No Use For a Neck Beard                            By The Cheeth of Deeth

          

First, let me introduce myself. I am the Cheeth of Deeth. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I currently live in a land most of you have never dared tread.

It’s a place you may have contemplated venturing but in the end, couldn’t quite overcome the parade of fears and insecurity that you knew would beset you.

You stopped brushing your teeth, played shirts-and-skins ping-pong, ate wasabi by the spoonful, - anything to try and match the thrill without having to take all the pain that awaits the one who dares.

I live in the land of Neck Beard, and I am a recent arrival. Yes, just as it does in every man’s life, and lamentably, some women’s lives, the time came about two weeks back for me to grow one.

I will spare the reader most of my tale of unspeakable scorn, insults, and intense itching of my double, nay, triple chin, but rest assured, I have walked a life-changing path, lo these many days.

I sense that there may be some skeptics among those reading. I sense that some greater feat is being cited, perhaps to a friend or maybe just to your monitor-side bag of cheese puffs.

 

 

 
 
These would say, “No way, Cheeth, I’ve been skydiving,” or “No way, Cheeth, I play chess with Old Man Withers,” or “I’ve had a neck beard for thirty years.”

Yeah, well, if you can answer yes to these questions, you have my apologies and retraction:

Did skydiving make your fiancée leave angrily with a rash on her face last time you watched a movie together?

When you recently went to Vegas, did the Golden Nugget kick you out for sleeping under a blackjack table, just because you slept under there with a neck beard?

Did you get fired from your job, just because you never showed up and had a neck beard?

Oh, the questions I could ask. Don’t think, though, that a neck beard is all shame and unemployment. You should see me in my leather jacket now.

My whole wardrobe, in fact, has taken on an amazing new significance with a neck beard. I can wear that woolen scarf, and it doesn’t move an inch. No, not with a sturdy anchor of similar rough fiber it doesn’t.
 
The neck beard also serves to accentuate the greatness of my two-sizes-too-small blaze orange tee that reads, “LINDA”.

Sure, there have been fashion drawbacks, too. I lose a lot of the chest hair showing capabilities of my open collared shirts with the bulk of attention drawn to my beautiful under-chin and throat regions. Ties also become an itchy hell.

Is it worth it? Yes.

Sure, a neck beard wearer’s world is dark, but slightly bearable. It has moments of utter despair, followed by marginal satisfaction with an admiring smile from a slightly impressed colleague watching you clean out your desk.

I may not have a neck beard for the rest of my life, or today, but the experience will always guide me through rough times, especially ones where I look self-inflictedly ridiculous.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom, and probably not to shave