I was hanging with a friend last week. I love her. She knows who she is, and so does her boyfriend, but I’m not going to tell you who they are, and you shouldn’t try and figure it out. That’s not the point. The point is; I was telling my friend that I was thinking of shaving my face clean at the solstice. She got a mischievous glint in her eye and suggested I try and get more guys, including her boyfriend, to do likewise. In her words, “You could make it a men’s solidarity thing.”
I told her I would do no such thing. When we met up with her man later I told him what she’d tried to get me to do, and he and I had a good laugh of mustache solidarity. My friend was faux-palled, and took me to task for “selling her out” to him.
She isn’t used to men having honor with each other so let me make it clear to her, and to the rest of my female friends, sisters and potential lovers: When a woman is trying to conspire with me to manipulate a fellow man into betraying himself to suit her convenient aesthetic projections, so long as he isn’t hurting anyone, I am definitely going to “sell her out.” Just as I imagine she would if I were trying to get her to convince some woman under my spell to lose weight or start giving sloppier blowjobs, “as a women’s empowerment thing.”
One exception to this rule: If I agree with the woman’s point, in which case, I’ll just tell the man to his face, or withdraw with as much honor as possible. But when it comes to mustaches, as far as I’m concerned, the man is always right. In this, the mustache is kind of like a woman’s uterus.
Accidental Initiations 2 
http://www.jcplookbook.com/gallery/GiftsforKids/image/15/
(Mustache Honor)
I agreed to shop with my mother yesterday – she had been ill and was just recently able to go out. And when she did – I was in for a 6+ hour extravaganza of shopping. I barely shop – in fact, I usually only shop offline out of necessity. In any case, although very tired in the end, I’m glad I went. The recollections will linger into my old age, as I sit here and grumble that my mother is in better shape physically than I am (even after being ill, so, I must do something about this.)
Many stops were made, including a store I have not stepped foot into in a decade – it was/is what I consider an old school store – and where I stopped to make a care package for both you and my other pal when you resumed your tour and he resumed his hipster journey on the west coast. While I was dazzled by bright, shiny consumer objects and memories and amused by the sections which had barely changed in my decade absence – a product stood out – the above link – a little character set of mustaches. Tweens were giggling over them, whilst chattering in a language I will never master – but they looked so goddamn happy, so fucking happy at these mustaches – it was an energy that made me smile and allowed me to finish my mother’s giddy spree on a lighter/less exhausted note.
I’ve never been in on a mustache argument, nor do I understand the cultural energy expended on talking about them, joking about them, defending them, hating them …. I mostly sit by and watch, observe, soak in the mustache parade and wait for my proverbial light bulb to come on or least flutter a bit in the presence of one, but I work among a few choice great ones, and I barely notice them – so I fear my waiting may be useless and better applied in another direction.