Catch - All

By Jessica Lake

About the Author

I dreaded every birthday.

At ten:

“Double digits. That’s when I die.”

At thirteen:

“I’m not a kid anymore. I’m a teen.”

And on and on.

You cannot begin something without planting the seed of its destruction.

As a child, I loved my body. It was light, fast, skillful. My mind was frightfully curious, intelligent, and fearless. Everything I needed to mindfully inhabit this plane.

Then adolescence came slouching toward Bethlehem.

Why doesn’t every boy find the transformation from angelic androgyny to rugged, bearded sasquatch horrific?

Why don’t more boys feel tortured and betrayed by puberty?

I certainly did.

Sure, life isn’t fair.

But does she have to be cruel?

Years later, a photograph presented me with another version of the same problem.

And yes, that is a wig.

And I paid a fortune for those pearly whites.

What unsettles me is that even after all these years, I still don’t recognize myself.

Spoiler alert:

I never did.

Once past youth, I defined my face mostly by its failures.

Jessica, diva that she is, exclaimed:

“I am unmasked. And I recoil at the reveal.”

There is one consolation.

For all the misery I associate with childhood, many of the moments I remember fondly have something in common.

I was alone.

Bildungsroman

A bildungsroman is the German equivalent of the American “coming-of-age” story—the journey from boy to man.

In every culture, the milestones are time-honored.

But what most boys experience as triumphs, I experienced as tragedies.

Each step was a small death.

The grief I felt for the loss of childhood was boundless.

Modern psychology speaks of five classic stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

I never got past denial.

Nimble minds can subvert reality to protect fragile egos.

I saw the world through Me-colored glasses.

It was a fabulous folly.

In my tiny hominid brain, I hung a portrait of someone else’s beauty. Growing up in the 1950s, I idealized the extravagant glamour of cinematic starlets.

Who better than the girl next door—

Veronica Lake?

What better way to guarantee a lifetime of disappointment?

When you imagine yourself beautiful, do you see someone else’s head?

As my second ex-wife once counseled:

“There’s nothing wrong with your face! You always had an unusual ethnic look, and that’s what makes you attractive.”

Magical Girl

Oddly, from an early age, I crafted a fantasy origin story.

It gave me the hope and strength to survive.

I am a changeling—an immortal princess of extraordinary intelligence and beauty, trapped in the body of a human boy.

This curse has made me ordinary and doomed me to a short and brutal life.

Everything around me conspires to convince me I am human.

But if I remain true to my origins, others like me will someday return and take me home.

Crazy, right?

And yet…

I still believe.

It’s odd to carry both belief and disbelief in the same chest.

But the fantasy gave my struggles meaning. A salve to numb the buffoonery of human life.

I always expected that an X-ray, MRI, or DNA test would finally reveal the truth.

They never did.

Still, the belief persists.