I have one of those faces. I feel like that’s a statement literally anyone can make. ‘Cause I’m pretty sure we all have faces. I mean in what scenario has someone been like “I have one of those faces,” and someone else said “Well, good sir, I do not! My face is not one of those faces, it’s one of these!” But I do have one of those faces. The specific “those” refers to a face that gets touched. A lot.

Sometimes this happens with friends of mine. We’ll be sitting at a bar, and one of my friends notices I trimmed my beard (I guess she didn’t read my seminal article on the matter). In what I would consider a normal scenario, this would result in a “Hey! You trimmed your beard! You look slightly less ugly!” possibly followed by a high-five. What happens to me is that the same thing is said, but my friend reaches in and rubs my beard. Which signals to the rest of my friends to reach in and touch my face. And tousle my hair. This literally happened to me about a week ago.

Sometimes this happens with people I don’t know at all. I’ve mentioned before the time a rando cougar came up and said “I like your beard, can I kiss it?” which she proceeded to do without me responding. Another was a time I was at a friend’s friend’s birthday party, just hanging out in a corner like is customary at a social gathering, and a dude comes up to me and say “How’s it going, Rabbi?” By itself this is insensitive to Jews and just plain stupid. But then he makes things worse by proceeding to, for lack of a better descriptor, molest my beard. I was honestly so taken aback that I just didn’t know how to react. In my mind I thought of one of my favorite episodes of King of The Hill, where Bobby screams “I DON’T KNOW YOU! THAT’S MY PURSE!” and proceeds to kick people in the balls (this ‘un). But then I figured acting like an 11-year-old cartoon character who’s using a fighting tactic from a women’s self-defense class is probably in poor form.

Sometimes this happens in the form of cheek pinching. As with the time that I was at my friend’s wedding, and another friend of mine decided to accost my cheeks for the photobooth picture. And then at random intervals throughout the wedding reception. It’s a good thing I always travel with a stout facial moisturizer (with SPF protection, of course!) cause my cheeks were sore (that statement sounds weirder than it should).

So yeah, it happens a lot. I don’t know why this happens. What about my face welcomes touch? Is it that inviting? And if so, why does that not parlay into beautiful women touching my face? With their lips. On my lips. I mean, per the statement in the previous paragraph you know that I keep my face well-moisturized, and that coupled with my daily activities (none of which are even remotely manly or “face-hardening”) means that my skin is certainly baby-soft.

But I’m more inclined to want to touch something that has an interesting texture than a soft one. And honestly, a beard is not all that interesting of a texture. I mean either you’re a dude and you know what facial hair feels like, or you’re a gal and you can figure it out by not shaving various parts of your body for a week or so. Maybe what’s really happening is people just need to wipe their hands, and they figure my facial softness means it’s super absorbent. Maybe I just have a big towel on my shoulders.

I guess at the end of the day things could be worse. I mean my face doesn’t, in general, repulse people. When people do touch my face they don’t recoil their hands and throw up a little in their mouth. Plus there’s like people starving somewhere or something (ya know, the whole “in the global sense your problems are pretty damn insignificant” argument). I just would prefer it if people asked before grabbing my face. Knowing me, I probably would just say “I mean, I guess so?”, so it’s more of the courtesy of asking for permission first.

Unless, of course, you’re a beautiful woman. Then you can wipe your hands on my face any day of the week.