The man in the mirror

One day, things begin to change.  You don’t remember exactly when, but they do. 

You start getting out of bed a little slower, a little more reluctantly.  You find yourself moving toward the bathroom a bit unsteadily, and your back is creaking like an old floor.  You look at yourself in the mirror and you see a stranger.  Who the hell is that frightening-looking man?  How did he get in the house?  He’s old. 

Suddenly you have skin hanging under your chin like a suspension bridge.  Hair grows out of your nose and ears like wheat, and your eyebrows start looking like Bertrand Russell’s.  Let’s not forget the encroaching gauntness that slowly but surely makes you look like you’ve just been liberated from Bataan.  And stairs missed, names forgotten, routines ferociously protected, and the more frequent trips to the pharmacy.

Getting old.  

Getting old, and with it, so many new ways the world looks at me, and I at the world. 

Inside, I’m young and eager and robust.  But the face I show to the world doesn’t mirror this energetic youth I am inside. 

Faustian thoughts begin to crowd my mind.

Living where I do, in New Orleans, where there is a constant ebb and flow of youth, makes me think dark thoughts indeed.  I start to have covetous rants in my mind, the kind you hear old men make to themselves under their breath in scary movies. 

Why should they be young, I think, and I be growing old?  Why should they have their life ahead of them, and I have mine mostly behind me?  I—I who would know how to use their youth to its fullest degree—I should have their youth!!!! 

 I want your youth, I think, you there, bright savage boy, with your studied insouciance, flip-flops, tousled hair, tattoos with Chinese characters, and torn T-shirt.  I covet what you have, and I’m going to have it.  In the dark of the night I’ll come to your room and threading my way among beer cans, empty ramen containers, assorted balls, X-box, bong, condoms, bottles of booze, female clothing left behind, I’ll come to you while you’re sleeping.  Then I’ll sink my teeth into your neck, and I’ll suck your blood.  I’ll imbibe your youth, drain it from your body.  I’ll feel its strength shoot through my own veins, replenishing me! 

Then I’ll leave you there, with two tiny denture marks on your neck.