This cover photo taken by the lovely Sapphire-Jen Bernard.
The facial hair began in November. Was it a conscious decision? Or did he get lazy one Sunday and fail to shave off his weekly accumulation of man-scruff? None of us can remember how or why it started, not even Andrew. Suffice it to say, it started, and by early December he was working well toward a new artistic creation: “The Handlebar Meets Fu Man Chu.”
Things got worse after he found the movie “A Million Ways to Die in the West”. Something about this satirical western about a man who could not afford to grow a satisfactory mustache “embiggened” El Capitan Andrew “the Odd” Godfrey.
“Quit twirling the ends!” I nagged. “We aren’t supposed to touch our faces, you are wearing a Covid-Catcher!"
He looked me in the eye, donned his flat-lipped, “I’ll do as I please” smile, then continued to twirl, twirl, and twirl, smash, pull, adjust, etc. etc. etc.
I sighed.
Ignore it and it will go away, I told myself.
But, it did not go away. In fact, Andrew began influencing our friends for the worse leading Pete astray into a forray of matching “Handlebar Fu Man Chus.”
After enjoying the strange looks they drew from passers by, Pete shaved his off and started over to grow a monkey tail.
A week later, Pete achieves success but the satisfaction isn't as deep as he hoped. “I barely even notice it, really.” Pete says, “I mean partially that's because I see myself in a mirror once every six weeks, but it’s also because if I turn this way, it looks like a goatee, but if I turn to the right, it just looks like a beard!”
“Nifty,” I say.
“It’s like the mullet of the facial hair world!" Andrew says, gleeful that Pete’s sporting “a party on the left, and all business on the right.”
“I’m so sorry,” I mouth silently to Jen.
But Jen is probably in the crew of individuals quietly encouraging this behavior by sending a series of amusing additional facial (and body!?) hair options via our WhatsApp Group Chat:
Jen can afford to play the "Supportive Wife” because she knows Pete will shave the monkey tail off and start over the same night he completes any given facial hair project. Pete is the kind of lad that can grow hair at-will from the top of his head to all ten toes like Frodo in the span of a week. This means he generally takes the skill-set for granted and rarely delves into the ranges of ridiculousness sought by my own husband who...considers any attempt at facial hair an investment of precious time not to be thwarted by the careless wielding of a razor.
By Christmas, it was getting a tad scraggly, and Mrs. Claus must be a woman devoted to the well-keeping of her man’s flowing facial locks, because tucked into Santa's red velvet gift bag was a "precision mustache trimmer" to be left in Andrew’s stocking.
A week or so after the New Year, Andrew languished on the couch enjoying the land apartment airconditioning while obcessively smoothing Fu and Manchu from right to left.
“Are they straight? They don't seem straight," he says to me, poking his chin my direction.
“They definitely are not straight," I confirm. Both Fu and Manchu lean a little to Port as they grow out and there seems to be nothing Andrew can do to convince Manchu to turn Starboard so that he might run parallel to Fu in the proper way he should. Andrew jumps up from the couch and makes a beeline into the bathroom. I hear buzzing echoing across the tile floor, and I cross my fingers. Maybe we will be rid of this monstrosity forever more!
Andrew emerges to unveil......
“Nice," I say.
“Look!” He exclaims, “it's ready!” He twirls the ends of the mustache upward, and with some coaxing, they gather into a point and turn back on themselves to create the curly-que a’ la Colonel Sanders of the Famous Kentucky Fried Chicken.
I close my eyes and repeat my newly formed mantra “I love a man with a mustache,” which is strictly true, it just depends on where you place the emphasis: I love a man who happens to have a mustache? Or...I love the look of a man with a mustache? The mantra is intentionally vague and ambiguous.
It wasn’t very long after this that the mustache started talking. “This is brilliant!" the mustache says.
"What?" I say, looking up from my position on my yoga mat.
Andrew waves me over to the couch, rewinds the YouTube video he is watching and holds the phone before my face. The man in the video is walking through the grass toward a wooden hutch with wheels installed on the bottom. He kicks the wheel breaks up while explaining he keeps 25 rabbits on his property, scrolling the rabbit hutch down the grassy knoll every week or so to allow the rabbits to dine fresh, green, lengthy grass that has not already been gnawed on.
I look up at Andrew. “Yes....nice....you are watching YouTube videos on rabbit hutches now?" Andrew smiles at me like this is the most reasonable progression from whence he began.
I can't really tell you whence he began.
