esrosedotblog

I stood there Friday, ready to shave, and I could not do it.

Something inside rebelled.

This is an old feeling. Sometimes a different target but then, it is the beard's turn.

Months and years now of conformity have led to a kind of exhaustion.

I am sick of this even though I do it only several times a week.

So, I don't shave.

What will happen? What could happen?

The next morning, nothing happens. It doesn't look too different to me but that is me.

Put it this way. I spend at least three mornings a week in a room of mostly younger, some a lot younger, gay men who miss nothing in the looks department.

Sure. We, I count myself among them, are very interested in spiritual questions, how we are doing in life, how our friends are "inside".

But we never forget who we are or how we got here. We have been working at looking good since we first got the idea that anyone was looking.

For some of us that work might have involved some hiding. Some butching it up to keep the bullies at bay. As you know they are still out there. Lurking. Guarding their own sexual identity crises.

But for most of us, the quest was to be noticed and to be seen in a good light. Looksism is, for many of us, a daily practice. You and I look at each other. We see what has gone on there to keep up the side.

So, I got to the Meeting and, silly me, was actually surprised that people noticed a, well, let's see. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. A three days growth.

I had trimmed. That could have been the tipoff. Letting it go? Any guy can do that. Even the bullies. Maybe especially the bullies.

But guys who care trim the side. The same idea as "edging" a lawn.

In my case, I had left the mustache which, I know now, didn't hide anything but called attention.

Not that I was trying to get away with anything. I fucking know what I am doing after all these years of gay gaming. And I am pretty good at it.

My principal mode is to act as though I do not pay any attention to it. But the lie can only stand in a naive audience.

This group has my number by now and almost everyone knows that I am a dedicated fairy and not about to let the side down at any time. They also know my insides pretty well as my outsides.

It doesn't take long to add it up.

Maybe two seconds among the dimmest bulbs. The adepts get it automatically maybe before I even came in the door.

Put it this way. I got a lot of comments.

None negative.

Many positive and encouraging. Some obvious abstentions.

So, I did not run home and shave. And after some reflection (the very close physical kind in front of a real not a virtual mirror) I went a step further.

I got out the Phillips trimmer which we have had for a long time and did the mustache.

Did it down. To the same level as the rest of it.

I have had the mustache for so long that I could not tell you.

It would have to be long before we moved here. That is 16 years now.

It is my signature. I think. Or thought.

Not now except in loving memory. It is gone.

Of course it can always be grown back. But that would be a retreat.

It makes me wonder. Who is it that wants to come out from behind the shrubbery?

Who is it that is willing to look scruffy (trimmed nicely of course around the edges)?

Who is it that is having some fun today with his looks, his physicalness, his discovery that age is no deterrent to playing around?

Of course if, in time, it turns out that I really look like an old codger nodding away in his nursing home bed, this look will go.

In the meantime I will see how it goes and try and get to know the guy who has done this thing to himself> Smiling all the way of course.

Nothing more interesting than me me me.

Labels: fashion, gay life, life

STREET PERSON

Today's film was Bill Press' NYTimes Critics' Pick documentary:

Bill Cunningham New York (2010)

I kept putting this film behind others in the queue but it finally surfaced today and I am so glad that it did.

Bill Cunningham is the fashion photographer (charity balls and stuff) for the NYTimes and, once a week, the curator of the iconic photo display On the Street. Also, of course, in the NYTimes.

Cunningham is a delightful personality, 80 years young. He knows thousands of people on sight and they know him.

He has recorded fashion history in NYC since the Fifties when he gave up designing hats (a declining business) and took up photography for the Times.

One day, he had leftover film from the night before and went out on the street scouting for snapshots of people in fashionable clothes. He made photo books, some now classics.

On another day, he got a snapshot of the famous recluse Greta Garbo, several shots. His editor saw them and asked him to make a layout with other street shots to make a theme. Which he did.

Now, decades later he still does that weekly column.

Cunningham is a very interesting guy on the personal side. He lived in the studio apartments at Carnegie Hall until the year this film was made. Crammed with file drawers and minimal living space, he lives a spartan life.

No car, he traverses the city on a Schwinn. His 29th. 28 were stolen.

We see a lot of fashion in this film but good stuff, not a lot of bullshit. He is the champion of the common man or woman who wants to dress in a way that makes a statement. He is not interested in celebrity except insofar as it helps pay his salary. He is not a paparazzi. He attends only charity events and charities that he approves of at that.

He is a seriously pixie like man who sparkles with life and energy. He is an optimist. He is in great shape. A natural beanpole of a man.

He is still very handsome and when he was younger, a real looker.

I really liked this film and saw all the deleted scenes. There is a lot in the film to see and hear again. A 4 out of Netflix5.

Labels: fashion, films