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!"