Sixteen—Geoffrey
I am tall, slim, smooth skinned. Blue eyes. A former catwalk model, which sounds more glamorous than it was and taught me less about my body than the years that followed it.
I don’t trust the mirror. Never entirely have. What it shows me is not quite what others see—I learned that early, in rooms not unlike this one, when it became clear that my own assessment of myself was among the least reliable available.
Some men find me attractive. Some do not. Both are looking at the same body and seeing something different and neither of them is seeing me, exactly. Just their own version of me, which is all any of us ever sees of anyone.
What I have is not confidence in how I look. It’s something quieter than that. An indifference to the mirror’s verdict that took years to arrive at and feels, now, like the most useful thing I own.
It’s what I notice most in the men who come here. Not the ones who dislike their bodies—that’s almost everyone, at least at first. But the ones who are waiting for the mirror to change before they can begin. Who have made their own comfort conditional on a reflection that will never quite cooperate.
The mirror doesn’t have to be trusted. It just has to stop mattering so much.
That takes longer for some men than others. But it’s remarkable how quickly it can happen when someone else is looking at you without an agenda and finding nothing wrong.
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