Photos
Never Lie
by
David Hagerty
You can call me
Gray. Not because it’s my real name, nor even my stage name, but because it
describes my legacy. I sit alone in a dusky attic above my Hollywood mansion,
staring at my face in a mirror. Unlike most aging celebs, and contrary to what
you’d expect, I look as good as I did thirty years ago. Nearby sit photos from
my youth, when I was acclaimed for my beauty, which has changed not at all.
Only now I notice
not the soft skin, golden hair, and chiseled cheeks that gossip columnists and
publicists exulted, but a stiff, unmoving face that betrays no emotion, no
humanity. I’ve become a statue, a soulless reflection, my own wax mannequin.
How did I evolve to
this unnatural state?
I hit hard and fast
in the movie scene, a star from my first minor role as boy toy to an older
woman. Publicists acclaimed not just my looks but my magnetism. They called me
a modern James Dean, a man who embodied the innocent mischief of adolescence.
With just a flash of my pale blue eyes, I could seduce anyone. Journalists forecast
I’d be an icon for the 21st century.
Only my agent warned
me: beauty and celebrity fade. He advised me to take acting lessons, study the
craft of filmmaking, watch classic movies, so I understood how stars of old
prolonged their fame. “It takes work,” he said.
Being young and
foolish, I didn’t listen. Instead, I flaunted myself at every venue: on red
carpets, at hip clubs, in trendy restaurants. I was the prototypical celebrity
whore, chasing the paparazzi as relentlessly as they chased me. I loved the
adulation, even for something I couldn’t control. I’d inherited a blessed face,
and it took little effort at that age to maintain it.
Except I learned it
couldn’t last. All around me I saw aging actors whose looks had faded, and
along with it, their careers. My leading lady in that first film never got
another part half as good. My next director had moved behind the camera because
no one wanted to see his craggy face. Even most producers were washed-up stars.
I didn’t want that.
I didn’t spend three years waiting tables and going to auditions to be a blip
in the spotlight, a one-hit wonder. I didn’t want temporary fame. I wanted
immortality.
So I asked makeup
artists, fitness trainers, and plastic surgeons how to preserve my appeal. They
all had techniques, which they shared for large fees, yet those only disguised
the decay. In the mirror, I saw ruin edging around my eyes.
Then I heard about
Doctor Henry—homeopath to the stars. He claimed to have a formula for eternal
youth. His treatments didn’t involve shots, pills, or surgeries. A few drops of
his potion could reverse a year of aging.
“How?” I said.
“Mithridatism.”
“Myth-what?”
“Mithridates was the
sixth king of Pontus. He worried about being assassinated, so he took doses of
toxins to develop an immunity.”
“You’d poison me?”
“In amounts too
small to do any harm. To trigger your immune system. Like vaccines or
antivenom. Treating aging with the causes of aging.”
I wanted to believe
him, but after meeting so many false prophets, I doubted his promises. Not
because I didn’t understand the science (the art had been practiced for
centuries) but because it sounded too good to be true. How could a few drops
counteract nature?
So I tested it. The
potion tasted vile, like death in a concentrate. Still, I bought a small dose,
then spent all night tanning, drinking, drugging, and screwing. Everything my
agent warned me to avoid. The next morning, I saw a glow on my skin and a sheen
in my hair. Only my ruined clothes offered evidence of the damage.
“This works no
matter what I do?” I asked.
“Indulge all your
desires,” Dr. Henry said. “Self-denial is the greatest cause of decay.”
I did as he
prescribed. I drove fast cars, dated fast women, took drugs to make me faster
still. My breath always tasted of Champagne, and my skin emitted pheromones. No
velvet ropes could contain me. Soon, I became infamous for my hedonism.
Contrary to what my
agent said, my bad reputation only enhanced my career. Magazines put me on
their covers. Promoters begged me to appear at their events. Actors competed to
be in my movies. Celeb magazine proclaimed me the Alpha Male of the industry.
Hollywood had
changed. Once scandal could ruin a career—even for Charlie Chaplin—but in the
21st century it could propel one. No bad press existed on social media. All
attention enhanced my image.
Once and again, I’d
compare my appearance to my earlier one, holding up my first head shot against
my reflection. True to Doctor Henry’s prediction, I grew not uglier but more
handsome. Meanwhile, I came to disdain my younger self. In those early
pictures, I saw naiveté. With half my later wisdom, I could have owned the
industry in a year rather than a decade.
Then I met Sibyl.
She was an adolescent model acclaimed for her precocious beauty, but also an
aspiring actress, eager to learn the business. Her mother introduced us, asked
me to apprentice her. A true stage mom, living vicariously through her child.
Called herself a manager, though really she was more like a madam.
I heard that Sibyl’s
mom once worked as a showgirl, but that glamour had passed. Her face looked
skeletal, her skin cracked and sallow. She stank of hair spray and cold cream.
I assumed she was compensating for her own aging by promoting her daughter’s
beauty.
I’ll admit to being
taken by Sibyl’s innocence. She smelled of talcum, and her flesh bore not a
freckle. Yet like mine, her baby face hid a taste for the depraved. She quickly
became my best girl. Not my only one, of course—that would undermine my
image—but the costar I appeared with most often.
