The first impulse is to lick your thumb and wipe it off.
"Here, let me get that for you."
But the hairs don't budge. They are there on purpose, lone pilgrims in an expanse of otherwise shaved skin. Which is pretty soulful, when you think about it — you know, being alone and different, and possibly misunderstood.
Oh, soul patch! Such a small cluster of hairs. So fraught with meaning.
Soul patch: Adornment for the lower lip of Satan? Or Beat poets and basketball coaches? Or how about Apolo Ohno, short-track Olympic speed skater?
He could not be cuter. After the 2002 Winter Olympics, on the streets of Ohno's hometown of Seattle, you could buy stick-on soul patches in his honor. Four years later, and he still hasn't shaved that delightful little beardlet.
People are also reading…
On him, it's cool. On him, it looks good.
Otherwise, it's a risky proposition. The soul patch is a catcher of Dorito dust. It has several vulgar nicknames. It makes weak chins look weaker. It is popular among minor-league baseball players who can grow only spotty beards. It cannot be thoughtfully stroked the way a goatee can.
Is it a good idea, or a bad one? Is it cool, or not?
Here's how you can tell the soul patch is still even a little bit cool: Call five or six local barber shops to ask about the soul patch — how to groom it, who should wear it, whether it's popular these days.
A summary of those conversations:
Caller: Yes, about the soul patch. How do you groom that thing?
Barber: A toupee?
Caller: No, you know, a soul patch? That little tuft of hair men sometimes grow below their bottom lip?
Barber (confused now): A goatee?
Caller: Well, kind of. Except without the part on the chin. Just the part below the lip.
Barber: Who is this again?
So this is a good thing, right? When The Establishment doesn't know about a particular style of facial hair? That still counts for something, doesn't it?
But then Bill Payne, a barber at Playboyzz Barber Shop in West Palm Beach, Fla., has to blow that notion. Oh, he knows about the soul patch, all right. And his feelings about it are: Eh.
"It's a style that comes and goes," he said. If a customer asks, he advises them to trim a soul patch like they would a mustache or beard. If it gets pretty long, there's always mustache wax to tame it.
"But it needs to be a guy with a longer chin, who's got a larger separation between the bottom lip and the bottom of his chin," Payne said. "If it's too close together, then (a soul patch) just looks like it's part of the beard."
And that's where things get sloppy. Because it's a facial hair free-for-all out there, said John Leland, author of "Hip: The History." Anything goes.
"Facial hair is one of the few things guys can change," he explained. In terms of the soul patch, a man could have just the tuft of hair below the lip, or do like Ohno and grow a strip from bottom lip to chin, or pair it with a mustache like Phil Jackson, or with a goatee like Maynard G. Krebs on "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis."
Maybe that's why men get attached. In fact, Leland himself had a soul patch for a few years and recently shaved it off. He says he lost it. His words: "I just lost my own a couple of months ago." Like a loved one died.
You look at something every day in the mirror, you expect it to Make A Statement, and you get attached.
And oh, to be inside the head attached to the soul patch! To know what those Statements are! Some theories:
● I am deeply, deeply Zen.
● I have just written this poem. It doesn't rhyme. I will think you are dumb if you don't get it.
● WOO-HOOOOO!!!
● I play golf/baseball/basketball/Grand Theft Auto so much better than you do.
● I live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and I'm so confused. Is this whole hipster thing dead, or what? And if so, why am I still wearing this stupid Western-cut shirt?
● May I program your computer for you?
● Or maybe just: It would be bizarre if I dyed or cut my hair too much, so I will just futz around with my facial hair instead.
There's a precedent of cool dudes' having soul patches. William Shakespeare. Vlad the Impaler (who was a crazy tyrant, but still). Ingmar Bergman. Frank Zappa. Tiger Woods.
Dizzy Gillespie said shaving irritated his lips, so he wore a soul patch.
The problem is, as with asymmetrical haircuts and acrylic toenails, the wearer eventually grows bored of a soul patch. Maybe a year or 10 down the road, it stops making the statement it needs to make.
"If you're hoping to smash patriarchy," Leland said, "you need a bit more than (a soul patch)."
Worn too long, it becomes the sad, scraggly gray ponytail of facial hair. So a hand reaches for the razor.
But all is not lost! That's the spunky thing about the soul patch: It grows really fast. It is the facial hair for those unable to commit to — or grow — a Grizzly Adams beard or a Tom Selleck mustache. It is democratic. It will grow on just about anyone.
Whether it should, well, that's a different matter.
