Published February 26, 2006 in the Hibbing Daily Tribune
By Aaron J. Brown
(Cue tender violin song, such as “Ashokan Farewell” popularized during the Ken Burns documentary, “The Civil War.” Here, a forlorn soldier in some unknown war reads a letter to his distant lover.)
My dearest Beatrice Marie,
I once thought the terror of this enterprise would never match the courage our love provides me, but today we saw the enemy’s new razor. It has five blades.
My darling, I long to see the soft curves of your smiling face. Mine own features are but scarred remnants of the visage you saw marching off to this terrible war. We thought the Quattro would end this conflict by summer, in time for us to be married in your father’s ripe vineyards. But today my eyes peer from a round mass of scar tissue. Five blades. Oh, my God!
You tell me your brother has grown sideburns. I pray he does not see this battlefield. Tell him no empty promises by razor salesmen can repay the debt of skin cells these monstrous blades shall levy. May he next grow a handsome mustache and be spared this foulness.
It is called the Fusion, and its name does not lie. For my face is but a fusion of blood and toilet paper. We had thought five blades to be pure folly, a farcical exercise by Gillette’s idle-handed engineers. Indeed, four blades would suffice. But no, like the serpent in Eden, they meddled and we were cast us from the Garden with nothing but the gelatinous shaving lotion on the tips of our outstretched fingers.
They say some have no hair left at all. I am lucky, for only my face and head have been scraped clean. The nights echo with the ill-omened sounds of full body shaving. I seldom sleep and only with the most appalling nightmares.
As if to pour salt upon our red, bleeding faces, they have made this beast, this Fusion, so that it vibrates with use of a battery. My dear one, I cannot understand. I recall fondly my father showing me his homemade electric razor. His words ring true today, “My son, if it is to be sharp and near your eyes, make it not to pulsate.”
He was so wise, but so foolish to trust the flag of peace after the second blade came. May he rest in peace.
This has been called the Great Razor War, but I fear that no face can win such a clash. Every blade added serves to fuel this fire, until such time as each man must don a mask made of furious quaking blades.
We now face the question of whether to match the wicked five blades or proceed to the inevitable six, or even seven. Our playful jokes about the eight blade razor when we sipped watermelon wine beneath the railroad trestle last spring may have been but ominous prophecy, my love.
Be wary, my dearest, for the time shall come when our enemies will produce pink versions of these fetid contraptions, thus turning your luscious legs and delicate underarms into fertile ground for its quintuple shearing. Do not be tempted by its glinting allure.
I shall write so long as I have skin on my arms, a luxury I shall guard to the end. We have just two cans of shave gel left in camp. Pray for our faces. If we stand against this five-bladed fiend on the nigh, we shall be together soon. My loving Beatrice Marie, this madness shall then be forever behind us.
With deepest love I remain yours until the last follicle falls,
Capt. Leonidas Merriweather Schick IV
Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune.