“He was serious—he did have a serious moustache—but he also had a lot of dreams she liked to hear about, like his dream to build a giant electric brain at the top of Mt. Everest.”
Young Man with a Moustache
by Jeffery Ryan Long
The young man with a moustache worked at the internet café in our town. All of us thought it was rather extraordinary of him, especially in those days, to wear the moustache by itself; no sloppy beard to dwarf it, no sculpted goatee to subtract from its singularity, no exaggerated, tongue-in-cheek sideburns to comically frame it, to suggest he really wasn’t taking it seriously. No, the moustache lay stark and dark, well groomed over his mouth so naturally it looked as if he’d been born with it, even though we knew he’d just grown it the summer before we started our freshman year in college.
You might not think it so extraordinary the young man wore only a moustache when so many others, at least in those days, dared not. That he simply wore a moustache, perhaps, is not so special—but as a moustache it was a magnificent specimen. We later learned he’d grown it in hopes of appearing “Lennon-esque,” a tribute to the 1967 incarnation of that ubiquitous being, now deceased, whose name and likeness has infiltrated every strata of popular culture. But the young man’s moustache operated on a higher level, strove for something even more universal, more powerful. We all thought it was, more appropriately, “Stalin-esque.” Unlike Lennon’s, where two distinct wings were separated by a vague perforation—the groove in the middle of the upper lip—this young man’s moustache hung like a single piece of thick fabric, per Stalin’s in the photographs. Mandelstam’s caterpillar. It was a nearly straight bar over the lips, which spilled into two short ledges at the corners of the mouth. Whatever Stalin’s faults as a political leader, or as a human being, the former General Secretary of the Communist Party could maintain a striking moustache. This is what gave the young man an authoritarian presence as he stood at the counter cash register, his lower lip working like a scoop to collect the foam the moustache had gathered from his cappuccino. We all looked up from our keyboards, our coffees having long since gone cold, and fingered our naked upper lips in the reflection of the computer monitors.
People commonly mistook the young man for someone much older than his eighteen or nineteen years. Old women referred to him as “sir” and businessmen coming in for quick espressos would idly make conversation with him about stocks and sports, to which he would reply with the same nervous smile (which came off as a knowing grimace from under the moustache). We heard that his own mother, once the young man’s moustache had grown firmly in place, had panicked when she’d glimpsed the “strange man” from the corner of her eye, walking through her house wearing only boxer shorts. And his father, we also heard, now felt uncomfortable when he gave the occasional lecture or piece of advice; he felt he was speaking to his father, instead of the only son sitting to the side of him, slouching on the couch with the TV remote control in his hand, obviously thinking about other things, greater things.
The young man’s first girlfriend—and I’m speaking of the girl who was with him when he made the transition from ordinary, clean shaven student to the young man with the moustache, homo superior—had had similar discomforts and apprehensions. Her first problem, which arose when the young man’s moustache was grown out, was that her father had had a moustache in his college days. She’d seen pictures of the dashing fraternity jock, his hair long, a can of American beer in each hand, his tight body tanned by some coastal sun. There were also the playful snapshots, close-ups of his face with the tips of the moustache curled into perfect circles. Although her father now went without facial hair, the young man, disconcertingly, reminded her of the times when she was an admiring child and her mother showed her those photographs to prove what a handsome man her husband used to be. The young man’s moustache brought issues to the surface his first girlfriend didn’t feel responsible to address yet, at this time in her life, when by all rights she was supposed to interact with boys the complete opposite of her dad.
Then there were the stares the couple drew when walking about town. The men sitting in the reclining chairs in the barbershop once saw them hand in hand on Main Street—when she glanced through the front window she saw them smiling, elbowing and winking at one another. Mothers holding their children by the arms in the candy store would look over the gummy snacks and click their tongues. She heard one of them mutter “Cradle robber” under her breath. The first girlfriend was indignant. After all, she was older than the young man by a month and a half.
