CW FISHER
I am not a vain person. I don't fuss over my looks. I don't lose my place in a conversation when I catch my reflection in a window. Anymore. I avoid reflections or look through them.
Yet in the privacy of my oval office where the 3-way offers its version of infinity, I freely admit I sometimes look at my many selves left and right, trying once again to make the lines straight, and failing. A thousand me's on a merry-go-round disappearing into swampy glass.
When I look in the mirror I see a tall man with tremendous shoulders, washboard stomach, piano key teeth, the white ones. I see a jaw of jutting rock, cheekbones like matching mesas. My forehead is a warehouse of all that is known by mankind minus html.
I am, it is impossible not to admit, nearly perfect in almost every way until somebody gets pictures developed at Walgreen's: dogs, dogs, dogs, some old dude stretching out my shirt. Double take with bongos. It's me. Glasses off, bring it in closer. Even my skin is gray. Drop picture in disbelief, and wonder how many more years I'll keep having this reaction. It shouldn't be a surprise anymore.
What angers me is poverty. We still don't have a digital camera. We've been good. Yet, year after year, Christmas comes and goes, and what do we have to show for it? Like two years ago when we all got buff puffs. The men of the house are still using them, although we all suspect that all three of us are using the white one. This, according to the women, is gross. I agree, actually, but what are we supposed to do about it? The women get new buff puffs every time they go to Bed, Bath and Beyond, "beyond" referring to my belief at what they're spending on buff puffs and buff puff accessories, since a little bleach takes care of mold nicely and explains that rash come to think of it.
If I had a digital camera I could give myself a tan, add a little hair, gimme a dimple. With Walgreen's I am dealing with a person who obviously hates me because there's no way he couldn't be doing this on purpose.
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Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
U.n.c.l.e. is the guy married to your aunt - but what of Thrush?
2 - Shark
Fisher King, you think you've got problems...
At 49, I was often told I looked like Mel Gibson.
Att 50, I started being mistaken for Willie Nelson.
Rough year, babe, rough year.
3 - Eric Olsen
Shark, so you are the missing link?
4 - CW Fisher
Mel Gibson before or after blood?
Jeez you poor guy(s). Well, at least you don't look like Willie's Johnson.
I've been told I could do a mean Dick Cheney if I cut the wisps and dug out my fat suits. Show up at various corporations with a flotilla of secret service agents (guys with cell phones and earsets), you're in the door. Cash only, we're in a hurry, come on, let's go. They wouldn't know the difference. They don't know what Cheney sounds like. I could speak, say a few words: "Thanks for all your hard work, your talent, and yes, your treasure. On behalf the P of USA, bla bla bla," then bolt. Just ahead of a spray of bullets. Not to hurt anyway. Just a little whack at Dick's rep.
I have to do something. This sounds like it could work. I might even make the papers. CHENEY PULLS DOWN MILLIONS. He's done it before. Nothing breeds success like the idea it rubs off, which it doesn't. All the most successful robbers say you literally have to take it. Rubbing does nothing.
Thanks for all your help. And the federal prisons are very nice, I hear, with libraries.
5 - Shark
FYI:
I looked like Mel before he started that strange eye-twitch that makes him look like he belongs with the cast from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
re: Cheney -
They'd know you were a fake Cheney because he never goes out.
Your best bet: wear camos, tote a shotgun, and keep asking "When do they release more pheasants?"
Your *cup will overflow.
*no, not that one.
6 - CW Fisher
Here in Illinois we don't wear those things on our geniteels. But I had a nurse at the dentist's office today who appeared to be wearing one, in addition to the mask and the visor and the hair net and the hood and the yellow raincoat. But in general we don't like to bind ourselves up up here. You may wonder how it is I can speak with authority on such matters, and I can't in all good conscience, but since I have a very small conscience, I'll go ahead anyway. Illinoisians wear no cups. We pee freely into cotton underwear and wash them regularly. Having once been the Laundry Guy at a local homeless shelter, I speak from authority -- and not because the homeless have the dirtiest underwear anywhere: they don't. In fact, the homeless people I served were more likely to have brand-new used-once underwear fresh out of the package from last night. You'd think the homeless would have filthy teeth, right? Wrong. I've seen them glob on a heaping helping of toothpaste, brush a while, add some more -- no spitting -- foaming at the mouth -- then throw away the toothpaste... then throw away the toothbrush. And no, I'm not lying. This is what people do with plentiful free stuff. I also cooked and cleaned up. Gluttony in America is alive in every caste.
What this has to do with looking in a three-way mirror is nothing.
Thank you for your comments.
7 - Shark
Yah, but it keeps the ol' essay alive!
(You *OWE me!)
*visit "**Aristide's Diary" soon and receive 10% off on your next Caribbean Cruise!
** "It reads like a hot, throbbing, dollop of sexual manliness! I couldn't put it down!" ---Nora Roberts