Chronicles of the mustache man

By MICHAEL BOYLAN

If you see me on the street over the next few weeks, do not be alarmed. I am well aware of the “growth” occurring above my lip. It is not a smudge of dirt, an alien bacteria or a dead caterpillar. It is the beginnings of a mustache and I’d appreciate all the support possible.

Much like a plant, a mustache needs a nurturing environment to grow, so please feel free to play classical music in its direction or to talk soothingly to it, encouraging it to blossom.

You may be asking yourself, Why is Mike growing a mustache? Well, the answer is quite simple and, no, I’m not aspiring to look like a pubescent Tom Selleck, nor am I concerned about the levels of my machismo.

I have recently been cast in a play and my character is a mustachioed gentleman. Instead of searching for a good looking fake, I was asked to attempt to grow a real one.

I’m working on it, but I freely admit it has been slow going thus far. Lucky for me all I have to do is not shave one part of my face during the one or two times a week that I do have to shave.

Boylans throughout history are not a particularly hairy bunch, although my grandfather now sports a Maynard G. Krebs-like soul patch. It is pretty sweet looking, so there my be hope for me yet.

I have to say that the process has been sort of fun, much like that elementary science fair project involving growing pea plants in various conditions. I have found that the mustache responds well to both Vivaldi and Metallica but it did not grow very well during my participation in the Hanson CD listening marathon.

Each morning I wake up and look in the mirror, studying the fuzz that appears to have accumulated a little bit more each night while I slept. I imagine tiny mustache fairies pulling out the little hairs above my lip with their wee little tweezers, singing a mustache song and whistling while they work.

Yes, I am that weird.

As the process continues, I have begun to research the history of the mustache. I want to learn everything I can about facial hair and unfortunately mustachetheory.com is only a pipe dream of mine and never existed on the Web.

I started to look up the history of the mustache and found that they apparently started as being worn by military men. The higher one’s rank often meant the fuller one’s mustache.

With the introduction of film, mustaches often represented villainy (see Snidely Whiplash) and Adolph Hitler did not help the cause of the mustache any with his treacherous villainy.

In addition to learning about this exciting history, I also found a myriad of styles I could adopt. I wonder what I would look like with a Dali, which is a narrow mustache with long, steeply upward pointing ends. Perhaps a Fu Manchu, a mustache with long, downward pointing ends, generally beyond the chin, would give me that distinguished look.

I do really like the handlebar, which is a bushy mustache with small, upward pointing ends, but I’m afraid that once the show is over, my mustache will only be a memory.

I have been told by my wife that I must shave it off after the show and I think I will be OK with that but I still harbor this small hope that the mustache, when complete, will be the crowning achievement of my face.

It may look like a smear of hairy fuzz now, but when all is said and done it could be as important to my look as it was to Groucho Marx or Charlie Chaplin.

I can just see me pushing the shopping cart around Kroger and having some big-time Hollywood agent (because they all shop at Kroger in Fayetteville, too) discovering me and saying, “With that mustache, you could be the next big action star. Have you ever thought of living the life of a television detective?”

I answer that of course, I have, who hasn’t and he whisks me away to a studio in Burbank, where I jump out a car and yell, “The jig is up, Mrs. Callendish. I know you killed your husband with the thigh-master!”

Perhaps this whole mustache thing has gone to my head and slowly infected my brain.

Oh, well, only five weeks left now.