But she stayed with him longer than anyone expected, despite the sly looks and whispered comments. We learned that she had actually liked him. He was serious—he did have a serious moustache—but he also had a lot of dreams she liked to hear about, like his dream to build a giant electric brain at the top of Mt. Everest. This brain would transmit optimistic thoughts telepathically to all the people in the world, in the form of electric waves, thereby sponsoring good feelings among mankind. He believed this giant brain was the key to world peace. Even though she didn’t quite believe like he believed, she liked that his heart was in the right place.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t just the two of them in that utopian world, living through fantasies of electric brains and genetically engineered cats with wings, and she knew it. That the world was watching and judging her against the young man with the moustache began to grind away at her affection for him. “It’s just—anachronistic,” the American Studies instructor said about the moustache one day. Even though neither one of them knew what he meant, they guessed that it wasn’t wholeheartedly positive.
The end came at Burger Castle. We were there watching the young man and his girlfriend in line from our booth, having just joined our fries into a collective, forming a large enough pool of ketchup from individual packets. The young man stared up to the menu board, serious as always, stroking the moustache deliberately with his thumb and index finger. When he put his arm around his girlfriend and nestled in close, asking her what she wanted, that’s when she heard it. We knew she heard it because we heard it too, over the frying apple pies and the yelling from the kitchen, the slide of wasted wrappers from the trays to the garbage cans, the opening and closing of the entrance and exit doors. “Lolita,” someone said from behind them in line—and although he either didn’t notice it or pretended not to notice, her head went down, her hair falling into her face.
He maneuvered her to the cash register, they ordered, and he took their tray and went to a table. We couldn’t hear them anymore; we just saw her standing over the table after he’d sat down, shaking her head. He looked up at her, puzzled only in his eyes, his mouth open under the moustache we knew she was really talking to. Then she brushed the hair out of her face and walked away, out the door, while he sat hunched over the food wrapped in paper. He must have been so depressed he couldn’t even finish; the fries were left untouched and the bacon burger only half eaten when he picked up his Coke and left. All of our fries were gone, the ketchup smeared into the paper tray covering, and after we discussed briefly how “too bad” it all was, we threw our garbage away and went back to our houses, all of us a little ashamed.
He became, for all of us, a hero after that—not in the way that Captain America was our hero, but how Tom Thumb or those fat twins on little motorcycles would have been our heroes had they lived in our town. We followed his movements closely, reporting on what we’d seen him do or say in class. One of us (I swear it wasn’t me) even made a half-assed attempt to grow a moustache—he hid the early stages of it by covering the lower half of his face with his hand when he sat down, even when he talked, so that whatever he said was unintelligible. We made him pull the hand away and saw the thin patches of incoming hair. We convinced him to shave it before he made a fool of himself. We knew that even if he grew it for weeks, for months, it would never achieve the majesty of the young man’s. From what we saw, and I’ll admit it was still in the early stages, this moustache looked like a stringy affair, not something you’d want to imprint on a coin. Besides, we could only have one young man with a moustache.
“Did you hear what he said in English today? It made absolutely no sense at all.”
“He’s always a step ahead—that much is for sure.”
And there was our constant vigilance from our computers at the internet café; we’d always watch his interactions with other customers. One day, a heavyset woman in a business suit looked through her purse at the cash register. He handed her the hot chocolate she’d ordered and then began to leaf through his biology textbook.
“I think it’s great, what you’re doing,” she said, giving him a five dollar bill.
“Oh—thank you.”
“I went back to school four years ago, got my MBA. Yeah—whoo!” She exclaimed this softly and made a motion with her arms in the air. “Now I’m making fifty grand a year. Not bad for a divorcee—formerly housewife, thank you very much—who got her GED.” She said this last part conspiratorially, leaning into the cash register.
The young man nodded.
“So when did you decide to go back?”
“Go back?” We knew he was confused, but a moustache like that would never allow confusion to show on the face.
“You know, back to school. Were you working, then just up and decided that a higher education was what you really needed? Career, and all that stuff? That’s sort of how it was for me. And Jamie, my daughter, started getting all the brochures, the letters in the mail, and I just thought ‘why not?’ I guess got the bug, too. Best thing I could have ever done in my life.”
