“Be afraid of nothing. . . . A new Hedonism - that is what our century wants. [...] Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!” - Lord Henry Wotton to Dorian Gray in The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Old age is wretched. My grandfather (formally Pappy; colloquially The Big Dick) will never get out of a car, recliner, or plastic doctor’s office chair without at least an unwieldy sigh. On days of particularly unbearable pain, he lets out long, guttural groans, and says one of two things to me: either (1) “It’s hell to get old,” or, (2) “Don’t get old, Tyler.” Sometimes I wonder if he thinks about how heartily I could take that advice.
He used to have some humor when he fell, but that was before his hip got really bad. They were just little slip-ups then. Infrequent enough to write off. He would say he fell right on his ass and manage to smile up at me as I lent my hand, or joke about how he was really getting old now as I helped him up. Now, though, there’s an apologetic air to the rooms I rush into. He’ll tell me that he doesn’t know how it happened, and that he’s not sure he has the strength to get up. From somewhere deep within him, he musters it; but I’m not sure how long he’ll be able to do that. What will happen when he falls whilst home alone and no youthful hand is there to be extended to him? How many more falls until his spirit gives out with his body? How many more years?
In early December, I was leaving a guitar and piano recital extremely melancholic. As I walked through Artist’s Alley to the parking garage alone–fighting to keep the worn out leather on my collar to remain upright–I decided to go to Martin’s to find a remedy for my blues. Once there, I picked up the cheapest container of birthday cake ice cream they had (horrible mistake) and a bag of candy I’d never tried before. As I waited in line with the ice cream melting in my hand, the elderly woman in front of me dropped the card she had been fiddling with on the floor. I spent a second debating whether or not to help her; which is a beastly thing to admit to, I know–but I fear the day when I move a little too quicklyand someone’s open-carry grandma thinks I’m about to run off with her purse.
But I thought I heard the bones in her back crunching as she bent over, so I ignored my holy psychic radio and bent down to scoop it off the floor. Mercilessly, I did not get a handgun pointed in my face. This was a slower burn.
Initially, she said, “Thank you, young man!” But after my polite nod and acknowledgment, she just had to take it farther. “Eighty-six doesn’t do good for the body.”
I didn’t quite know how to respond to this. It was a meaningless thing to say, but I was used to it at that point. Although she could barely see me over her nose-level shoulder, I gave a solemn nod. “I know what you mean,” I finally replied. “I live with an eighty-year-old.”
Somehow, her face wrinkled even further as she commanded it to grimace, and she managed to turn her neck just enough so that I could see both of her black eyes start to leak some of the malice she accumulated in her eighty-six years. “What of it?” she growled.
I stammered for a moment before she turned back to face the front of the line, where her daughter–or caretaker, or whatever–was making useless conversation with the cashier. Fuck it, I thought. If I was really rude enough to genuinely hurt her feelings, she probably wouldn’t see the sun rise to stew on it for another day. I shut my mouth tight and stared into the faces of the Clintons on the cover of Globe.
But if anything is more wretched than the deterioration of the body and soul in old age, it’s the autoappreciation of one’s youth.
Never before in history have we had more access to our own faces. On the quantity of mirrors in the world, I can only assume that it’s grown dramatically since 1890 when Dorian Gray crushed his pocket-mirror under his heel in a fit of self-loathing; but what I know for sure is that, somewhere along the way, we realized the many advantages that came with adding a reflective gleam to a wide range of purchasable goods.
Where in history did we decide formica was the way to go? Who looked at wood and thought it needed to be synthetic? More importantly: who looked at granite and decided they needed another mirror? Was it the lower cost of production that influenced the adoption of this deceptive plastic, or was it the reflectivity that steered that decision? How many vodkasmelling, berated nights did I spend as a child glancing back and forth from the countertop to the floor, only to see my own helpless eyes staring back? How many questions must I ask before Mr. Wilde responds to me?
