People often ask me, “Steve, why are you wearing a bee beard?”
They usually have to yell so I can hear them over the hellish buzzing and also because they’re standing fifty feet away.
“STEVE,” they yell, “WHY ARE YOU WEARING A BEE BEARD? WHY DON’T YOU HAVE A NORMAL PET, LIKE A PUPPY?”
I tell them a bee beard is like a puppy. A horrific buzzing puppy that could sting me to death in seconds.
Bees are a lot like cats. You start feeding one on your back porch, and the next thing you know you have several thousand clinging to your face and neck in a freakish undulating mass.
Wearing a bee beard has a lot of benefits. For example, you always have something to talk about with strangers. Also, the bees keep you warm in winter like a soulless, crawling blanket, while their tiny diaphanous wings create a refreshing breeze in summer.
And of course, the best part — honey! So much honey. Gallons and gallons of honey.
I leave a trail of honey everywhere I go. Sometimes people will see it and ask, “What the fuck is that?” And other people will say, “There’s this freak with a bee beard that drips honey all over the place.”
DON’T LOOK AT THE QUEEN!!!
Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. But trust me, you don’t want to make eye contact with the queen. She’s very temperamental. She might send her drones to attack you, or she might fly off and take the hive with her. And then what would I be?
Just another mentally disturbed virgin without a bee beard.
I have to tell you, I face a lot of discrimination because of my bee beard. People don’t understand the value of building a rapport with another species.
Some people say I’m not being discriminated against because I have a bee beard. They say I’m being discriminated against because I’m a psychopath wearing thousands of lethal insects like a ski mask.
All I know is, the sign says, “No shirt, no shoes, no service.” It doesn’t say, “No shirt, no shoes, no bee beards.” But people still scream at me to get out of their store.
“Get the fuck out of my store!” they scream. “I’m allergic to bees!” they scream. Then they flail their arms and jerk dramatically. Sometimes they get really dramatic and die.
Losers. They’ll never know the ecstasy of being caressed by thousands upon thousands of tiny grasping claws.
I have to admit that intimacy is difficult. Most women aren’t interested in having sex with a man who’s wearing a bee beard.
“Why don’t you take the bee beard off?” you might ask.
It’s not that simple. Once you start wearing 20 pounds of throbbing, vibrating, pulsating, quivering, trembling, seething bees, you can’t just walk away.
I tried going to meetings. One guy carried a chicken everywhere he went. Another guy married a sheep. There was even a guy who said he could communicate telepathically with his dog.
Everybody at the meetings was crazy, so I stopped going. Plus, the bees complained that the donuts were always stale.
Not everyone is cut out to wear a bee beard. It takes a special kind of person. If you think bee bearding is for you, start slowly. Talk to the bees. Try to bond with them. Maybe plan a game night — bees particularly enjoy sudoku.
You’ll know you’ve been chosen when you wake up one morning pinned to the mattress by a seething mass of black and yellow. Don’t be surprised if your first thought is, “I could really go for a big bowl of pollen.”
Sure, all of your friends might run away. But as long as you’re wearing a bee beard, you’ll never be alone.