I think the real reason Biden annoyed me, these last several weeks, is that I myself know something about decline. I'm not in the throes of cognitive decline, but I'm dealing with hair loss.
I find this completely unacceptable, but there is the evidence, in the mirror, saying, "Accept me."
For some reason, Facebook began sending me ads for "Hims," which appears to be a kind of potion to "restimulate" your hair follicles. (This makes me think of Pirelli's Miracle Elixir, in "Sweeney Todd.") Also, I received an article about celebrities who have openly discussed their hair plugs. Cheyenne Jackson has admitted to attempting the "plug" route on five separate occasions; I think this candor is charming. Another celebrity says, in a defensive way, "I had all the hair I needed, it was just on the *back* of my head. I just had to take some from the back and put it on the front..." (Thus, Birnham Wood came to Dunsinane.)
I think some gay men may choose fairly eccentric style icons--Alan Cumming, or Ari Shapiro, or the actor Wilson Cruz. I'm not interested in any of that. My own style icon is the emphatically heterosexual novelist Anthony Horowitz. Why? Because he hides his balding head under a baseball cap. Also, he wears a blazer over a tee shirt, to conceal evidence of "latitudinal thickening," around the waist. Horowitz strikes me as very intelligent--and he is pointing a way forward, for me, as I contemplate my forties and fifties.
But: denial is a siren song, with a loud, loud melody. Maybe science will leap forward this year. Maybe the miracle elixirs will become--suddenly--miraculously--strong....
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