YOU'RE SO VAIN. YOU PROBABLY THINK THIS POST IS ABOUT YOU.

I'm gonna have serious issues getting older. I already am having issues DAMNIT! My hair is starting to show lots of gray, but other than that, I still look pretty young, hip, and fresh. AHAHAHAAHHHAAH! Yeah, I'm with it baby! I need to successfully find that elusive Fountain of Youth, and quick!

I dunno. I find it horrid that the freshness of youth has to slowly but surely wither and wilt away, like a beautiful flower. I don't look forward to the upcoming changes my body will begin to show as I start pushing certain decades. I often look at people in their fifties who show me pictures of themselves when they were in their twenties and thirties and am often horrified at the dramatic changes their bodies have undergone! A woman at work who used to be gorgeous and rail thin in her twenties has now blown up to the size of a hot air balloon in her fifties! WHAT THA HELL HAPPENED, WHY, AND HOW??!! I had a hard time looking at her pictures from the 1970s and not displaying shock and awe on my face at the dramatic change! I used to have an old man as a neighbor, and he was in his eighties and looking pretty beat up. When I saw a black and white pic hanging on his wall from whence he was 25, I just about lost my lower jaw. There he was, a strapping handsome lad at one point only to look like a corpse some fifty years later. How utterly and bitterly cruel!

I know it has a lot to do with how you take care of yourself and shit, but still man. No matter how much you exercise, how well you eat, how much you sleep, drink water, you're still going to age. The skin will eventually sag, wrinkle, implode, and lose its elasticity. Extra pounds will probably come in to ruin the glorious fast metabolism you once possessed in yer youth. In my case, I'm pretty thin, so I have no idea how much I will eventually gain, if anything. But the gray hair will continue to invade my scalp and face, as I already notice it doing. And I'm really not that old age-wise mind you, it's just genetics that the men in my family go gray fairly young. I will physically change somehow as my ship sails along, but I dunno what kind of wrecking ball is going to hit me and how it will shatter my now handsome youth (modest bastard) and turn me into a decrepit old man. That is of course, if I live to see old age, which James Dean and Marilyn Monroe immortally did not!

Looking at celebrities and pics from their youth from time to time, I am amazed at how some of them have dramatically changed! Brigitte Bardot, a woman who was gorgeous in the 1950s now looks like a real cadaver! HOW AND WHY? LORD!!! WHYYYYYYYYY????!!!!!!!!! And I know you've seen Jack LaLanne and his juicer informercial. The man is in great shape of course in his eighties, but he still has aged considerably, and nothing has stopped it. NOTHING. Liz Taylor, Paul Newman, Eddie Van Halen, Warren Beatty, Robert Redford were all so hot in their prime and now look like they're ready to hop into their graves practically. I know some of them have abused their bodies and crap, but it don't matter kids. THE IMPLOSION WILL COME AND WILL HAPPEN TO YOU IF YOU LIVE LONG ENOUGH. You can grow old and age gracefully, and some do it remarkably well, but sometime eventually, the body's just gotta give.

In gay culture, turning 30 is a nightmare to many, even though it is often the best decade in a man's physical, emotional, and mental state. Youth is cherished and superficially expected. We are often bombarded with images of young, hot, well-built dudes in all kinds of ads. It is not cool to be old and homo. Perhaps maybe one of the reasons why I have this certain vanity? Even though older is better in bed and wisdom (and I have proven this), it is often perceived negatively by many in youth-obsessed gay culture.

So, whatever man. Let it be. Let time take its toll as it wishes. I'm trying to take care of myself as much as possible. I'm pretty pale, and avoid the sun often which I read is real bad for the skin. Trying to take as many pics of myself now, before it all falls apart and time begins its concerted effort on my physical mortal shell. Trying to enjoy all that blissful youth has to offer, before the ugly specter of geriatric senility hits me and I am no longer sexually attractive to anyone.

"Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity." -Ecclesiastes 1:2