Desperate Husbands

Hairy scary

‘Don’t come near me with that thing,’ says Jocasta, from her side of the bed. ‘You look like a sleazy creep. It’s like a dead slug, just sitting there on your face. It makes you look disgusting.’

It’s true the moustache doesn’t suit me. For a start, it has somehow made my nose grow bigger. ‘How is that possible?’ I ask Jocasta, but she refuses to look, preferring to engage with a magazine photo essay on the actor Viggo Mortensen.

On a beach holiday, the normal order must be overturned. Women who usually don’t give a damn about bikini waxing and nail polish are suddenly mad for it. Men who’ve spent the year meekly pruning and defoliating let their beards go wild. It’s like dress-up time for grown-ups. And so I’ve got the mo.

It begins under the shower, halfway through shaving off a week’s growth. ‘I could stop right here and have a mo,’ I think to myself, and there seems no reason not to. These are the liberations of the Australian beach holiday. You can slough off your workaday self at the same time you slough off your clothes. In a pair of sluggos, you could be anybody. For instance, the sort of guy who has a mo.

‘What sort of guy has a mo?’ I ask Jocasta, as she hovers with her magazine, chanting the word ‘Viggo’ in the hypnotic manner of a Sufi priest. ‘A sleazy, creepy guy,’ says Jocasta distractedly, as she turns the magazine to better appreciate another shot of Viggo.

I don’t think she’s right. As a mustachioed man, I think I’d be more decisive, more manly, stricter with myself and with the world. I’d probably drink less and be able to play sport. The question is: is it worth gaining all of the above if I also get a bigger nose?

‘Do you think my nose has actually grown bigger or does it just look bigger?’ I ask Jocasta, but she doesn’t seem to hear me.

‘What colour of nail polish do you think Viggo would like on a woman?’ is all she says, rocking her magazine from side to side to better appreciate the effect of sunlight on the actor’s skin.

‘Pink,’ I suggest. ‘An actor would love something theatrical.’ I’m hoping an answer from me might garner one from her; a tactic which fails to work. ‘He’s not just an actor, you know,’ says Jocasta. ‘He’s also a poet, a horseman, and he speaks ten languages.’

The next day we’re playing beach cricket. Jocasta is bowling, wearing bright pink nail polish on her toes. She’s never worn nail polish in her life but such are the transformations of the beach. Our mate Neil whacks the ball hard, on a fast, low trajectory. I stretch to the left, wondering whether I’ll miss the ball entirely as usual or instead catch it, fumble for a while, and then drop it. I look down to check the manner of my disgrace only to find the ball nestled sweetly in my hand. In a summer of sporting firsts, here’s another. I’ve caught a cricket ball. The moustache has more power than I thought.

During the 1970s, I spent most of my leisure time trying to summon up a single chest hair on my otherwise hairless torso. I’d brace my body, shut my eyes, hold my breath and squeeze. Under this sort of pressure the usual result was an explosive fart, together with the odd ruptured pimple. But the hoped-for hair never put in an appearance.

Hair seemed to be some sort of code for masculinity. On TV, cricketers like Dennis Lillee mocked me with their ever-larger moustaches. Schoolmates would undo successive shirt buttons to reveal gorilla-like thatches. There was so much pure manliness knotted inside the bodies of my compatriots, it just kept bursting out – that seemed to be the unstated message. ‘Mate, every time I have a shower, more of it grows; I just can’t help myself’ – that seemed to be what they were saying.

As a teenager whose main interests were theatre and the odd book, I needed all the masculinity I could get. Desperate, I considered pasting onto my chest a poultice of Dynamic Lifter; or, at last resort, the purchase of a chest wig. The chest wig I rejected due to the cost; the Dynamic Lifter due to the quite incredible smell.

As the seventies wore on, the hair on every bloke’s head became progressively longer and less restrained. Some attempted sideburns, beards, even mutton chops. Chest hair, if it could be summoned up, was proudly displayed – framed in the V-for-victory of a partially unbuttoned body shirt. Women, too, threw away their blades and let hair joyfully sprout from their legs and underarms. With every year that passed, the country became hairier. By 1976, it appeared the nation would soon resemble Cousin It from The Addams Family, with severe consequences for road safety.

Finally, through dint of effort, some time around my early twenties I achieved a small fuzz on the upper lip and just enough chest hairs to award them individual names. (‘Hi Trevor’, ‘Hi Douglas’, ‘Hi Angelique’.) And now, years on, right at the end of the summer holidays, I have finally graduated to the mo – and with it the yearned-for masculinity.

Some strangers wander up and join our cricket game. They must think of me as a mustachioed man, and of Jocasta as a woman who habitually wears pink nail polish. I find this strangely appealing. One of the newcomers takes up the bat and hooks the ball skywards. It arcs up high, sits for a moment and then heads down towards me. There’s an eternity in which to position myself and contemplate the catch. For me, this signals disaster: the more time I have to think about a catch, the more time my mind has to catalogue all the ways in which I’ll drop it.

As the ball falls, I remember the time when I was the assistant coach of Batboy’s baseball team. Steve, the coach, would put me on first base and try to teach the boys the rules of the game. ‘The batter,’ he’d explain, ‘runs towards first base, and at the same I throw the ball – really fast and hard – towards Richard like this . . . ‘

There’d be a pause as they all watched the ball travel towards me.

‘Yeah, OK, well let’s just imagine he caught it,’ Steve would say, brightly. ‘If he’d caught it, that runner would then be out.’

Back at the beach, I can feel everyone watching me. Never before has a ball moved so slowly; so precisely towards a waiting fielder. It must be the easiest catch in the history of beach cricket. I scrunch up my eyes, jerk my arms into the air and feel the ball drop perfectly into my hands. ‘Great catch,’ someone yells. I breathe out, and give the moustache an appreciative rub. The thicker the mo gets, the more my play resembles that of a young Dennis Lillee.

‘I think it’s changed your personality,’ says Jocasta that night, as she changes her nail polish colour to an electric sapphire blue. ‘What happened to the man I shacked up with – incompetent, self-pitying, hopeless at games and unable to control his drinking? Frankly, I’d got used to that guy.’

Maybe she has a point. What sort of guy has a moustache? Not a guy like me. The mo has to go. So does her nail polish, and the magazine with Viggo. The next morning, the last day of our holidays, I shave the thing off. Almost instantly, my nose returns to its normal size. We have a final game of beach cricket with Jocasta bowling, her toes reassuringly unadorned. I take the bat, miss her first three balls, and get clean-bowled on the fourth.

The holidays are over; and so is the new me.