A Shave

At 7:30am, winter solstice morning, the electricity went out because a garbage truck was on fire. The truck’s driver, warned by a similar past event now knew he had to unload his cargo before the truck itself caught in flames.

The driver pulled the truck to the farm roadside and pressed levers to release the load. While calling his dispatcher he heard the tumble of garbage accompanied by a loud crack and crash. He hadn’t noticed the electric pole when parking the truck. Live power lines fell upon the truck. Blue sparks skipped across the wet road and surrounded the truck with a fearful light.

The truck driver, still stiffly seated before the steering wheel opened his door. He, not thinking, allowing more than curiosity to control him, timidly looked behind him to see what he had done to the electric pole.

This is how the power in the country valley was cut on the shortest day and the longest night and this is how a light-less memory, one of loving each other in a world without electric power began.

The man sat on a drop cloth on the floor, legs crossed in Yoga lotus style with shirt stripped and muscled torso twisting.

His woman photographed. Her face beamed brighter than the camera’s flash.

After 46 years the man shaved his beard. Not since he finished his term in the Air Force had he seen his face. His lover photographed the process. The virtues of digital technology allowed her to take 165 photos in sequence, creating a stop motion of events. He shaved and she photographed one stroke at a time. He posed. Laughing, he changed his role- from Kaiser Wilhelm to Jerry Garcia to Captain Kangaroo and Hitler. For all, he acted the part of an embarrassed and proud man, while the shaved beard hair collected like grey embers on his lap.

The shaving revealed a face so unlike the one framed by the woodsman beard he just had. This new face had the width and romantic flesh of a smiling cherub.

His young lover not yet subject to her own age, wondered about the lines tracing his face. His skin, his shaven cheek now so pleasing to touch and its suppleness, so free from a bearded boundary urged her to offer him more love.

He had not seen himself for 46 years. He didn’t recognize himself now, but he knew he had changed.

She had not ever seen him. She had known the sensuality within his fingers and his eyes, but the beard covered his expression and so she never really knew how much sensitivity he had applied to his way.

A small moment, one where the shedding of hair, shaved with the same steady gentleness of a portrait painter’s stroke, brought odd feelings to life.

She was happy to feel love dancing through her. He felt her love but his stomach cramped, it not knowing the difference between the excitement of fight or love.