Ah… horrible delusions. I can’t hear a word out of the old fruit’s mouth, despite the price of this beautifully bound copy of Dorian Gray. I need a heater and some serious smelling salts before a dialogue can be opened.
I once accidentally drove through a car show while trying to park at a library in Boonsboro. People stared in disgust at my tan-colored 2007 Honda Civic as I made a loop of shame inside the perimeter of sportscars and oldsmobiles. A sick joke, they thought… with the sole intention of perverting the sacred vehicles around.
As humiliating as this was already, I realized as I looked around me that there wasn’t a single angle I couldn’t be seen from. Every fireapple red hood, every silver fender, and every electric blue door shot the image of my stain-on-wheels back at me. Even if the wrinkled, bearded men wanted to look away in shame, or the graying, fat women in disgust, they wouldn’t be able to escape me. The only things observable from the dull body of my car were dried drippings of ice cream on the passenger side door, and embryonic scratches enveloped by a huge dent on the driver’s side. I felt as though I was smearing melted chocolate against every antique paintjob there, ruining cumulative hours of buffing.
When I reached the end of the loop, my foot got heavier. My increasing speed was aided by the momentum of the hill. When I reached the bottom, I looked down the road and saw a purple lowrider coming my way; its turn signal flashing bright even in the summer sunlight. I didn’t want to see myself staring back from its doors as it passed, so I sped into traffic a couple seconds ahead of it. After a couple short feet and a jolting stop, I joined a line of minivans stopped at the intersection light on Main Street. I glanced up into my rearview mirror and saw the regal nightmare climbing up the hill.
My avoidance of reflection might or might not be a response to some repressed memory from childhood, but I can more certainly point to a contemporary instillation of this fear:
I care not to remember how she got there, but a girl stayed for dinner at my house once. She stayed a couple times, actually. I don’t remember if it was the time we ate that thin-crusted abomination by ourselves, or if it was when we shared the stuffed crust monster with my family. My sister tried desperately to connect with the girl on some basic levels, but something in the back-and-forth fell flat. When I asked for her impressions afterwards, she thought for a second too long and said, “I think she’s really pretty!”
No matter which pizza it was, though, I felt the girl’s absence very heavily after I set the timer on the oven. She usually waited with me in the kitchen, but I guess we had already started to resent each other at that point. I assumed she went back downstairs, so I, in my provincial clinginess, started towards my basement, where I was probably crying into her arms and hearing useless, forgettable nonsense not fifteen minutes before. Before I reached the door however, I saw that she was leaning against the counter in the bathroom. I quickened my pace to reach her, assuming she was about to vomit, but slowed down when I realized she would be missing the sink by about six inches. I worried less about holding her hair back now and more about the trance she seemed to be in.
“What’re you doing?” I asked.
She didn’t bother to look up. “Nothing,” she replied. “Just… mirrorgazing.” She spoke softly; her lips barely parted, which kept the gap between her front teeth hidden away.
I didn’t feel like thinking about this any longer and walked back to the kitchen. Turning the oven light on, I bent down to watch the cheese melt. I caught a glimpse of myself in the glass and shuddered.
Why not? I hear a lot about the importance of self-love, and beauty is a fleeting window, you know. What’s the issue with appreciating your youth? Is there really anything wrong with testing the limits of our young, supple bodies through a complete surrender to hedonism? What simple-minded prudishness pervaded me when my stomach turned upon hearing the mirrorgazer suggest that very thing?
Christ! More questions! This time I tried leaving the book open to page 210 while I muttered to myself, but even after sticking my ear to the paper, I didn't hear a thing. Where can you even buy smelling salts? And would the new owners of my dad’s old house have kept that hazardous, smelly little space-heater I kept in the basement? Back then, I would have been trying to commune with Jim Morrison instead, staring up at my poster of him while The Very Best of The Doors played in the background. I kept an antique light underneath it, so as to keep it perpetually illuminated.
