When I realized last year that my face and body were officially going south, I went into denial. I was 61. Yet look at George Clooney—62 and a silver fox, I reasoned.
I buoyed myself with images of Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and Johnny Depp, who represent luxury watches, designer colognes, and AARP: The Magazine. Not to mention Tom Cruise, who, at 61, is still doing the impossible leaping and bounding.
It wasn’t all that long ago that by civilian standards, I was one of them. In high school and college, girls said I looked like the young John Travolta—Barbarino in Welcome Back, Kotter or Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever. (Now I get Jeff Daniels and Bill Pullman, not that there’s anything wrong with that.) At 30, I was working in the newsroom of the New York Post as one of its youngest editors, filling the coffee stations before most got in. After work, I’d stay out until all hours hitting the gallery openings, music clubs, and bars. (A phenomenon known as “joie de Steve!”) I got by on personality, but also my looks, which I did nothing to deserve and, frankly, never entirely appreciated when I had them.
Now a freelance writer on an unbalanced diet and income—print, too, is aging. There’s no top-tier personal trainer, nutritionist, or dermatologist in my life; no wife or full-time girlfriend, either. I cycle daily, and sometimes swim and play tennis, but three ankle fractures (one from a bar brawl) have caught up with me. As has typing—I’ve been an ink-stained wretch since I was 17.
I’m no stranger to self-improvement. Fifteen years ago, before I married my wife (we’re now separated), she asked me to get Botox so I wouldn’t look “too Faulkner-y.” I did. But I looked like Al Gore (so very highbrow), or perhaps Florence Henderson with a beard. I began using heavy moisturizing creams like Kiehl’s, and even some collagen serums for my crow’s feet.
But those stopgap measures didn’t last. The real aging wasn’t gradual, mind you. It just … landed. My stomach, figuratively and literally, dropped. Chubby-collared fishermen’s turtlenecks, a Hemingway staple, became my guise for hiding my developing turkey neck. My salt-and-pepper beard was no longer looking distinguished. Instead, I was using it as a concealer, hiding my softening chin.
I got by on my personality, but also my looks, which I did nothing to deserve and, frankly, never really appreciated when I had them.
Still, I took inventory of what remains: my smile, some decent-enough hair that is not yet fully graying or going through a major recession. My shoulders are strong (does it sound like I’m grasping?), and I’ve never taken Viagra—yet. I can still wear jeans with a 33-inch waist, although they’re all below-the-belt hip-huggers.
I witnessed a facial mole grow that wasn’t a beauty mark, but the result of too many summers protected by only the occasional application of Bain de Soleil. Scraping and freezing at the Skin Institute of New Orleans ensued. Under those clinical lights, I noticed that my nose was looking more bulbous. My eyes are more hooded and less fierce—think Beau Bridges, rather than Jeff.
Last summer, the day before my 61st birthday, I was riding my bicycle when the driver of an S.U.V. sped through a stop sign and left me laid out on the street. It fractured my pelvis, which, like ribs, can’t easily be mended with surgery.
On crutches for nearly two months, I had a prognostication of senior citizenship. As I healed, mostly as a result of swimming laps, I lost 10 pounds and got a spiffy haircut, requesting a “Don Draper.” I was told I looked younger. And each time my issue of AARP: The Magazine arrived, the subscription a gift from my mom, I dropped it immediately into the recycling bin.
Just a few years ago I used to shave seven years off my age. Now I tell dates that I’m older. “You look insanely amazing for 67!” one enthused. I drive a classic Vespa scooter, which women friends enjoy riding on. There’s a cavalier flair to it, except when it’s pouring. Nothing shows age like a yellow Lamborghini.
To me there is no “Carrie Bradshaw” answer to this aging thing. We’re all “Mister Big” (Chris Noth, 69) in either looks or character, maybe both. And it’s going to get worse.
Steve Garbarino, the former editor at BlackBook magazine, began his career as a staff writer for The Times-Picayune. Once again New Orleans–based, he now contributes to The Wall Street Journal and New York and is the author of A Fitzgerald Companion