“Yes,” the young man said.
“Well, have a good day,” the woman said as she took the hot chocolate and turned away. Then we saw her set the drink on an empty table and begin to look through her purse once again. She pulled out a business card and returned to the register.
“Look, here’s my card,” she said, holding it out with two fingers, each fingernail painted a dark shade of maroon that matched her blazer. He took the card and looked at it. “I don’t—I don’t really give it to that many people, but I thought well, if you needed some financial advice—what with your new future and all.” She smiled. “Or, if you just wanted to chat, have some dinner—okay. Bye.” She went out the door, came back in when she realized she’d left the hot chocolate on the table, took it and left again; this while the young man stood at the register still holding the card in front of him with both hands. We all turned from our computers to one another, each of us making silent “whoahs” it would have been ridiculous to see the young man make, because his moustache exacted so particular a temperament. That afternoon, while playing videogames in someone’s basement, we went through dozens of scenarios, all of them concerning a date and ensuing love affair between the young man and this older, heavyset professional woman.
The aspects of the young man’s life upon which we most speculated were the times he wasn’t around, not at school or work. What, for instance, did he do on nights off? The young man didn’t have any friends; we were certain he’d probably lost patience with too many others in the past. After his first girlfriend had broken up with him we didn’t see him around the river, or at the go-kart track, or in the pool hall next to the grocery store. When we did see him, he was always alone, the moustache set and intent, his mind focused only on the unknown mission. One of us said he saw the young man at the stationary store, buying pencils and notebooks. This led to a number of theories: perhaps, after the TV set was turned off and his parents were asleep, the young man retired to his room to write the pamphlets and manifestoes which would inevitably lead him to greatness, a greatness we were proud to recognize so early. The young man was more interesting than our college classes or our own quick romances. He kept us small, and by doing so enlarged our imaginations.
Then we heard the young man was dating someone new. They’d been seen at the movie theater, his one hand in hers, the other mechanically moving from the bucket of popcorn to his mouth. She was a high school teacher’s daughter who, unlike all of us who were merely students still living in our parents’ homes and having our mothers do our laundry, was working for a living at the bank next to the butcher. We were impressed she worked for a living straight out of high school instead of killing four years before having to work for a living. Her maturity and her forty-hour a week work schedule seemed to put her and the young man with the equally mature moustache on the same level. We all believed nothing could spoil the relationship.
One Friday night one of us, with the girl he was dating at the time, was in the back seat of his father’s car at the local make-out point: a wide, uninhabited dead end with the creek just a few yards from the road, the branches of trees hanging over the parked cars. He’d seen the young man with the moustache pull up and park with his new girlfriend through the window while he was on top of his date, and told us he crawled off of her right after he had removed her bra.
“What are you doing?” she’d said, after he fixed his shirt around his shoulders and slid closer to the backseat window in order to look at the parked car.
“Shh,” he said. “I just want to see what he does.”
“What are you, some kind of pervert?”
“Look, can we just play the radio a while, or something?” he said. “A guy doesn’t get an opportunity like this every day.”
He told us he couldn’t really see what was happening in the young man’s car. It was either too dark or the new couple was below the level of the windows. But he said for one second he caught a flash of white skin and he didn’t even know what body part it was. We were all disappointed he hadn’t seen more, but we clapped him on the back for the effort. We pictured the young man and his new girlfriend kissing for hours, saying nothing, and when their lips parted we pictured her with a moustache as well—a red one, right under her nose, where the young man’s moustache had chafed the skin with its rough contact.
