When the Eye Hits Our Beard Will be Black

Some Of Us Are In Its Path

It’s a mad scramble on the Texas/Mexico border as folks rush to secure their homes. The storm is imminent. It has not (as we type this on Tuesday afternoon) been upgraded to a hurricane, but CNN assures that it will be a hurricane before it makes landfall and that it will most likely take the lives of all those in its wake (we embellish slightly for dramatic effect). If you’ve never lived through a hurricane, it’s likely that you are unaware of the ritual known as the hurricane party. Allow us to illuminate.

There are many things you need pre-hurricane — not least of which is alcohol. Two years ago, when Dolly struck, the Rio Grande Valley lost power for 24 hours. We spent a night sitting in candlelight, listening to winds strip fence boards from their posts. It was magical, because we were drunk. Sans drunkeness the hurricane experience is terrifying. Every bit of debris screaming under the power of 100-mile-per-hour gusts seems destined to destroy you. Anxiety suffocates your sober mind. A good buzz, however, brings out the music of the catastrophic weather. The magnitude of the situation aches for passive aggression. Some folks spray paint taunts across their boarded-up windows — phrases like, “Rock me like a hurricane.” Others wear rain coats and sit in lawn chairs in their front yard. And many more get together in hives and dance and drink as the melee ensues, sucking down drink until the sun parts the clouds.

There are other things you need, of course: Ice, flashlights, first aid kits, board games, bullets for your guns, canned meats, condoms, a wine opener, a flare gun, a weather radio (which is like a radio but it only plays the weather), several gallons of gasoline, a bathtub filled with water (maybe for drinking, maybe for washing), books, magazines, marshmallows, needle and thread, flotation devices, and, apparently, Just for Men.

This from Wikipedia:

Just for Men is a hair coloring product designed for men and manufactured by Combe Incorporated. Just for Men is designed to color gray hair with a young, natural hair color. Another line of Just for Men products has been designed for coloring gray hair in men’s beards, sideburns, and mustaches, and the Touch of Gray product is intended for gradual hair coloring.

Ingredients include Ethoxydiglycol (an organic solvent), Oleyl Alcohol, Vegetable Fatty Acid, Ethanolamine (solvent and alkalizer), Erythorbic Acid (antioxidant and sunscreen), Trisodium EDTA (protects the other ingredients against water-born copper), Polyquaterium-22 (polymer conditioner), p-Aminophenol and p-Phenylenediamine (reactive coloring agents), Resorcinol, and Hydrogen Peroxide.

The product is available in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Israel, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. In the U.S.A., the product sells for around $10 per application, which can last from one to six weeks; reviews are somewhat mixed.

You might be asking yourself, “Why the fuck is Dark Sky Magazine talking about Just for Men when a hurricane is about to beat down their doorstep?”

Great fucking question.

This afternoon we braved the supermarket to gather supplies. It took us half an hour to park. Every space in the lot was taken by those fearing for their lives. Without water and canned meat surely they would perish. The store was thick with patrons. The shelves were spare of staples. We had to lug our baskets through bundles of fat assholes with Vienna Sausages cradled in their arms like babies. We had to kill an 80-year-old woman with the tip of our umbrella in order to secure the last gallon of drinking water in the store (a lie). We had to beat a seven-year-old unconscious and pry the last available 24-pack of beer from his tight-clenched hand (also a lie). We were there for several hours, but we got what we needed.

The line for the cashier was the worst part. Lines stretched back into the aisles and folks cursed and jockeyed for position. It took us nearly half an hour to get checked out. When we placed our goods on the conveyer belt, we noticed the man behind us. He must have been in his forties. He looked mildly aloof. He didn’t have a basket. In his hands, blatant and solitary, gentle the way babies are gentle, he clutched a box of Just for Men beard dye. We looked at the box. We looked at him.

“You know, there’s a ‘cane in the gulf.”

He nodded.

Later, when the belt had drawn our groceries enough forward space to allow the man to set his proposed purchase behind them, we glanced back at the Just for Men box, and then to the purchaser of said cosmetic product.

He wiped both sides of his beard with his hand, as if to call our attention to the gray strands sprouting from his face, as though his most sincere worry at that point was to paint a new color on the billboard calling attention to his face.

We were jealous as hell.

We realized we were standing by the most free man in the entire universe.

Did he own a house, a car? Did he have children, a wife? Did he depend on a job? Or have any reason for money at all, save for the obvious reason, which was to purchase beard dye? And why? Why was he so fortunate, while staring down death (and make no mistake, a hurricane can kill the fuck out of you), to be able to take a moment (or several) and think only of his beard?

And then for a moment, we thought perhaps he was god. God with a bad beard, in deep South Texas, just waiting on a little rain. – Brian Allen Carr

Video: Your Beard is Weird