Today I shaved my head. Again. I do this rather uneventful task about every four days. Sometimes I end up looking like one of the main characters from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. You can really make a mess of yourself with hot water, a mirror and a razor. I have on occasion had someone walk in the bathroom while I am in full slasher-victim mode and it kinda freaks people out. One rather gruesome rule, always use a dark towel. The things we girls go through to be glamorous.

On this day I went ahead and continued shaving on my face and erased the goat. Took the facial hair right off. Except for a little “soul patch” below my bottom lip. I am unsure if this looks cool or ridiculous. An artist or jazz musician can probably get by with it, but I am not sure about a 44 year old leaning-toward-redneck from the Midwest. Maybe I look younger or maybe I look like an old guy trying to look younger. I recently bought some “cool” jeans. You know the kind, pre-stained with some holes already in them. I looked at those suckers and said “What’s the big flippin’ deal, most all of my jeans are stained and have holes in them.” I guess I have been in style for years. Not according to my family. I have heard repeatedly “Helllll-ooo, Carhartt’s are not a style.” Why not, they are a designer label. They have a big C right by the hammer loop. I’m not sure what is so cool about freezing your @$# off because you’re too hip to wear warm clothes. I’d wear a dead beaver around my ears if I was cold enough. That’s me with the burlap sack coat and the Walmart bag hat. Girls will go without a coat in an ice storm if they don’t think they have one that “goes”. Goes? What goes with frostbite? I’ve seen guys who wear the “wife beater” undershirts when it is like 30 degrees out and all I think is “whatta freakin’ idiot”. Plus, why are most of the guys that insist on wearing these built like Mary Kate and Ashley. That’s a look I’d be sporting if I had less meat on my chest than a hot wing. So I get some cool jeans and I got this soul patch thingie working but I still drive a pick-up truck with binoculars on the front seat and wear steel-toe boots with everything.

See, what I am is a new definition of man. Here is what category I put myself in. I am a “Metro-Billy”. Somewhere between white trash and yuppie. Not quite a redneck and not quite a suburbanite. Let me give you some examples:

- I drive an old pick up truck, but it sometimes is parked Barnes & Noble.
- I have a gun rack, but I keep an umbrella in the bottom slot.
- I subscribe to Men’s Journal, The Economist and Fish, Fur ‘N Feathers.
- I use Bath & Body Works lotions…to soften my softball glove.
- I drink cappuccino’s. That I buy at the gas station when I stop to get beef jerky.
- I use empty Starbuck’s Carmel Macchiato cups to spit sunflower seed hulls into.
- I have work work boots and church work boots.
- At the library I check out poetry books and deer hunting video’s.
- I clean my fingernails daily….with a pocketknife.
- I eat spinach quiche…..that I put gravy on.
- I use bullet points and pointy bullets.

You get the point I think. So, that is me. A well read hill-jack. You gotta be comfortable with who you are. I am not sure I am comfortable with who I am, but I dress in comfortable clothes while I’m thinking about it. So if you see me looking GQ wearing my cool jeans with my leather jacket zipped up, know that I zipped it to hide the BBQ sauce on my tee shirt and that I am wearing two different colored wool hunting socks under my “dressin’ up” work boots. I am…..a Metro-Billy.