It’s been a long time since I’ve danced all night.

I’ve always hated my hair. I have the worse combination. That little duck tail at the back. A widow’s peak. And it’s wavy in all the wrong places. I’ve tried nearly bald. I’ve tried really long and curly. Hell, in university, I even tried bottle blond. Nothing relieved it. And now I’d have to say that my high forehead is growing. Or rather my widow’s peak is peaking. Whichever it is there’s more skin than there was. And what’s more I have the forehead of a worrier. Or at least a thinker. And now, much more forehead than before to announce my thinking.

I’ve been 155 lbs my whole life. That is until about a year ago. Now that it’s warmer I’ve been trying to put on last year’s pants. I can, with some effort, manage to get into my 32 waist. But I can barely move and I rather spread over the top like too much loaf mix in the bread pan. No. I’m steadfastly a 34. This distresses me. I’ve never had to think about dieting. It is, by the way, a matter of coincidence that I’m showing cupcake wrappers. I don’t eat cupcakes. I don’t make cupcakes. I couldn’t say why I even have cupcake wrappers. I’m nearly two stones heavier than I’ve ever been. I’m pushing 175. And all inside of year. I’m spreading and my hair is rising. My body has changed. I’ve always been lean. Or at least I’ve been lean since I outgrew scrawny and gangly. I’m not quite sure what to make of this.

I am steadfastly middle-aged. And, though it might be fashionable to be graceful about this kind of thing, I have to say that I am not. Up until recently I could imagine I was young. I’ve always rather felt like a kid inside of a man’s body. But now I’m balding and spreading. And the beauty of youth was having options, alternatives, hope, the luxury of time. It’s not so much that I’m balding or that I’m spreading. It’s that time has found me out and set upon me.

I am also not as vigorous in my maleness, if you follow. I understand this is mostly age and probably smoking and diabetes too. This might be something that men only confess in therapy or not at all. If my performance used to be a horn section I’m lucky lately if I can pull off a piccolo. It’s a horrible thing to say. It’s a more horrible thing to realize.

I’m not saying I want to be 25 again. I did that once. Once is enough. It’s not my pant size or the breadth of my forehead either. It’s not even that time found me out, that I am, after all, a man, not a boy, that I probably couldn’t dance all night. It’s the banality of it, the mediocrity of it, the surprising predictability of it. I walked face first into a cliché.

SS