Here’s Lookin’ at You, Kid

I don’t have writer’s block. I have writer’s fright. Nothing is permitted. Everything is true. I tell myself that I cannot lie in my writing. Is this what I’m afraid of? Why should it be any less easy to lie to myself than it is to you. To lie to you. This is my canceled confession.

I have rarely enjoyed looking at myself in a mirror but I’ve been doing that a lot lately. I don’t mean that figuratively. I recently shed my beard, my goatee, my goat song, my pretense. This is what I see.

I say that I don’t like my chin. I say that it’s weak. I say that I look like my father, that I don’t want to look like my father, but that I do. Am I lying when I say these things, and if so, to whom?

I have a sad face. My mouth lines turn down at the edges. I had the blues so bad one time it put my face in a permanent frown. Smile! they say. I am, I reply. I do look like him.

I once told Tom’s partner, Josh, that I wished my head was less round, more lean, like Tom’s. He laughed. Tom says the opposite, he said.

I am bald. Losing my hair wasn’t a loss of virility. It was a loss of my beauty. I started to write that it was the only thing above my neck that I enjoyed looking at, but then realized that isn’t true. I also like my hazel eyes. I like that they’re hazel, a kind of green. As a kid, everyone else has some…