I would stare up at it like the appreciator of a portrait in a nightime gallery, or a sinner kneeling before a shining, golden fixture of Christ on the cross. One night, looking to antagonize me, my dad came downstairs to find me in my mock prayer. He sighed heavily, expelling rum into the air. He called it a shrine, and made me look up what that word meant on his iPad. He sent me into his bedroom where it was charging, and I sat there, staring at myself in the black screen. I let enough time pass for him to believe I read Merriam-Webster's definition.
I knew what the word meant, of course; and I knew that it applied to my setup in the basement. Why shouldn’t I worship that kind of beauty? The perpetual “Young Lion.” The thought of a dead twentyseven-year-old lying in a bathtub somewhere in Paris was far more holy to me than images of monks mummifying their bodies to Buddhaify their souls. I didn’t know the name of a single monk, but I gladly read my copy of The Jim Morrison Scrapbook many times over. I saw no point in depriving yourself of all the pleasures of life, just to have your corpse marveled at by the supposedly enlightened. I would have much rather given in to our natural inclination towards hedonism and burnt out spectacularly. The thought of my tomb requiring a fence to keep fanatics out was titillating.
Morrison was well known for his smokage of hash and consumption of LSD, but he turned mostly to heavy drinking in the final years of his short life. Apparently though, it all got too weak for him, because it was heroin that did him in. In the bath, too–I just couldn’t get over that. Cleanliness is next to godliness, they say. After all, isn’t that why we buff our cars? Or…?
A modern-day Narcissus would have a very peculiar problem. He could try staring into a body of water to gaze upon his beauty, but it would all be too murky to capture his likeness faithfully. He’d soon find all the better means of reflection we’ve created anyway. And safer ways to kiss himself, too. Lip to mirror action doesn’t run the risk of sucking up some brain-eating amoeba out of a contaminated pond.
More intimate yet, we could give him an iPhone! I wonder what would happen then? Would the camera app also be too impure a reflection for proper self-appreciation? Would a filter help? I think not. Probably, it would be the phone powering off that satisfied him… when he doesn’t know what to expect and suddenly finds his noir countenance staring back at him…. authentic, but cast as if rendered out of black marble. Dark and handsome.
Oscar? Is that you…? A breakthrough! I finally heard a rumbling from the book, as if something mechanical was being created inside of it. I flung it open so it could speak more freely, but at that moment, all sound ceased, and I was left staring at a bunch of words.
“ ‘The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought and sold, and bartered away. It can be poisoned, or made perfect. There is a soul in each one of us. I know it.’ ”
Gibberish. If there is a soul to any of us, Oscar Wilde’s left this earth during his decomposition. Nothing I’ve done has roused him, and I’m getting very tired of trying to talk to paper. I even disturbed a neopagan from sleep and sought their counsel on the matter. And I suppose white candles and clear quartz would be less suspicious purchases than smelling salts and a heater, but I don’t think even the strongest mediums with the most effective conduits could guide any spiritual energy to my bedroom tonight.
But I haven’t lost all hope. If Wilde’s spirit still resides anywhere on our plane of existence, I would bet the easiest place to rouse it from would be his tomb in Père Lachaise. I could try to contact Morrison while I was there, too, but it would probably be too painful. I don’t think I could bear to know I was standing above a skeleton that used to have beautiful flesh clinging to it.
So, dear reader, if you’d like to help finance my round trip to Paris, get in contact with me at tylergormanaae@yahoo.com, and I’m sure we can agree upon one of many flexible payment options. I can cover the cost of the crystals and candles myself, but if it comes down to it and you greedheads aren’t willing to cough up the necessary funds for my expedition, I wouldn’t mind settling for a one way ticket. After a conversation with the Great Mr. Wilde, I would be content to lie down in the stinking streets of Paris and let a fleet of penny-farthings run me down. I’d keep my head safely on the sidewalk, though; I won’t let any tiremarks besmirch my eternal youth.