Chapter 3
If you have a facelift and no one notices, did you
waste your money?
I have a house that I rent to comedians, real comedians. Actually, I rent the house to Sacramento's premiere comedy club and they use my house as sort of a hotel for the comedians that they book to play the club. So, every week, three different comics reside in my rental property. Every time I visit the house, I meet new comedians, and without exception, I have found them to be sensitive, intelligent, and pleasant people. I respect comedians immensely, not just because they are nice people, but because of what they do for a living. Night after night, they stand in front of strangers and try to make them laugh. If they fail, they don't have to wait for an annual report, they know immediately. There is nothing louder to a comedian than the silence of a gag that doesn't work. It's much harder than, say, writing. A writer never really knows how a book is being received. Sales and reviews only tell part of the story—nothing like the immediate feedback a comic gets. The nearest thing a writer gets to immediate feedback is a rejection notice.
Comedians are always gifted observers, and rarely hesitate to share their opinions, so I asked the current tenants their opinions on facelifts for men. You would expect quips and jokes from comedians, but most of them are pretty serious off stage. After all, doctors don't do surgery away from the office, and scientists don't do research away from the lab. Why should comedians be funny off stage? Anyway, it seems that my panel was too young to have really given much thought to facelifts, let alone facelifts for men. About the only experience any of them had had with cosmetic surgery was second hand, and most of that dealt with breast augmentation. The most cogent statement that emerged from this conversation went something like this, "Men don't have facelifts, they have beards." This comment proved to be a humor stimulus, and was followed by, "Men don't have facelifts, they buy a convertible, cowboy boots and Viagra." Followed by, "Wear your bangs like Pete Rose, grow a beard and you will look like a 21 year old--a 21 year old Chewabaca." On the other hand, they all thought breast implants were wonderful. They all agreed that they would defend a woman's right to have breast implants no matter what the cost. I left no closer to knowing whether I was going to try vanity surgery or not. One thing was certain, I wouldn’t be having a breast implant.
It was raining when I left the "Comic House" and headed back to my apartment. The roads were slick with rain and traffic was light. The reflection of city lights transformed Main Street into an art piece. The black of the roadway contrasted vividly with the reflected lights, long streams of neon bright paint spilled on the shiny black surface of the street. As I drove home, I remembered a similar night, years ago when I rode my motorcycle across America. I had just passed through Colorado Springs, a light rain had turned the interstate slick and I was tired. I was wearing my helmet, which was rare, and I had to keep wiping the rain splatters from off my visor. The headlights from oncoming traffic reflected from off the glistening black roadway, and from cars ahead of me was the red glow of brake lamps reflecting from the inky highway. My shoulders ached, and I could hardly keep my eyes open. Denver was only a few miles down the highway, but I was slowly wondering if I had the energy to make it. The rain increased, and as my bike sliced through the storm I could feel the sting of drops that missed my visor and struck my neck and chin. My jean jacket was soaked through, and I began to chill. The highway began to undulate and the reflected light began to squirm like giant snakes, the overpass that I was approaching was slowly sinking into the roadway, blocking my passage.
I shook my head violently, trying to awaken myself from the hallucinatory stupor into which I had slipped. I pulled over to the side of the road, took off my helmet and lifted my face to the rain. It played down upon my face, I opened my mouth and drank from the sky. The drops were hitting me with such force it felt as though they could puncture skin. I would have laughed at the idea of a facelift in those days. Men don't get facelifts, they lift their faces to the sky and drink in life.
As I continued my drive home, I fantasized about actually completing a book describing my motorcycle adventures. There were so many interesting things that had happened on that trip that I could easily fill hundreds of pages. The reverie of hallucinating just outside of Denver was certainly worth writing about. I had never experienced anything like it. Fatigue induced hallucinations can be horrifying. That was just one experience among many. I visualized myself returning to my apartment and pounding out on my computer a chapter about the Denver experience. I played with different opening sentences, "It was a cold, wet night on a mile-high freeway." "My body was trembling from the cold and exhaustion as I left Colorado Springs." Everything I came up with sounded trite. This wasn't going to be easy. As I got closer to my apartment, I felt my enthusiasm for writing diminishing. I am no Erika Lopez, and in truth it would be a major undertaking to put my adventures on paper. The reality of my ever becoming a novelist seemed even further away now that I no longer had a list of excuses for not taking pen in hand. I pulled into my parking space and looked out at the row of cars nestled in their stalls. They glistened in the rain. As I sat there I slipped off into another reverie--another idea for my book.
In the Midwest, it is not uncommon to see cars with pock-marks; marks not unlike the scars you see on someone who had bad acne as a kid. Hail damage. In Illinois I got caught in a hailstorm. I didn't have my helmet on that day, and there had been no rain. The sky wasn't particularly threatening. There were cumulous clouds, but there was also a lot of blue in the sky. I was driving the back roads, somewhere near Springfield, when the first stones started to fall. At first they weren't very large, pea size, but within seconds they increased to the size of golf balls, and they were smashing down all around me. I took a few good clunks on the head, before I found a county park with a covered picnic area where I joined a small congregation of park users who were also seeking shelter from the hail shower. I sustained a few bumps on my head, but intuitively new they would quickly subside without the aid of cosmetic surgery.
Nature puts on the greatest show on earth. All you have to do is visit Texas in the summer and watch the skies. My motorcycle journey took me through Texas, and it was in Texas I chased a tornado. I know that sounds crazy, but how often do you get to watch a tornado form. The sky was very much like the sky that dropped hail on me in Illinois. There were huge billowing clouds hanging low over the Texas plains, gray, swirling and threatening. Yet, there were huge windows in the cloud cover revealing a brilliant, cerulean blue sky. I was traveling east, and dead ahead of me was a mass of clouds that looked like a hundred huge balls were pushing down on the floor of the cloud cover. I had never seen such clouds before, and it wasn't hard to imagine a huge ball eventually falling through the clouds and onto the flat prairie over which I was traveling. I was transfixed by the magnitude and drama of it all. Eventually, one of the convex forms became conical and started to drop slowly to the earth. I pulled to the side of the road and watched the birth of a tornado. It was mesmerizing, beautiful, and terrible all in one.
As the tornado took shape it appeared to move away from me in an easterly direction. I pulled back on the road and raced toward it. It lengthened and took a snake like form curling down toward the ground and then retreating in a winding, twisting motion. This continued for what seemed like hours, but from the distance I traveled it couldn't have been more than a few minutes. It never did touch the ground, and by the time I rolled into Houston the sky was clear.
It was 1976, the Bicentennial Year, and I wanted to see America in the most personal way I could think of; I traveled by myself, and had more adventures in that one trip than I suppose many people have in a lifetime. There were times when I was scared, times when I was tired, times when I felt like I was flying, and times when I was awestruck by the beauty of the American landscape. The me that soloed across America on a Yamaha 650 would probably l
augh at the idea of vanity surgery. Men don't have facelifts, they have beards.
I guess, I there is part of me that tends to agree that facelifts aren't very manly, sort of the ultimate red convertible and cowboy boots. Throw in a gold chain, too. But what if the lift is so slight that no one would know? Would that count? Or what if I had a real manly facelift and let the scars show? Maybe I could convince the doc not to use an anesthetic--what could be more manly than a swig of booze and a pencil between the teeth? Gosh, maybe I could just do it myself. Now, that would make an interesting book!