me as a neighbor, or my recent goatee

Hi everyone,

About a month ago I grew a goatee. Then I shaved of the mustache part, and I had just a little bristle pad on my chin. Then I shaved that off.

There's a story here, believe it or not.

A month or so ago, Sarah and I felt kind of put upon by our neighbors for several reasons, some of them having to do with laundry. (This is an exciting tale, isn't it?) Well, my tactic for dealing with them was as follows:

Rather than courageously asserting my rights (as I am comfortable doing only in my daily, caffeinated rants to Sarah), I thought I might try subtly intimidating my neighbors. First, I would dress even more frequently than I do all in black, making more liberal use of my black leather jacket. Second, I would try to play a lot of Venom and perhaps King Diamond and Fantomas to create ominous, even threatening moods for those who passed outside our door. Third, I would grow a rather devilish goatee, as my tendencies to the hirsute and my black facial hair allows me to do rather quickly. (For those of you who don't know it, my hair is dark brown with subtle reddish highlights -- when clean and in the sun at least -- but my beard is black and wiry).

Well, about a week into my goatee, our downstairs neighbor knocked on the door. I appeared with baby Daisy and my goatee, wearing a Motley Crue t-shirt. Turns out my neighbor came to give the baby two big boxes of baby clothes. She was very nice, and I was touched. I smiled gratefully through my scruff -- there went my pathetic attempt to be intimidating!

This sounds like some kind of Reader's Digest feel-good essay. Oh well...