The next issue of ALTE: Getting Old Together, our first exclusively online issue, is going to be dedicated to the theme, “Disguise,” which has me thinking about the ubiquity and sensuality of disguise in my own life.
• When I was a boy of about 9, I bought a rubber mask for Halloween that turned my face into an old man’s, with my eyes peeking through. My mother found it very creepy to have this little old man skulking about, and I enjoyed scaring her (and liked the smell of the rubber), so for the next year or so I periodically showed up in the kitchen or living room wearing my old-man mask.
• When I was 16, I switched clothes with my high-school girlfriend. She coiffed my hippie-long hair, and we went out with two friends to Jahn’s, a large ice-cream parlor in Queens, with me wearing her dress and rabbit-fur coat — a major turn-on, soft as it was; we often made out with her wearing it, sometimes with nothing underneath — while she wore my dungarees and ski jacket. I felt silly, nervous and vulnerable, being out in public dressed in girl clothes, but no one paid us any attention — either because I passed the audition or because of New York’s legendary tolerance for the weird and outré.
• Last year, as I was writing my AMERICAN TORAH TOONS 2, I came upon the Torah portion that describes the Hebrew priesthood’s “sacral vestments,” which got me ruminating about the worlds of fashion, uniforms, gender performance, and power. Here’s the illustrated commentary I created —
• Finally, there is the “veil of age,” which has slipped across me over the past few years, eroding my vanity even while I try to stand up straight and look dignified. The pleasurable aspect of wearing that veil is, indeed, the surrender of vanity, which enabled me to create this artwork this morning, which I call “Big Head.”
Odd, isn’t it, how we only get to see ourselves in mirror image while everyone else gets to see us as we really are, with our hair parted opposite to how we think it is?
As a parting shot, here’s the best song about “disguise” ever written, Betty Everett’s “Shoop-Shoop Song,” aka “It’s In His Kiss.” I’m going to go learn how to play it.