Instead of dealing with these questions, I decided to grow a goatee.