My life as a marked man

I have a mark on my forehead. a crease, actually. Three inches long, it begins at the hairline near my left temple and runs diagonally to the inside terminus of my left eyebrow. Frankenstein had a mark very much like it, though I notice that in old movie posters his tended to be jagged and blood-red. I don’t know how Frankenstein got his. I know how I got mine. My crease tells a story. It explains, in part, who I am.

Nearly two decades ago, when we were first married, my wife and I bought an antique oak bed. It’s impossibly romantic and utterly impractical. We sleep high off the ground between a hand-carved headboard and a simple, sturdy footboard. Our two kids, now 9 and 12, still climb, literally, into bed with us. Our bed is also very small. While most of our friends have graduated to queen- or king-sized mattresses, we still sleep on a double that seems designed for humans who never really evolved.

When I was younger and alone, I slept like a man skidding on ice. But over time, in the cramped and lofty quarters of our tiny bed, I’ve become a remarkably disciplined sleeper. My wife long ago claimed the left side, leaving me with the right. My half is 2 feet, 3 inches wide. Each night I customize my assigned space with the same ritual: one pillow goes beneath my head (the thin one) and I hug the puffy one with my right arm like a drunk’s best friend. It keeps me from rolling onto the floor. I always face right, which is how the left side of my face developed this Frankenstein crease.

It appeared like a subtle detail emerging in a photographer’s developer tray, except the process took many years. I’m now 45, and the crease is a feature no less fixed than my nose. People sometimes ask me how I got that scar. “Lobotomy,” I usually say. Sometimes I tell them a story about a guy in prison who pulled a shank. It would seem too maudlin to tell the truth, which to me is really about the profound joy of beginning and ending each day in the same place, with the same person.

Any time I want, I can get rid of my little imperfection. This could be as simple as smearing some expensive designer goop across it each day to make the skin on my forehead as tight as a drumhead. For a bit more cash, I could have a cosmetic surgeon simply cinch me up. Everybody’s doing it, or so I’m told by the remarkably uncreased spokespersons from the various vanity industries. They assure me--and I see no self-interest here whatsoever--that it’s perfectly OK for men like me to invest heavily in their products and services.

Lynne Luciano, author of “Looking Good: Male Body Image in Modern America,” says those industries have pretty much given up trying to convince guys like me that eyeliner looks great on men, but they’re making great strides in terms of convincing us to drop money on skin-care products. “For men, that’s legit,” she says. “Looking good and looking pretty are not, but protecting your skin when you’re out there skiing or surfing or driving your Ferrari around with the top down is OK.”

So, with no apparent damage to my manliness, and with the right combination of skin spackle ($20 per half ounce) and PABA-free aloe moisturizer ($18.50 per 4-ounce tube) and non-streak bronzer ($11.50 for 2 ounces), I could make my crease disappear. It would be like ironing a wrinkle out of a shirt. If I wanted to get proactive, I could invest in antioxidant grape-seed capsules ($1 each), aloe facial scrub ($12.50 for 4 ounces), essential shave oil ($10.95 per ounce) and post-shave healer ($13.50 for 2.5 ounces) to prevent the wear and tear of life from ever again accumulating on my face.

Why stop there when whiter teeth, bigger pecs and the Center for the Cure of Sweaty Palms are just a phone call or mouse click away? Surely I could find some permanent solution to this unfortunate ear- and nose-hair situation. Erectile dysfunction? No, but why take chances? Thanks to significant advances in surgery and self-delusion, I can have a penis the length and density of a police baton if I want one.

Whenever I’m tempted, I think back to the day when I was 10 or 12 years old and my godmother, a fine dentist, noticed a slight overlap in my two perfectly healthy front teeth. She pointed out that particular imperfection of mine to my mother, and my mother tensed. “Braces, then?”

My godmother, chin in hand, studied my teeth for a long time. Then she studied my mother for a long time. “Anybody can have perfect teeth,” she said at last. “Imperfect is much more interesting. But it’s up to you.”

We agreed then that I’d have an imperfect smile for life, and the lesson I learned that day shaped me in ways I’m just beginning to understand. When my dark brown hair began to go gray before I was 20, it never occurred to me to dye it. Even at age 28, when a barber dissed me with a ham-handed compliment--”Leave it. Gray looks distinguished on a man of 40.”--I let it be what it was meant to be. Today my hair is as white as a Limbaugh family reunion. To people struggling to reconcile my birth date with my driver’s license photo, I simply explain: “I’m 45, but my hair is 80.”

True, I’ve never been discriminated against because of my age, and I’ve never been injured or disfigured in a way that left me desperate for relief. I can imagine something like that would change my attitude. But for now, it’s a kick to see people react when I stand beside my 80-year-old mother, whose snow-white hair has been that color practically since I was born. There’s no denying our genetic link. “Oh,” people say. “Now I see.”

So the hair, too, is part of my permanent record. I can change that record any time I want, just as any of us now can. Someday my wife might get tired of the tiny scar on her right cheek, left there by one of her paper-thin infant fingernails shortly after she was born. My children might someday rid themselves of the little dents and dings that tell stories about their childhood bout with chicken pox, or the kindergarten teacher who should have clipped her salon-perfect nails, or the careless classmate whose sharpened pencil point left an indelible mark. Those will be their choices, not mine.

But I hope they’ll see their imperfections as I do. We’re here, all of us, for so short a time. Life leaves marks, and marks tell stories, and stories become history written in flesh. Anybody can be perfect. Imperfect is much more interesting.