(1 week)
SATURDAY, 10:00 A.M.
Having returned home from New York after midnight, I wake up late and walk into the living room to watch cartoons. Boosh, asleep on the couch, is stirred awake. No sooner does she achieve consciousness than she is growling at me.
“Booshie,” I say, my voice slipping into the easy falsetto of a man addressing a poodle in the privacy of his own home, “don’t you even know me anymore?”
In reply, Boosh lets loose a series of barks, yips, and snarls that make me feel like a hobo trying to steal pie off a windowsill.
I turn around and leave the room and she settles back into the couch. I should probably wash my face and get ready for the day anyway. That dog brings out the best in me.
While brushing my teeth, I stare at myself in the mirror with great intensity. Sometimes I fear that Boosh can see through me—through the thin veil of niceties and pretend goodness that fools friends and family—to my soul.
10:25 A.M.
I’ve been staring at myself in the mirror far too long and have entered into a dangerous game: trying to see, without sentimentality, what other people see when they look at me.
As a teenager I would lock myself in the bathroom and stare into my own eyes until, through some act of hypnotism, I could no longer recognize that person in the mirror as me. At which point I felt liberated, as if I’d escaped my “me-ness.” In that state, I was just another person in the world, born into personhood as my sister had been, as the old Polish butcher who delivered our chicken had been. I could see with clarity how pimply my skin was, how ill-fitting my burgundy turtleneck, and, despite the assurances of well-meaning aunts, how unlike Matt Dillon I actually did look. And like anyone else who wasn’t me, I could finally experience the exhilaration of bad-mouthing myself.
I am not as good at this as I was as a teenager, for try as I might, I can still see something in the reflected jumble that is recognizable as “me.” I just can’t shake the feeling of kinship with the eyes staring back at me. I guess at this point I’ve just been me too long.
At thirty-nine, it looks like I can safely assume that this kinship will always be there, whether those eyes in the mirror are sunk in an old man’s baked apple of a face or even floating free in a soup bowl of formaldehyde in some future sci-fiworld. There is a part of my brain that is now hard-wired to leap up and claim ownership, that shouts, perhaps against all good sense, “That’s me.”
10:50 A.M.
Boosh enters the bathroom. I stop staring at myself and pick her up. She licks my cheek and it feels nice to have someone appreciate my face, even if it’s only a poodle looking for breakfast.