The Best Time I Shaved a Stranger’s Face

by Jen Doll

The guy was Australian, though I didn’t know that at first. He was sitting next to me at the bar, doodling with great intensity in a journal resting in front of him. It’s unclear what led me to interact with him, but it probably had to do with his concentration on anything not the bartender, another drinker, or an attempt to get another drink. Plus, people who write in journals in bars are just aching for you to talk to them, right?

“What are you working on?” I asked, although, to be clear, I never meant it as a come on. It was one of those bars where people just talked to each other, and at the time, I was unemployed. I was getting my conversations where I could.

“It’s my diary,” he said, his Australian accent emerging. He had been in the city for a time period I’ve since forgotten — maybe a month? — and traveling in the U.S. for longer. He was something of an artist and something of a poet and something of a writer, but also a musician, or so he said. He had a name with many, many syllables. Though he was blond he was not the strapping young towhead you imagine meeting at Semester at Sea as a college sophomore; he was short, as men go, and more of a plum than an apple or ruler or pear. He was middle-aged and clad in a sleeveless green tank top (he called it a singlet), which revealed extensively tattooed arms. His crowning glory was a lush, full goatee, from moustache to chin, and back again.

We had drinks. We had more. I became obsessed with the goatee.

“How long have you had it?” I asked. “Have you ever thought about getting rid of it?” “Isn’t it a lot of upkeep?” “What does it feel like?” And so on.

Patiently, he answered. He confessed that he was considering shaving it all off, that it was starting to get old, that sometimes it made his face itch, and that not all the ladies were fond of it. He was quite forthcoming.

I nodded, understandingly. I had an idea. I allowed it to marinate.

Perhaps an hour later we were at another bar, just down the street. There he told me he had a 16-year-old daughter, back in Australia, that he’d married young and had been “into some trouble” early in life. Maybe he’d even been in prison. It wasn’t related, exactly, but it was at that point that I sprung my great idea.

“I live really close,” I said. “Listen: We could shave your face.”

He looked at me hazily, unclear as to what I was offering, exactly. But, truly, it was simple: I was offering to shave his face.

He agreed. We got to my apartment. I did not have shaving cream — I never do — but I did have a splendid array of face soaps and moisturizers, shower gels and special styling potions. I also had a brand new pink Gillette, which I unwrapped his presence, as if I were a tattoo artist showing off my never-used equipment. Look at how safe you’ll be with me!

First we used scissors for a trim, and then, with an application of St. Ives Cucumber Melon body wash, the lather was made, and the razor was scraped along the ruddy facial skin of this man I had just met.

Was this safe? Probably not, not least because I, any number of wines in, was holding the razor. (There’s also the matter of having a strange man in your apartment, which is generally not advisable.) But not a knick or scratch was made. I felt some satisfaction in that a previously unknown, not even considered, career option had been revealed; if nothing else worked out, I could shave faces. And shave them well. His newly revealed skin was soft, vulnerable, almost babylike, free of the wiry tendrils now decorating my sink. This was my Svengali/Professor Higgins/Jonathan Antin moment!

Alas, I should have known, there is no such thing as a free shave. Soon the newly hairless Australian had outworn his welcome. He had become babylike, just like his face, and I could barely look at him, or perhaps I was simply tired from all the exertion. Maybe it has something to do with the years of bikini waxes women have suffered, ostensibly for men, or going even further back, with Samson and Delilah — but in any case, once the hair was gone, so was my interest. Once you’ve shaved a guy’s face, what else is there, really? This is the definition of moving too fast.

He left me with his number. I think he texted once. We never spoke again — shaving face, as it were.

I imagine, though, that he soon left town — oddly lighter, the way one feels after a particularly freeing haircut, his green singlet setting off his smooth, pink-hued cheeks, suddenly bare to the wind and rain and sun — but also heavier in this newfound knowledge of razor-wielding New York City women, whom, he must have explained to inquiring pals, would just as soon shave your face and kick you out as they would be taken out to a proper dinner. And he wouldn’t be wrong, necessarily.

On the other hand, his fresh-faced new look would have cost him far more than the price of a drink or two had he gotten his shave in a New York City salon, so you might even say I’d done him a favor.

Jen Doll is a staff writer at the Village Voice, co-helming the Voice’s news blog, Runnin’ Scared.