Friday, November 5, 2010

FACE IT

Last night, I had a dee-lightful evening at dinner with a fairly new friend in my orbit along with his equally wonderful boyfriend, whom I had never met before. We had a great evening and the banter was fast and the one-liners were even quicker. One of them is an inveterate reader and actually brought with him the second book I wrote (when the world was young) which he checked out of the library one block away from the restaurant. It's a minor book, to my mind, in my "catalog" of non-fiction titles I've written and not one that I mention or, even more, pick up and read. However, the hardcover edition, which he had, included my author photo on the inside back jacket.
The photo is now 30 years old (and I'm, alas, not). While the bf looked at the picture, my friend opened it further to really look at the photo and he audibly gasped and lurched back for a nano-second in his seat. At least, that's how I remember it 24 hours after the fact :)
Sure, I'm, well, 30 years older than I was in that photo and I have to claim that (where's that vial of Botox, anyway?) and live with it, and accept it (as best as any single gay man can, I suppose), but what really struck me came later when I got home. I gave them a tour of the house, which they seemed to like very much (very gratifying to me, as they both have superb taste), but after they left, curiosity got the better of me and I opened a copy of that same book and looked at my (now-ancient) author photo.
What struck me, and saddened me at the same time, is that I really was OK looking. On a good day, and in that picture at least, nicely attractive. It's hard, even in retrospect, to write that about myself, but I was good looking; perhaps I'm the mature version, still, and fairly adequately appearing on a good day after a couple cups of coffee and never before 11AM.
"My God, the moon is bright!," as Vera Charles said to Mame Dennis...
The part that gave me an empty, sad feeling is that I never, ever felt I was attractive, even at my so-called "peak" or blush of youth. I never had self-confidence, or bravado or held on to any personal currency which I felt had anything to do with how I looked. I knew I was smart, I knew I could write, I knew I had a sense of humor and could make people laugh with a one-liner or two, when I felt comfortable enough and relaxed to do so...but I never felt attractive...certainly, never "hot" or "studly" or "handsome"...I certainly don't feel anything like that now. I hate pictures of myself, maybe liking one out of 30, maybe.
I wish, and I say this to others also struggling with self-image issues, if someone says you're attractive or handsome or pretty or nice-looking, don't question it, take it in, enjoy it, savor it. It doesn't have to define you but it certainly can help make a good day better and a bad day worthwhile, sometimes.
I look back on those days now and think, if only I had reveled in the youth I had, felt that I was gosh-darn handsome or good-looking for a day or a week. Who knows what my world would have been like without always doubting myself in a physical way, especially in the gay world.
It's like having your driver's license photo taken and it's a terrible, terrible picture. You can't bear to look at it. But then, four years later or maybe eight years later when you have to go in and get a new picture taken, you look at that old one and think, 'you know, that photo isn't so bad!"


Tuesday, October 26, 2010

TWO YEARS AND ONE DAY...

I've been steadfast in avoiding my blog for quite some time -- still, even I was surprised that my last entry was two years and one day ago. I've had friends and blog followers ask me, nudge me, cajole and show abject irritation at my dropping the ball and stopping my blog in mid-flight, as it were. However, I don't suffer illusions of grandeur that my wee blog is read by millions (I'm happy with a robust dozen)...does the world NEED another blog?

I may be delusional when it suits me but I've never had an abundance of self-importance. (Thanks to my bevy of Catholic school nuns for that!) After all, when you're born with the Original Sin (vs. a trip to Walker's Original House of Pancakes, but that's a sweet detour on the road to Hell), there's only one way to go...well, you can either go up or you can go down. I've gone up and, oh yes, I've gone down, but, well, this is a family show :)

Looking back at the blog with a distance of two years, I'm stuck at how much I exposed of myself and how selective (naturally) I was about other things going on in my life and about new and old friends. I can say now the blog was part of my self-created therapy. Between the blog and my home renovations, it was a tidy (although sometimes full of tumult) package of therapy to get me through the very rough patch (that's such an understatement, but it will do) of tending to my terminally ill mom, diagnosed suddenly, moving back to Chicago after 25 years in LA, and adjusting to life without my mom and trying to find my way in a city which was so familiar to me, but yet, suddenly, where I felt like an outsider. How could I feel that in my home town, where I grew up and lived through college? I did, indeed. The adjustment, and the feeling that I was part of Chicago and rooted here was a very long time coming. It's happened, at long last, and I'm very fortunate to have made wonderful, trusted friends and my social life is booming. When I wrote the blog, it was all about adjusting to this old but new metropolis and trying to find my way.

I'm on the way, well on my way, and I've very grateful and happy about that.

To wrap up this post, I have come upon a peculiar dilemma which I know well other bloggers (and writers) have wrestled with online and in the real world and on the typewriters of yore.
Didn't Truman Capote lose friendships (including Babe Paley) because of his candid recounting of the lives of NY's upper crust, and discounting the importance of privacy between friends? He got the book but lost a lot in the process.

Can one have it both ways? I'm not so sure.

Now that this cycle of the blog (2010!) expands beyond rehabbing my kitchen (faucets don't particularly care what I say about them) and into human relationships and experiences, the quandary is, deciding not only what to write about, but having the proper filter to not reveal the identities of those mentioned (after all, beyond the obvious, they might read my blog!), certain conversations or events might come back to bite me...isn't that me at my most lyrical? :)

To paint with a broad brush, not long ago I had what I consider to be (in retrospect) a funny, illuminating, what-could-go-wrong, went-wrong evening with a gent I fancied. Yet, even if I disguise who it is, I don't want him to necessarily know that I liked him, maybe, in that certain way because I'm on the down low about that...and yet, damn, it would make for a great blog entry. But I don't want to drop my drawers, in a manner of speaking, and make our current state of friendship weird by writing about it for the world (and perhaps him) to see.

Did I mention he has a boyfriend? I didn't know that until the third act curtain, as it were.

In closing, thanks to the hearty bunch who encouraged me to return to the blog. So whatever you read here, remember the Mary Boland line from "The Women" -- can we keep this between the five of us?" -- it's strictly confidential but tell all your friends about the blog. As you can see, I'm conflicted :)