Forever Young

A few weeks ago, I joined some of my friends for lunch. I was all tanned up, fresh from a 15 minute vacation which I took while baking inside the tanning bed at Basement salon. My friends were appalled when I told them about what I did. They looked at me as if I had venereal disease. They all went on and on about photoaging, acute skin dehydration and etc. They gave names like Bridgitte Bardot, Liz Taylor and others as great beauties gone California raisins. Vain as I am, I am the type who lives for the moment. At the most, my future forecast is limited to five-year increments. Just enough to set a goal in which I can orchestrate my movements in. I can be all wrinkled and puckered up. I can look like a walking Birkin bag. But I’ll never be old. Never. Even at the young age of 22 I speak this prophecy with conviction.

The concept of age has always escaped me. Maybe it’s because of the numbers and my utter hatred for counting, calculating and accounting. Same goes with the way I handle money—that’s why it disappears the moment I touch it. You see, the thing with numbers is that it measures the value of something. It’s all very precise and the concept of relativity does not exist. So a woman of fifty is to act like a woman of fifty. A woman of twenty should act like a woman of twenty. It’s all measured. So I say do away with numbers.

Life for me is like a painting. It changes with every stroke.

My father is a prime example of the ageless one. He’s probably the most charming curio ever. He lives each day with a child’s curiosity. He does not apologize for his rather unconventional ways of doing things and is more well-versed with names of Italian and French clothing design houses than the current prime ministers of these countries. He’s forgotten my real name, as it appears on my birth certificate a number of times, but he still remembers where his plaid orange trousers from the ’70s are hanging. He’s so into clothes that my mom says when they got married he would hide bags from Rustan’s under the bed, in the car trunk, in the nursery, just like an alcoholic stashing J&B at random places in the house—to dodge her nagging. One time he went to Iraq for a state visit and in front of all the ministers he crossed his legs and revealed a navy blue sock with an American flag emblazoned on it. They all didn’t even make an effort to conceal their shock at seeing the US flag on my father’s ankles. When he noticed them staring, he grinned and said "You like it? It’s Polo, you know Ralph Lauren." He was totally oblivious to the fact that he was saying this in the midst of the Gulf War.

When I went to London for the first time he said to me, "Let’s not bother seeing the Big Ben or the Buckingham Palace — they have books for that...let’s just go to Harvey Nichols." He is too honest to be good, Dorothy Parker said the same about herself. He says things with such nonchalance coupled with his distinct abrasive charm that he can get away with murder. I mean if he did what O.J. did, he wouldn’t need the dream team to talk himself out of that one. He collects alarm clocks and buys toys from street vendors and plays with these in the car. He, a man born in the Thirties — before TV, commercial airlines and cell phones — is a constant reminder for me that following the rules don’t always make things right. Yet, despite his being child-like he is an adult. He always wants to have fun and make fun of convention by charmingly defying it. He lives on his own terms and even if it seems odd to others, for him his world is what normal is. His manner and the fashion in which he chooses to conduct his life may leave some a little queasy. But to him it works.

He has taught me that living my life on my own terms is the only way for my spirit to evolve and remain alive.

What makes him beautiful is his eccentric and whimsical approach to life. It is my fondness of him and his ways that has brought me to meet and love people who are unsullied by the black and white rules of being ordinary. I used to feel uncomfortable with the way I was especially during my high school days. You see, when you’re a kid being weird is cute. However, once you go past the 4’7" height requirement of being cute, you are no longer considered cute.

My friend once told me that I smoke like a third-grader. Well, aside from some Hollywood brats whom I have never met but simply read about, I have never seen a third-grader smoke. So I attribute his comment to my rather virginal handling of the cigarette which ironically I have lodged between my fingers since I was fifteen.

I tried to smoke in a more sophisticated manner but I kept dropping my cigarette. I also dance like I have Tourrette’s syndrome. I tried dancing to the beat. I found myself standing still trying to catch the beat. No fun. Anything that requires unnecessary effort is not worth it. If I can smoke, even if it is playground style, so be it. If I dance like an African bushman, at least I’m dancing. Never force anything in life. That is how pretensions are born. My mom told me that I should behave like a lady. Meaning I shouldn’t laugh too loud, shouldn’t dance if I didn’t know how to dance and stop telling nasty stories during meals.

But if you take all of that away, who will I be?

I tried to be a good girl once. I was in high school then and I guess it was the one time in life that I felt compelled to fit in. That coupled with the fact that my mom was threatening to cut my allowance since I was spending it at Mars. It was so hard. You know—to be proper.

I have inherited my Dad’s style of speaking and to suddenly speak in Edith Wharton language was, to say at the very least, inconceivable. I felt like I was at an Emily Post concentration camp. I broke down and quit.

The only manners I need to know are the following:

• Never hurt anybody intentionally.

• Treat everyone with respect. If you fail to do so, apologize profusely.

•Thank people for their good deeds.

•Give credit where it is due.

•Be good to your friends and family.

•Never steal: ideas, material possessions and lovers.

•Be discreet especially with regard to the confidences of others.

•Follow the constitution and traffic rules.

You see, to grow up is not the same as growing old. To see life with the inquisitiveness of a child make’s any day a spectacular and inimitable experience. One grows old when one measures his or her life within the confines of the do’s and dont’s. Allowing yourself to go beyond the borders of what is considered proper is really the way to live life without pressure (thus no wrinkles). What I’m saying is that being quirky is not something to be ashamed of. All the greatest mavericks in history were strange in their own ways. I can’t fathom anything extraordinary coming out from a cookie cutter, can you? Who wants to be vanilla anyway when you can be a pistachio-strawberry with dulce de leche ripples and marshmallow bits?

I believe that even if we’re put in this world together, we can’t help but perceive the world like it were our very own. That we are the lead actors and the rest are just the supporting cast. Just like a fingerprint, how we see life can never be replicated by another. That’s the great thing about meeting new people. You get to see the world through another person’s eyes. You get to see how wonderfully scrambled it gets once their odd ways are folded in. Remember the movie Being John Malkovich? The husband John Cusack plays the role of the scorned puppeteer who finds a portal into John Malkovich’s brain and gets to experience the world through John Malkovich’s eyes. As fantastic as this notion is, I am glad that I don’t have to live my life through someone else’s eyes. To live life being exactly who I am is the ultimate anti-aging formula. It is the Creme de la Mer of the soul, the Vicky Belo of character, the Marie France of the spirit. It may not feel right to others, but heck, no one else is gonna live your life but you. So have a party and never apologize for being you.