A few weeks back I decided to grow a moustache as a kind of novelty. I stopped shaving for a week or so and then removed all hair save that which befits a typical moustache of the kind my dad or Joe Walsh would have had back in the '70s. Late that afternoon I went to the gym for in my daily pursuit of reversing all the time I spend sitting each day. I went to the locker room to shower and as I was getting dressed, a young man approached me. He then quietly asked if he could perform oral sex on me. Stupefied, all I could say was something like a quick 'um...no.' Then he ran off.
What? Come on. I could hardly believe this solicitation. Immediately, I connected the dots, lamenting that in this new millennium, it is clearly out of bounds for a heterosexual man to wear a moustache. I mean, what about Dennis Hopper from Easy Rider or Goose from Top Gun? My dad and his generation didn't know how well they had it. Here, in this day I have unassumingly wandered into some kind of discreet cruising code and I had managed to have given off the impression I was keen to have a covert encounter.
The same evening, I was taking my lady friend out to an Old 97s show in downtown LA. It was great show by the way. As we walked to the venue holding hands, we approached a homeless fellow/troubadour rapper/street performer. As he saw us he called out "yeah! alright that's a man right there taking care of his lady!" A few more steps then changed his tune into a kind of syncopated "whoa!! not the moustache, aww man, you cant do that, you got to shave that off brother!"
That's when I decided that the moustache had come to the end of its 9 hour run.
Such is the fickle hand (face?) of fashion. One day, LA will be free of moustache discrimination.
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