Couple of days ago, I had to attend a sort of Zoom meeting, something very rare for me. I found the

channel, twisted the red wires together, tuned in on the electrical device, threw the necessary switches,

adjusted the rabbit ears, pushed the big red button and lit the fuse. My face popped up on screen and

I flinched. Hard. Almost fell out of my chair.

Now, I do know what I look like. Despite my best efforts to the contrary, I see myself in the mirror almost every day . I know I’m old, grey, wrinkled, sagged and generally repulsive. So this shouldn’t have been such a gol-durn shock to the system.

But I quickly realized the problem. I can’t explain it, but I recognized it. I knew my face would pop up onscreen, but, for whatever reason, the image I expected, the image I previewed in my mind ahead of time, was not the old man in the mirror. 

I thought I would see myself as I was maybe forty-fifty years ago. No grey hair, no more than sun wrinkles, relatively fit and tan. Not as I look now, but a face which would not scare children. 

Why did I expect such unreality in my appearance? I don’t know. I’d recently been sorting some old photos online, so maybe--maybe--I expected to see the same young face on Zoom that I’d seen in my computer’s photo files. That’s the best I got.

But, lemme tell ya, there must be some sort of denial (or perhaps decay) in the mind of a man who knows the ravaged face in the mirror all too well and who still expects to see young Dorian. Must be.