A Reluctant Contender in the Quest for Everlasting Youth

I look young. Of course I am young, 23. But I look really young, as in not old enough to drive.

Apparently, I have that combination of height, weight, complexion and haircut that the world equates with youth.

I should be happy in Los Angeles, where being young puts you closer to God than being clean. If I were an actor, perhaps I would be. But I don’t act, and I’m tired of the things people say.

This is not a joke:

A woman walked up to me in a bar. We hadn’t been introduced, but we had friends in common. She shook my hand, looked me up and down, and said, “You look like you’re about 12 years old.”

Things like this happen to me. Every day.

Maybe I shouldn’t complain, lest I incur some of the wrath reserved for that woman on the television commercials who purrs, “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.”

(I’d better say here that looking young is not the same as looking beautiful. If you have doubts about this, I suggest you look at your high school yearbook. I, for example, look young, but nobody is slipping me a modeling contract.)

But I’m tired of everyone from hairdressers to co-workers telling me that I’ll be glad I look young when I’m 40.

I don’t know if I’ll still look young when I’m 40. Actually, I’m developing this phobia that I will age all at once, like Dick Clark in the Far Side cartoon where Clark, in front of a nationwide TV audience, suddenly ages 200 years.

Of course, this is L.A. I can probably find a therapist who specializes in treating cases like mine. Or a support group.

Yeah, a support group. This is traumatic, you know. I get ignored in department stores. And when I buy something with a credit card, they ask me if the card is mine.

On a good day I just say yes.

But if the traffic’s been bad or I’ve spent too much time in the fitting room, it’s all I can do to keep myself from screaming, “YES, IT’S MINE. The bill comes to my mailbox at my apartment. Where I DO NOT live with my parents.”

About 18 months ago I examined my parents to see how I would age and, more important, when . My father told me he looked 18 until he was nearly 30, after which he looked 25 until he was nearly 40.

I don’t think I’d mind looking 25 for a while. Then maybe ticket-sellers at the movies wouldn’t look at me extra carefully when I buy a ticket to an R-rated show. Or nightclub bouncers wouldn’t smile at me in that way that says, “I’m going to let you get away with this fake I.D., just because I’m nice.”

But more than the doubt, it’s the awe that gets to me.

I go to an interview or a press conference and people treat me like I must be some wunderkind . Like I’m the Doogie Howser of reporting.

“You’re really young,” they say, as if this observation had never been made before. I don’t know what to say back--”You’re not”?

I usually fumble through something about how I’m not as young as I look, which never convinces anybody of anything unless I pull out my driver’s license or my college diploma.

There are, I suppose, advantages. I get student discounts, even if I don’t have a student I.D. People don’t get nervous when I approach them. I can walk through any high school in the country and not get a second glance.

Maybe it’s all a control issue. I want the respect that normal grown-up people pay each other, and I can’t get it. And I can’t do anything about it. If I tried to wear more sophisticated clothes, I would look like a kid wearing my mother’s clothes.

The only way I can look older seems to be to wear more makeup. Then people will think I’m covering up the wrinkles that I don’t even have.