A nasty rumor spread round shortly after: the new girlfriend had asked the young man to shave. None of us could believe she had the gall. In recompense, we began a plot to sabotage their relationship but quickly nixed the idea. It was the young man’s test, and he wouldn’t let us down. He wouldn’t stop defying everyone with his soul-stunning moustache just for a girl. He’d taken us too far. Nevertheless, we kept closer tabs on him, nervous surveillance with walkie-talkies and shotgun mikes to monitor the status of the moustache. Each day over the span of two weeks ended with a sigh-provoking “All clear—the subject has been spotted and the moustache remains.” We eased up a bit, relaxed, began to bowl again and ride our mountain bikes through the woods. One of us, playing videogames online at the internet café, saw the new girlfriend kiss the young man right at his cash register, the moustache falling over their joined lips like a protective blanket. We thought everything would be okay. Our faith in the young man with the moustache deepened.
After a quick pick up game of basketball at the schoolyard one weekend we decided to go to the internet café for milkshakes—we could get them at a discount because we were students at the college. When we walked in, we all sort of froze into a row in front of the door. Believe it or not, I actually walked back outside to check the name of the establishment; it was the same as it had always been. And there were the same trash cans, the same water thermos and paper cone cups, the same computers, the same menu board, the same posters of coffee beans in outer space, coffee beans swirling around the head of a rooster, the same espresso machine behind the counter. And there was the same young man at the register—except that now he was simply a young man, nothing more. The moustache was gone. He met our eyes and smiled at us while we stared at him. He looked ten to twenty years younger. The face was common—good looking, maybe, but nothing close to dictatorial. Now he was one of us, hardly even a young man anymore, just another guy.
A few said nothing, just lowered their heads and left. A few picked up magazines from the rack and sat down, not knowing what else to do, frequently looking away from the articles to convince themselves that there he was, with no moustache, and that it was over. Then there were a few of us, myself included, who swallowed hard and went up to the register, who ordered our milkshakes and made small talk with him about exams, about papers to write. It’s difficult to portray the awkwardness of that exchange—only one whose heart has been that invested, whose dreams have been contained in a single splendid thing, now gone, could understand.
The shock, it seems strange to say, didn’t last for long. We went back to our computers for email and now we ate muffins that crumbled over the keyboards despite the rules, tipped the guy irregularly, and sometimes even played practical jokes on him, which he didn’t take so well. In other words, we treated him as we would any other employee at any other establishment: without the deep respect, even awe, we’d shown him before. I could say we learned, eventually, that we really hadn’t lost anything. I could say it was like we all had had tails—we were born with them, we lived with tails all our lives and therefore considered them important. Then one morning we woke up without tails and we discovered we never really needed them in the first place, and that life was actually more comfortable without having to drag a tail around. I could say, in shaving his moustache, the young man set us free. And he did, in a way, but into what? Soon we were drinking beers in the back of pickup trucks, parked for hours outside all night diners. Soon we were just barely passing our classes, hung over from Jell-O shots at fraternity house parties. I had to get out of town. I transferred to State University the next year, after working at a car dealership in the summer.
I actually saw him again, a few years later, when I’d come home to celebrate Thanksgiving with my folks. I’d heard he’d gotten a job at the video rental place and had an office in the back. He’d broken up with his girlfriend long ago. I ran into him at a bar—I offered to buy him a drink and he accepted, but only on the condition that I let him buy me one after. We talked about a few of the classes we’d taken together at the college, about certain professors and girls whom we’d both had crushes on. It was pleasant. He was wearing one of those—those chin things, cut very close so that it almost looks like a shadow at the end of your chin. It was a goddamn shame. After a few drinks I almost confessed to him that when he’d had his moustache, he’d been the greatest man alive—to me, to all of us.
But then I thought about it and decided to keep my mouth shut. Nobody ever wants to hear those kinds of things.
# # #
As of this printing, Jeffery Ryan Long is in the process of relocating from Hawaii to Italy. He enjoys music and is very new to the works of John Sanford, a writer his friend has begged him to read. Aside from biking, walking is the greatest inspiration behind Jeffery's stories. He has most recently been published in Labyrinth Inhabitant, The Last Man Anthology, and Hawaii Review, and is currently working on a fantasy novel.
© 2010 Jeffery Ryan Long, All Rights Reserved
1 comments:
I'm looking forward to reading your fantasy novel. Let me know when it comes out!
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