Of course, from the dawn of YouTube to the present day, Andrew's subscription list featured mostly sailors sailing various areas of the world or wishful sailors piecing together the skeletons of old sailboats. Either way, these subscriptions would be as you might expect. At some point, though, Andrew's YouTube “suggested for you" algorithm diverged from the trodden and expected path. Whether he led the algorithm there, or it led him there is anyone's guess. Maybe it started with the lead roof repair videos circa 2019, from which he learned the finer techniques of lead welding for Sonrisa's keel. Maybe it was his musical genre request for more “Dead South” (bluegrass rock complete with a giant cello, whistling, and a banjo) paired with Macklemore's moped song on repeat. However it happened, Andrew is now long down a path of videos you would never expect, including one channel at which Andrew watches a man literally saw logs each week.
Pete has tried to mock Andrew’s YouTube selection by thinking up the most random and strange things Andrew might watch, yet, Andrew always seems to beat Pete’s expectations. “Not just any rabbits!” Andrew (or maybe the mustache) exclaims, “Angora Rabbits!” He points his phone toward me, google compiling the images of Angora Rabbits.
“Mmmmhmmm....”
“Yep, I can raise rabbits and you can knit sweaters.”
Now, you might think this conversation is the likes of frivolity someone might raise while drinking too much rum and feeling a little bored. You might think that this conversation, like the mustache, would quickly fade into the history of goofy things said or pursued in the heat of jest. But this is Andrew, The Odd, Godfrey we are speaking to here. And so, weeks later you will find him diving deeper down this YouTube “Rabbithole” (pun intended!) compiling endless hours of watching videos about farms, off the grid homesteads, and goat yoga retreats.
“Do you consider yourself a hippie?” I ask him one day.
He sucks air through his teeth, tips his head to the side, then says “Uhhh....I have hippie ideas.”
“How do you square this with your identity as an engineer? Am I operating under an unfair assumption that engineers are generally not the patrons of goat-yoga retreats?”
“As an engineer, I like the idea of minimizing waste and creating processes that function intelligently in a closed system.” He says, easily and quickly as though it has always been obvious how the essence of a sailor, hippie, and an engineer overlap. “Look at this!” Now, he points a YouTube video on “Earthships” my way.
My parents are going to disown me.
Maybe this is inspired by the sudden increase in rainy-season fruit harvest here in the Seychelles where pineapples grow to be the size of small children and trees rain down with avocado toast and fruit salad.
This all continued well through January and into the beginning of February whence I found myself looking down the barrel of Andrew’s birthday with no plan for any birthday gift whatsoever. And so, I jumped on one of the greatest Facebook Groups to grace the internets - Search Seychelles - to see if I can find some beeswax.
“Why in the world do you need beeswax?” Andrew asks me one day.
“It’s a secret.” I tell him.
He shrugs.
Unfortunately, the answer is it’s not beeswax season, and there is none to be had. “Rats,” I say, deciding Andrew’s birthday gift is going to have to be symbolic at least until I can find a stash of beeswax to solve my problem. I take an empty peanut can generously offered by Sapphire Jen and design the future Oddgodfrey Mustache Wax logo from the combination of a twirly mustache and angora rabbit ears. With no beeswax, Andrew’s peanut can remains rather, empty. I make him a chocolate creme pie with blue and white stripy and sparkly candles in it to make up for the empty peanut can, and I ply him with a good amount of champagne to keep him cheerful.
“Happy Birthday, Oddgodfrey.” I tell him.
We clink each other cheers and stare hopefully into the abyss of a future that feels absolutely impossible to predict right now. The time allotted for our “five year” trip has officially expired, my back is unpredictable and annoying, Covid continues to make border entry unpredictable. Should we push pause and return home for temporary jobs? Should we call it quits and re-enter our careers like sensible people would? Should we just keep sailing until the dribs and drabs of our money runs out? Should we try to build a business at sea? If we do pause or quit, should we home to the United States? Or, is the world truly our oyster now?
My mother has always told me “life will show you where you should go next,” and I believe that. Throughout my life, it has proven itself to be true. However, my mother also says, “if something is going to happen, you have to work to make it so.” How these two seemingly opposite notions interact is a mystery to me. And where am I sitting right now? Should I be working to make something happen? If so, on what? Or, should I be looking around for life to show me where to go next? I fear if I wait around for life to come up with something, Odd will show me something truly strange next and I’ll end up posted on the moon.
“Maybe our work out sailing is not yet done, and that’s why my life-compass doesn’t seem to point anywhere, yet.” I say to Andrew.
“Rabbits,” he tells me. “Your fortune lies in rabbits.”
P.S. For the record, Katherine Hepburn agrees with me. Here she is sitting on his lap looking up at his face wondering “what happened???”
