I AM young. My skin, glowing with health, will never again look as good as it does now. In years to come, looking through photographs, I will be amazed at how handsome I was.
But for some reason I have made the decision to spend these years – my entire 20s – with my face hidden behind a massive, stupid, fucking beard.
Seriously, look at the size of this thing. If I were a fugitive from justice who’d spent six years living in the woods, it would be perfectly suited to conceal my identity from the law.
I am no fugitive, but a man in his prime who has chosen to wear the facial hair of the Baader-Meinhof gang (2018 Ibiza club re-edit) simply because everyone else is doing it.
And then of course there’s these glasses. There is no trace of darkness under my twinkling, youthful eyes. No creases mark their corners when I smile. But you’d never know that because of these ridiculous, thick-framed spectacles.
It almost looks like I could remove the whole lot as one piece,, like Darth Vader’s mask but revealing not a scarred monster but a man in the springtime of his life. I could remove it all. But I don’t.
Instead, when I show my children photographs of myself in years to come they will ask ‘Daddy, why did you spend your 20s cosplaying as Rasputin?’ And I will have no good answer.
