The area along my left jaw is completely smooth, and likely to never grow hair back. Today I went to get a haircut for the first time since before my beard on that area fell off. I tried explaining to Angelo the barber, a short cute hairy-forearmed Italian, but apparently he couldn't understand me. He thought that I had shaved myself there, even though I said I'd had radiation, and so he just trimmed it right down. It's a good haircut but he trimmed off the combover I had going on my left sideburn, exposing the angle of the line from the top of my ear to the side of my chin. I told him I wanted it to look even on both sides, and he told me to shave it any way I wanted. But that's why I went to him as a barber – to get someone to make it look even on both sides.
I'm sorry, but I feel very self-conscious about the way my beard looks now. I'm fine with the sprout of goatee I've got going, but I don't really want to shave every day to make it look good. My remaining righthand beard is too heavy for me to shave it so the right side looks as smooth as the left side.
(It's frustrating because I'm having other troubles with people not listening to my careful instructions. Today I got some materials from a publisher who did something completely opposite of my stated wishes, in ignorance of detailed work I had already done on a project in process.)
On another related but larger topic:
I think we as people feel uncomfortable talking about our bodies realistically – even when it pertains to sharing about our health. This feeds in part from our stigma (and dogma) around sex and is a significant way in which we alienate ourselves from our bodies. Tabu is a hardening around the heart isolating it from the head and the body.
