Taming the Neckbeard

I'm a pretty frugal person. You might even say that I border on cheap. It's not my fault; I've got a wife, a three-year-old daughter, and five cats eating me out of house and home. As a result I try to save money wherever and however I can - one of the ways I do this is by skimping on self-care.

Yeah, I know - that's a stupid goddamn thing to do. Well, I do it anyway, mostly because I don't want to deprive my kid or wife of anything they need. Most of the time this tendency will manifest in relatively benign ways - I'll put off getting a haircut until I'm shaggier than Cousin It. Also I don't shave often because, let's face it, razors are expensive as hell.

This has been all right for some time, as I work from home and we currently live on an isolated tract of land in the middle of the Adirondacks. We've got no neighbors, and I can cultivate a Grizzly Adams look with impunity. Problem is we're moving down out of the mountains into a more metropolitan neighborhood - back to civilization - so I find myself needing to tame the glorious, tangled mess that is my neckbeard. The vast, bramble-like warren of flesh and facial hair begins just below my jawline and stretches across my tree trunk of a neck, practically down to my collarbone, and it's a fucking mess.

Normally I'd just use my beard trimmer on that bastard, as it's my primary tool in keeping my face foliage trimmed. It's great for making me look less like a short, fat Wookiee, but if you're going down to bare skin you still need to finish off with a real shave. Luckily, my quest for the cheapest alternative led me to giving one of those discount online shave clubs a month back. 

I don't know what kind of profit margin these guys have, but their products are both high-quality and cheap as hell; I tried out the free samples of their proprietary pre-  and post-shave creams that came with my initial order, fully expecting to be underwhelmed by the "top-shelf botanicals" used in these concoctions.

Well, I know when I'm licked. After I was done shaving, my skin wasn't the pitted, bloody battlefield it usually was after a rough shave. That shit felt like a band of magical nymphs thoroughly and lovingly caressed my neck for half an hour while I reclined on a golden chaise lounge, eating comically oversized bunches of grapes.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I enjoyed the experience. I always associated high-end face moisturizers, "shave butters," or anything else along those lines as pretentious and vaguely unmanly. I'm not hyper-masculine by any stretch of the imagination - I'm inherently lazy, so I'm not that into sports. This also means that while I'm perfectly capable of changing tires, chopping wood, and fighting off the black bear that keeps trying to steal our garbage can (I keep a snow shovel next to the front door just in case), I'd really rather not. 

Still, when it comes to personal care products I've always gravitated towards the simple, no-nonsense (and cheapest) options: no-frills shaving cream, shitty disposable razors, and the cheapest bottle of supermarket shampoo I can find. The Spartan-like frugality re-affirms my masculinity more than bringing down that 10-point buck that keeps eating the apples off the tree in my backyard ever would. Besides, do you know how long it takes to skin a deer? Ain't nobody got time for that. Enjoy the apples, Bambi.

Yet with the results of this morning's experiment, I find myself wondering if I'll have to embrace my inner Metrosexual going forward. I have to admit that I do look much more presentable. It's bad for my wallet, as this stuff doesn't come cheap, but it's fantastic for my imminent re-entering of normal human society. I'll have to do an extensive cost/benefit analysis and get back to you.