Oh What the Hell. The Plain Unvarnished Truth*

*With all due respect to Peter De Lorenzo who speaks the real unvarnished truth every week at his Autoextremist.com website.

My 2003 self portrait sitting in my almost new Mercedes Benz E320. This was the end of my long, 25 year run in the fast lane, just before I spent every penny I ever made or inherited. Details to come in my forthcoming autobiography. The working title is great btw, lol. We'll see if it makes it through to the end.

2006 self portrait. I was growing my hair out for the first time since 1980, and dying it a realistic reddish brown instead of green or blue or orange as I had in the past. I'd been clean for two years but not thrilled about it.

Self portrait 2007. Yes, I was probably wearing the same shirt as in 2006. I had stopped dying my hair and my silver streak was back with a vengeance. I was actually born with a few silver hairs in the front of my head, and had them in the front of my "widow's peak" my entire life, but the rest of my hair was catching up with that streak. And yes, Truman Capote was not the only queen that had periods of massive weight gain and loss. At this point I was probably forty pounds heavier than my 2003 self portrait. Again, acknowledging my "clean" life but not terribly happy about my appearance. I ended up growing my hair all the way down to my shoulders. I have no idea why, lol, and one day, I just clipped it all off, shaving it with a razor down to the scalp.

My most recent self portrait from 2010. The hair is entirely gray/salt and pepper. I've lost weight, gained weight, and probably begun to lose it again. My "soul patch" is just about the only constant in my appearance since 2003. I'm old. I look old. I feel young. I walk to town every day in the winter, and ride to town on my bike every day in the warmer months. My life is teeny-tiny compared to my years in Manhattan and New Haven. My night life consists of what's on TV, My love life consists of my antiques. One of my biggest daily thrills is the first pot of percolated coffee of a blend of my own creation. I've made more lasting art in the past five years than I did in the previous twenty-five years, and I'm happy about that. I no longer think of life as a series of "what ifs" as it is a remembrance of what was. I no longer care about what the future might bring. I just hope I can create all of the rest of the art in my head before I can't physically do it anymore.

What the hell! This is me today. The plain unvarnished truth.