The gossip rags
tagged us as a couple—a rumor inflamed by her mother—but I didn’t deny the
innuendo. Despite our age gap, which should have cast me as her father figure,
we were partners. I taught her the ways of fame in the modern era: the
titillating selfies, the shocking quotes, the public feuds. She proved to be an
A student, clawing her way onto the A list.
She’d text me asking
for advice, but really she only needed validation. Should I date a bad boy? Why
stop at one. Should I get a lewd tattoo? Why not two. Should I pose nude? Every
chance you get. Only after each episode, proclaim you did it for the purest
reasons: to empower women, to defy society’s conventions, to set an example for
others. Never admit that it was for yourself.
I’ll confess to
enjoying her company. Women my own age bored me. They were too inhibited, too
controlled. I needed the free spirit of youth to match my own eternal
adolescence.
Soon mom had lost
control of Sibyl, who’d yet to reach the age of majority, but who petitioned
the court for emancipation. Once that happened, once young Sibyl managed her
own finances, mom would be destitute. And she couldn’t allow that.
Instead, she accused
me of corrupting her daughter. Following my usual pattern, I answered with
indifference. Then she claimed that I’d set Sibyl on a self-destructive path.
Again, I didn’t deny it. To anger mom more, I told the scandalmongers Sibyl was
mature enough to make her own decisions. That was the tipping point.
Without any
evidence, mom reported me to the FBI for violating the Mann Act: transporting
her daughter across state lines for immoral purposes. I’ll admit to having
crossed that border a few times with former ingénues, and I suspected others
had with Sibyl—but never me. I respected her too much to take such advantage.
The feds tried to
entrap me with my own antics. They showed me press photos of us arm in arm,
claimed it proved my lascivious intent.
“It’s a grip and
grin,” I said. “All VIPs take them.”
They quoted
interviews where she credited me with teaching her the ways of stardom, said it
proved grooming.
“Nothing a good
agent wouldn’t do.”
They took an
affidavit from her mom, alleged I’d seduced the girl.
“How would she know?
They only speak through lawyers.”
Without better
evidence, they couldn’t bring criminal charges. Instead, they assassinated my
character in the media: walked me past photographers into their headquarters,
identified me as the subject of an ongoing investigation, slipped rumors to
reporters about their suspicions.
For once, the bad
press boomeranged on me. Instead of being cast as a bad boy, I got typed as a
pedophile villain. Studios stopped sending me scripts. Endorsers stopped using
my image. Promoters stopped asking me to their events. Even my agent stopped
calling.
For the first time,
I found myself home alone, a pariah. I’d been blacklisted, my career cancelled.
One of those lonely
nights, I broke out my old publicity stills. I hoped for consolation in my
enduring beauty. What I saw shocked me. While my features remained unchanged,
their effect had transformed. Instead of innocent youth, I projected the
weariness of wisdom.
Incensed, I drove to
Doctor Henry’s office, demanded to see him. Typically, it took weeks to get an
appointment—largely because I’d credited him publicly for my longevity—but for
his best client, Dr. Henry cleared his schedule. I threw down that old photo,
demanded to know why his treatments had stopped working.
He examined my face,
so close up I could smell his tooth polish. I’d experienced that same intimacy
many times in makeup chairs, but there it felt intrusive. After probing my
pores, he sounded vindicated.
“The treatments work
as they ever have,” he said. “It’s your mood that’s changed.”
“But you promised
I’d never age.”
“On the outside. The
inside, only you can control.”
Anger coursed
through me like adrenaline. In an instant, I saw not a miracle worker but a
charlatan. I knocked over his vanity lights, which crackled and hissed with
exposed energy, then loomed over him like Frankenstein’s monster.
“You told me to
indulge my worst impulses.”
“To satisfy your
desires. But when that satisfaction fades . . .”
“You lied!”
“Other doctors attend
to the mind—”
Before he could make
more excuses, I grabbed a vial of his potions and smashed it atop his head,
releasing a funk of chemical death. He looked stunned, then ran to the sink to
wash away the poison. He was too slow. It had soaked into his skin, dripped
into his eyes, seeped into his lips. By the time he’d rinsed it off, his face
had turned pale, and his breathing had grown labored. He clutched his throat,
then collapsed. I left him there to die.
Now, as I sit alone
before my looking glass, I understand what he meant. He could head off physical
deterioration but not mental decay. Never during my heyday did I feel
depressed. I was too busy chasing immediate gratification. But even a sybarite
can indulge only so much. I have exceeded not my own tolerance but the
public’s.
In the distance, I
hear sirens approaching. Truly, the devil has come calling. And resignation
seeps over me.
I had my run. It
lasted longer than most—thirty good years—but all stars burn out. In time, even
those immortalized on a walk of fame elicit shrugs and questions of “who”?
So, I commit myself
to the one thing that might prolong my celebrity. I pick up my old photo. As I
gaze upon it, I feel I’m looking not at myself but at a stranger. With such
detachment, I flick the lighter that has ignited so many acts of
self-destruction and set my image ablaze. I let it burn until the flames singe
my fingers, then watch the embers catch on my hardwood floors. As the fire
surrounds me, I take one final, vain look in the mirror and wish only that I
will be remembered as a shining star who refused to fade.
In honor of the greatest bad
boy of literature, Oscar Wilde.
