Lady's Man - Oct 4 2025

 

Lady’s Man

Oct 4 2025

When I saw my grandfather’s photos

as a young man

I confess I was taken aback.

But really, why so surprised

that this shambling old man

who never said much

and seemed perpetually distracted

hadn’t always been that way?

That he wasn’t born old,

had had a life before 

I was even thought of,

and must once have felt 

rather pleased with himself

and proud of his physique?

I suppose, like all young men

he felt immortal

when he posed for these,

mugging for the camera

and looking dapper 

with his pomaded hair, unfiltered cigarette,

in the swanky suit

with its high-waisted pants

and high-fashion pleats;

a lady’s man

out to prove himself.

Of course, he didn’t live forever,

died

when I was a child

still innocent of death.

And as much as we wish for posterity

even pictures don’t last;

the finish dulls, edges fray,

while the blacks fade

and white clouds over.

Until, if they aren’t first misplaced 

the subject is;

just some anonymous man

in wide lapels and pin-striped pants

posing like a movie star.

I see old people differently now.

Especially since I’ve become one myself,

and have my own restless young man

fidgeting inside.

But unlike my grandfather

no pictures to prove it;

the box of them

my mother kept

got lost in a move,

and that was long before the internet. 

If memory serves, I looked a bit like he did.

But less sure of myself,

and not nearly as stylish

as the old man in his prime.

This poem was inspired by a short personal essay in a recent New Yorker. 

(The Original Brooklyn Selfie King

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/the-original-brooklyn-selfie-king)

 So not my own experience. Although it’s true that there are few pictures of me, either as a child or young man. (This will come as a shock to all modern parents!) But neither grandfather — men of an era when modesty was admired in a man, and serious men had no time for such frivolity — ever posed and strutted before the camera like that. In fact, I’ve never seen photos of either.

But I understand the author’s feeling of being “stunned” when he stumbled on these photos.  Because it’s natural to assume old people were born that way, never imagine them as the young person they once were, and fail to realize that the young man or woman is still very much alive under that wrinkled and liver-spotted skin. 

Ageism seems to be the last permissible “ism”. Although I suppose, since all of us grow old (one hopes!), it's an equal opportunity prejudice.