Fall Fantasma

There is something magic and strange about this time of year that I can't totally explain. I love fall for a variety of reasons, but one perhaps is that ever since I was a child, it has brought up feelings, almost reminiscence to something intangible. It reminds me of all the longings and wishes that I have left unfulfilled and drives at me to look ahead.

Maybe it's partly that fall used to mean a new academic year, clean slate, new teachers, sometimes new school and friends. It's the feeling one gets beginning a big new project where any of the old flaws you had before get left behind. Fall signals a literal razing to the ground of the world around us. And maybe that's harsh, but it's also pretty liberating. Everything around you is full of promise and for a moment all your bad habits seem surmountable. For me fall is the essence of control over one's own destiny.

It's a time for staying inside more, for darkening hours and celebration of the hearth. Or maybe just your space heater. In fall I go crazy for pumpkin and apples and the bounty of the summer reaped now for my benefit. I like hot spiced drinks, the kind to sit and ponder. For one reason or another fall has always meant self examination, maybe that's why they're called mulling spices...

In fall I tend to think a lot about the fact that I have the capacity to keep warm and cozy, that I have the luxury to enjoy what is going on around me from a distanced, safe, point of view. There are lots of people who rather than appreciating the loveliness of the fall color change have to instead focus on the fact that the temperature will drop 20 degrees overnight. And in its way, I have to feel grateful all the more for what I do have, rather than worrying so often about what I don't. Fall holidays, even the Hallmark ones, just don't feel so contrite the way Valentine's Day hearts and Shamrocks saying "Kiss me I'm Irish!" do.

Thanksgiving is perhaps the be all and end all holiday in our house. Granted, we get more stuff over Christmas, but when I think of celebration and actual good-time family fun it's always Turkey Day that my mind wanders to. My mom taking three days off of work to make a meal. Making that meal stretch over hours and hours as 13 courses come out in their own sweet time.

As a teenager I dreaded the thought beforehand. I always wondered how on earth I'd make it through the marathon sessions of forced bonding. But at the end of every annual meal I found that the awkwardness never lasted past salad, maybe soup if it was an election year. And even if differences made their appearance, the yelling across tables over morals and values didn't leave me with a big "dysfunction" stamp on my forehead. Just the opposite, it made me think that here are people who really value what they believe in, who are willing to defend it, and do so intelligently. And at the same time, at the end of the argument we're still content to gather round and stuff our faces with mashed potatoes and discuss whether or not Jamie Lee-Curtis is a hermaphrodite.

Perhaps that kind of tolerance is reserved for one's families. But I like knowing that the people I love are capable of finding it, even if it's only for each other.

I wonder sometimes about tradition and whether growing up as a Caucasian mutt in America has left me without a sense of culture. And then I think of fall and realize that everyone creates their own traditions and these self procured ones are just as important to treasure and follow. That they are where the longstanding ones begin and grow out of. Maybe, in its way, fall is simply reminding me to find traditions I never knew I had. To long for connectedness to the things I already know. Which is a magic of its own sort, and one well worth celebrating.

On the virtues of kissing men with beards

"I hate facial hair.

Like for real."

- Me, my whole life

Ok. So that quote is more of a paraphrase. But, ask any friend worth their salt and they will tell you that indeed, for most of my adult and pre-adult life I have been terribly disposed against those growing follicle gardens in the region of their eyes, nose and mouth. I railed on significant others who felt it acceptable to leave their chins untended for any period of time, bemoaned the pains I endured when shaving was missed with any regularity. I'm not sure where I picked it up, but for most of my dating history I have been weirdly selective towards men with the faces of new born babes.

There were other preferences, all of varying degrees and strengths. I broke and re-applied these general tendencies as my dates came and went. And while a few of the hardcore personality dealbreakers stayed (liberals only need apply, smokers will not be accepted) almost all of my more superficial dating "rules" began to fall like so many dominos. Tall was clearly a draw but not, it appeared, a necessity. Ditto for "bookish" boys with wire rim glasses and skinny-minny frames. The strong features, especially noses, and that paler than average skin often made its appearance but was not in fact found in all cases. I seemed to be willing to expand my horizons. Except for the facial hair thing. It wouldn't budge. I was approached and I rebuffed. I encountered and I turned tail and ran. Unlike all the other little peculiarities I'd managed to surmount, I just couldn't seem to get past this one.

Beards and mustaches always struck me as sort of odd and other-worldly. On the one hand I maintain that for a long time they reminded me of paternal figures. My dad and most of his brothers have always had facial hair. I guess I associate it with a father/uncle kind of vibe. Nice perhaps but not what you want when you want to get in the mood. Like my dad's aftershave and his Old Spice deodorant, beards and 'staches were something belonging to an older time period, an earlier simpler era. When I pictured full beards I thought ragtime music and the man on the Monopoly box. Then in the early teen years, things swung entirely the other way. No longer friendly and asexual, boys growing in hair on their chins tended to look Darwinianly pathetic in their overly eager attempts to come off macho or downright scary with such an "adult" feature at such a young age. Maybe because I instinctively associated it with secondary sexual characteristics in those of my peer level, and being a bit of a introverted bookworm, I decided to steer clear. Not to mention that most contemporary styles of beards look seriously silly.

The chin is not a topiary people. At least it's not for me. I'm just not into the poodle look.

That said, once you reach a certain age, there's a fair number of guys who aren't giant and intimidating or sporting strange bonsai creations on their faces. Even if you weed out the dreadlocked hippies, who I rule against more on issues of possible cleanliness (or rather lack thereof, patchouli doesn't equal a shower no matter how much you use), it's hard to deny that there are a moderate number of normal, interesting, and cool people that just happen to have hair on their faces. But for whatever reason, I simply never went out with them.

"Hey Adrienne," says my more acute reader, "I notice a whole lot of past tense there in those sentences, have the tables turned? Are you eating your words? Have you finally embraced beards with the ardor of a Celine Dion fan in line for the 37th time to get tickets to her Vegas show and scream My Heart Will Go On at the top of your lungs, because for the love of God that's one catchy tune?!?!?"

To which I reply: Uh... Woah. Simmer down there. I don't think I've ever loved anything quite that much. Except maybe my bed. But we see where that gets me.

What I'm saying is that, perhaps, just perhaps, it's possible that while I don't really like beards as a general rule, I'm coming round to one that is bearded in the singular sense of the word. I don't think I'm ever going to enjoy David Duchovny's mustached grin over his more clean shaven days. Because really, Dave, that thing looks silly. Perhaps it's not so much that our personal preferences can't be overcome, simply that sometimes you find a person embodying so many of the others, that a particular one falls off the radar. And maybe, when that happens, you can even find the validity in kissing guys with beards.