UPFRONT:EVERY TIME I see a bouncer at the door of a nightclub or bar, my stomach flips and threatens to dissolve its contents into my pants. Not a pretty image, but such is my affliction: the fact of the matter is that the sight of a shaved head in a doorway still gives me the scutters something fierce.
See, back in the days of Inter Certs and slow sets, I was a serious liability on a night out: the weak link in our chain-gang who always got stopped on the way into the disco, while all the rest sailed coolly in and then had to traipse back out looking for me, usually still outside and squeaking at the unconvinced bouncers. It was never less than face-flushingly mortifying, and I still feel a rush of gratitude when a kindly doorman allows me pass, even though now he might be 10 years younger than me.
I never looked the right age until looking the right age was suddenly wrong, and at the time, it was a total curse. This, despite reassurances from those who swore up and down that looking so much younger than everyone else would one day be a blessing of considerable proportions. (Incidentally, these were the same people who told me it was practically a godsend that I had such acne-riddled skin, as it could only mean I’d be wrinkle-free long after the rest had shrivelled like dried fruit. Well, you lied, you oily-skin-myth pedlars: against all predictions to the contrary, I have managed to bring break-outs and wrinkles together at last, in one shiny visage, a ploughed and pimply paradox.)
On top of which, I now finally look my age, at a time when nobody is going to GAA discos any more. Which is fair enough: I am 35 years old, after all, and I’m not going to lie about it, so I shouldn’t require my face to either. These fine lines around the eyes and the odd grey hair are the inevitable result of time passing, and I did drag the arse out of my youth, so who’s complaining?
Except that, argue it any which way, it’s still a little disconcerting when your hair starts going grey. Not that I’m seriously attached to the nondescript mousey colour that nature finally settled on: I haven’t seen it for decades anyway, having been too busy dying it all manner of hues to have more than a faint recollection of the original. I even smiled indulgently when I found the first tenacious silvery visitor and made a big song and dance of the old “one grey hair” routine. Then brothers, sisters and extended family members moved in too, and it wasn’t such a fun party any more.
Lookit. Grey hairs, I know, do not presage my imminent demise and, yes, they looked pretty hot on Susan Sontag and haven’t done Helen Mirren any disservice, but in the same way I know that 35 is not old but merely (shudderingly) adult, I also know I’m no Helen Mirren. Plus, I’m sorry to report that my grey hairs have less of the sleek silver fox about them, and more of the toilet brush.
To characteristically overstate things, grey hair is a signifier that part of me is dying, even if the dead bits are only the melanocytes (thank you Wikipedia). It’s a bit like that moment when you lose your first tooth, a pointer to the passage of time, of some sort of transition, of – let’s not mince our words here – ageing. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing – I’m just saying it’s worth noting.
I’m fine with getting older (except for the part where your nose and ears continue to grow while everything else withdraws – terrifying prospect, that) and I’m not buying into some bunkum about youth being such a skip through the tulips, particularly as I recall much of it as spent shivering outside bars and smelling of Clearasil. I just assumed that by the time the grey hairs arrived, I’d be overflowing with the wisdom they are said to signify. It’s a little disappointing to learn that my skin, though saggier and wrinklier by the year, is not getting all that much thicker, metaphorically speaking, and that rather than getting closer to some universal truth as the tree-rings clock up, alternative truths now seem to present themselves as often as my birthdays.
Grey hairs, I would posit, do not a guru make, and I am none the wiser for my dying melanocytes. The years have taught me some things, like to be afraid of heights and not mix the grape with the grain, but they have left a complicated legacy of fine lines and bouncer-phobia.
Sure, ageing brings some shift in priorities, but it seems to me that rather than knowing more as the years progress, I just know different things, things that no doubt in 20 years time will appear just as questionable as my 15-year-old sureties seem now. Like right now, I’m struck with the awareness that although my appearance has finally, irritatingly, caught up with my age, I don’t seem to age at the same rate as time passes.
Lola, I’m told by those in the doggy know, ages seven years for every one of mine and boasts her own grey snout hairs at the ripe old age of eight, but I’d argue that I sometimes work on canine time myself. At other times, I’m going backwards, losing scraps of knowledge quicker than I gain them. The only thing that remains constant is my date of birth, at least since its slight alteration on my rudimentary fake IDs (there is nothing like a bit of cardboard pressed between two pieces of contact to make a doorman double up laughing).
At least I can get into discos these days, even as my desire to do so wanes, particularly now I’ve been told they’ve taken Roxette off the playlist. There I go again, showing my age: there are some things henna can’t hide.