Facing the future
Some of us old folks are getting pretty excited these days about gathering behind closed doors and exposing ourselves—by ripping off our masks and revealing what’s beneath. I participate in these orgies of the flesh but cannot say I feel the joy. For more than a year, my face was my own private Idaho, skin bathed in the humid warmth of my own familiar breath, visible to no one but my significant Other. No need to troll my chin for whiskers, or chip off the toothpaste crusting the corners of my mouth, or inspect my lined complexion for eruptions of “senile acne.” (It’s really called that.) I was free from vanity for a year. It’s still something of a mystery to me that the old were prioritized for vaccination, when it’s obvious the young should go first, given their general lawlessness, their drive to flirt and carouse, their need to gather in schools. So it’s a little odd to find my myself among my gray-haired cohort partying like there’s no tomorrow, flashing our naked faces shameles