Robert Manners

Why I Don't Remember the Past:

Yes, this is what a Queen looks like when she's just a little Princess. I find the top center picture particularly cringe-inducing... I had this notion that I wanted to part my hair in the middle, even though it naturally parts at the side... it was a fetish that I would indulge every few years until my hair started thinning on top. It took a lot of hair-spray to make that dreadful coif (these were the days before gel and mousse, y'know). The lower right is rather terrifying as well... Portrait of the Serial Killer as a Young Boy. And don't get me started on those vast and God-awful collars! No wonder I hate shirts with collars now... I was traumatized by 70s fashion!



My sister, bless her little black heart, sent me this thumbnail of my old school pictures yesterday, and I have been looking at them intermittently since then, shuddering with terror and amusement. She's sending a larger and clearer scan later, which I will of course post in my Gallery Page. Much as I complain about my old goofiness, I find these pictures rather enchanting. It's such a thrill to have proof that I did, once upon a time, have really pretty skin.



Suzie also sent me, by the bye, a picture of herself and her children... I didn't put her in the Cast to the left because I don't have a good single picture of her. But to rectify the matter somewhat, here we go:

That is of course Suzie in the center, with my nephew Matthew on the left and my niece Ariel on the right. This was taken a couple of years ago, I think... the kids are now 16 and almost-12, respectively.



So, what do you think... do I look like my sister? Does she look like me? When we were little, we looked almost exactly alike (a phenomenon heightened by Mother's dressing us alike and pretending we were twins). But somewhere in our teens, we began to resemble our parents more... Suzie looked a lot like Daddy, where I picked up more of Mother's features. And our surface personalities are so different that most people who know the both of us never ever guessed we were related. But as I get older, we are beginning to resemble each-other more... or, rather, I am more closely resembling my father, who Suzie also resembles. People who know us both separately are often surprised to discover that we are related (we are very different, still, in mannerisms and speech and style, the things most people notice first), but are quick to note the resemblances once we are seen together. Then we get to shock them with the news that I am eighteen months older than she is. There's something about being a mother of two that makes you seem older, somehow, than a drag-queen with a tray full of moisturizers and alpha-hydroxy products on her dressing table.



Sometimes as I write in this blog, I am seized by this dreadful feeling that I am being dull. I am feeling that right now, in fact... I worry that I am boring you. It happened yesterday, so I turned my original and rather dull post into a surrealist panegyric to Charlene and geography. Today, though, I will simply shut up. So here's your Daily Beefcake.

Now go read somebody more interesting... I recommend any of the lovely folks in the right-hand column.