Facemask
On my Wednesday morning commute, my phone shuffled up this gem by the wonderful Swedish songwriter Jens Lekman, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.
“I could sit and watch my life go by or I could take a tiny chance
‘cause someday I’ll be stuffed in some museum, scaring little kids
with the inscripture 'Carpe Diem,’ something I never did.”
–Jens Lekman, “Rocky Dennis’ Farewell Song
The song is inspired by the film Mask, which is about the life of Rocky Dennis. I’ve never watched the film, but one image from it I happened to see on television when I was in my teens–the moment at the 4:00 mark in the above video, where Rocky sees himself in a funhouse mirror that gives him a glimpse of what he might have looked like had he not suffered from lionitis–hit me so hard that I’ve never forgotten it, and even now, seeing it is almost enough to make me cry.
I can’t claim to have any idea what it’s like to live with a disfigurement. But I do know what it’s like to look in a mirror and see a face staring back at you that feels like a mask that prevents some people from seeing who you really are. And though I don’t think I scare little kids, I’ve definitely provoked plenty of questions from them about just what it is that I am.
We constantly talk about how attractive people are or aren’t, how hot or cute or sexy or pretty or ugly they are. I suppose this is normal and healthy, but I always feel detached from such conversations. It’s not that I can’t or don’t recognize physical attractiveness in people. I definitely do. But it rarely moves me. It’s only when I’m emotionally attracted to someone that their physical attractiveness becomes something real and affecting for me. I wonder if this is because my own experiences have led me to believe that appearances can lie, that a face can obscure or betray a person’s true nature as much as it can reveal it. Without a sense of connection to what’s below the surface, what’s on the surface is meaningless to me. I think it’s the fact that I’ve often felt so cut off from connecting with people that I’m so concerned with connection, and that I love the work of writers like Masha Tupitsyn who write about connection in ways that resonate so powerfully with my own longings.
Last night at Thanksgiving, I had my head on a friend’s shoulder as we talked about love. She and her partner have always struck me as an incredibly perfect match, the kind of uncanny coupling that just makes it seem as if there are still some things that are deeply right with this world, a reason to be happy. She said that she is a serial monogamist but had to go through her fuck-anything-that-moves phase to realize this. She asked me if I’ve gone through such a phase.
No, I said. I mean, opportunities for sex don’t exactly fall into my lap very often, but even if they did, I don’t think I’d be interested in them. Maybe I’m too old now for that phase, but I don’t think I need to go through it to know that I’m monogamous by nature. I told her that maybe I wish I could have had some of those experiences when I was younger, that I sometimes grieve for all the things I’ve missed out on, that I have moments of bitterness as I think about all the love and sex and cohabitation and shared travel and everything that I haven’t had, the building of a life with someone. That I get so tired sometimes of feeling like an alien, like my experience of this life is so different from that of so many other people.
Sometimes in my mind I paraphrase a line from the movie The Edge. "Never feel sorry for a man with a plane,” the line goes. “Never feel sorry for a woman who gets to write about video games for a living,” I say in my head. But sometimes I need to grieve.
But of course I’m still young. Nothing is over yet. And next year will be a year of many changes for me, if everything goes according to plan. I’m scared, but I’m ready.
Notes
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