A few blogs ago, I mentioned the movie ROXANNE, the 1987 comedy starring Steve Martin and loosely based on the "Cyrano de Bergerac" play. Since it played in steady regular rotation on HBO in the late 80's, I'm sure I must've seen the movie a dozen times back as a kid. But that's also probably the last time I actually saw it and hence, I only had very vague memories of it. Once I mentioned it, I looked online and realized a Blu-Ray of it existed and so I ordered it right away.
Usually when I add a new Blu-Ray to my collection, I'll throw it on and skip to a few scenes through out just to get a quick idea of how the transfer looks. I went to 2 particular scenes at random. The first is when Chris (Rick Rossovich) first meets C.D. Bales (Steve Martin) at the firehouse and he can not stop starring at his large nose. It's exaggerated, of course, but it suddenly triggered a nervous feeling I hadn't even thought about since my teenage years. I skipped ahead to the next chapter and it stopped on a scene where Steve Martin is begging his doctor to just chop it off. "Cut me, just cut it off!" He's sick of his giant nose and just wants to look normal. This resonated with me and hit me so hard, and reminded me of an incident involving a hammer that I completely forgot about. I wasn't prepared for it.
I know, right? A light hearted romantic comedy from the late 80's and it was having this effect on me?
Well, here's why. When I was about 22 years old, I had a nose job.
I never wanted one. I never felt I needed one. And if you look at my baby pictures, I look totally normal. Somewhere in the late elementary school days was when all of a sudden, I grew a large bone protruding Roman nose.
As a kid, you don't know any better. It's not like you have much control over what you look like, besides maybe the cloths you wear, which let's face it, isn't really a thought in a young boy's life until maybe high school. I tended to relate to the "nerdy" characters in all the 80's movies I saw.
I was brought up Catholic and so I was forced to go to Catechism (religion lessons during my final period at school). My memory is fuzzy, but if I recall correctly, I remember trying to talk to one of the girls in my class and her refusing to acknowledge me because I was "ugly" and "weird." I was always extremely sensitive, even at that young of an age, so naturally, I found a corner and started crying in it. One of the Church aides found me, asked me why I was crying and I explained; not only the events that had just transpired that afternoon, but in general the constant daily ridicule I got at public school. She said to me, "Do you know what Jesus did when he was on the cross and people were spitting and throwing things at him? He said to God, 'Forgive them. Forgive them, Father for they know not what they do.'" And that's kind of when I developed the philosophy that these people don't know me, they don't know what they're doing, and I'm going to be better than them. Somehow.
I'd like to say that this new-found rational made me impervious to future taunts, but it only got worse and worse. I only thank the Lord, Crom, Krampus, whomever, that this all didn't happen at a time when social media existed.
I found some solace in a few places. Firstly, through movies. Horror movies, of course were my favorite. I related to the monsters and usually saw the regular people as the villains, and hence felt at home with the genre. Mind you, I'm talking about Frankenstein and the Phantom Of The Opera and the Wolfman. Not dudes like Michael Myers or Freddy Krueger. I knew better in those cases. I just reveled in the idea of being a "Dream Warrior" and defeating the wise-cracking bad-guy who was the big-bad bully. Or being Tommy Jarvis, a kid my own age, who conquered something that everyone else would be too scared to face. Eventually I started to go to horror conventions and being around kids just as enthusiastic as I was about horror movies and how they were made, for the first time in my life, made me feel like maybe I wasn't such a freak. And through horror, I just grew to have a love of the fantastic and cinema in general. Two movies I loved, related to, and that would make me cry on a regular basis were David Lynch's THE ELEPHANT MAN and Peter Bogdanovich's MASK. The reasons were obvious. Here were two completely beautiful souls and no one in the world could see the beauty in them, except for a very select few. I totally understood.
Another time, I was walking through Cedarhurst, most likely to Record World to pick up a new tape and although I had my headphones on, I didn't have anything playing at that moment. And I walked by a group of the skateboarders, my supposed friends, at least they pretended to be to my face or when they wanted free ice-cream from Baskin Robbins, my high school job. The leader of the bunch called out, "hey, man! Why don't you get a nose job?" They all started laughing, and I pulled off my headphones pretending like I didn't just hear what he said and I asked, "What?" "Oh, nothing man! What's up?" On the plus side, that same kid went to jail for a while, so yeah... fuck you, dude. Karma.
Don't worry, it wasn't ALL bad. I remember there was this beautiful girl named Tara that would walk with me to Foodland Express every day for lunch, and it was primarily because she wanted to listen to this "Yellow Ledbetter" song by Pearl Jam that was a b-side on one of the import singles I bought from Slipped Disc. (Long before it got radio airplay.) Granted, we didn't talk a whole lot, but I didn't care. A really pretty gal wanted to listen to a song that I loved daily, so that's all that mattered. Had I any confidence at that point, maybe I would've asked her out, but alas, when you're made fun of every single day, you just assume this person is out of your league and can't possibly like you back. Remember that Baskin Robbins job I mentioned? There was a gal there that I turned on to a lot of the same music I liked and she was absolutely the first real love of my life. But I never did anything about it. Why? Because I believed everything that every asshole at school said about me.
So, what's next? What can I do with all this frustration and anger and self loathing? Might as well make music of my own. And so I picked up the guitar. My buddy Steve decided to start playing drums around the same time, and we started jamming in his garage. I had so much angst in me, but I focused it all into the music we were making and the lyrics I was writing. I started buying notebooks and filling them with random thoughts and words and observations about people and how they treated each other. It gave me an outlet to vent what I was feeling, and so I put my all into it at the time. No thought whatsoever about the future, about college, about what to do with my life. I was able to block everyone out and have my own little club with my best friends whom I communicated with through music. It also made me embrace me. Who I was, what I looked like, what I had to say. If you think I'm weird looking? Well, that's your problem. I like being unique. I like looking different. Because back them, everyone looked exactly the same. And I decided to just make fun of them back. Not take any of it seriously. Laugh at how plain they all were.
All of this did a number on my head, which eventually caught up to me. I was rather content and oblivious for years after high school, but there were still moments where I'd hear the wise-cracks. Sometimes it'd be from someone on line at the bank or the supermarket, who would smirk and point at me. Then, it got to the point where I'd be at a red light, a car load of kids would pull up next to me and they'd all start laughing at me. And hell, I even caught some of my family, my own cousins making fun of my appearance at parties. I couldn't take it anymore. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't be the person I knew I was inside unless I changed my appearance. I even sat in my living room one afternoon with a hammer in my hand thinking - well if I hit myself really, really hard in the face with this, and break my own nose, then they'll have to take me to the hospital and fix my nose. Yes, I contemplating breaking my own face. And then, thankfully I didn't have to.
I, at that point, had been serving time at my second Tower Records location. I had pretty great benefits and I went to the doctor because I was increasingly having trouble breathing properly. And it turned out I had a deviated septum, quite common actually and that he recommended surgery to correct it and improve my breathing. I seized this opportunity and figured, well if you have to break my nose for this procedure, then I'd like it reshaped too. And it was as simple as that. I was 22 years old, went through this whole painful ordeal, which honestly wasn't nearly as painful as the 22 year mental abuse I sustained before it. And suddenly I had new found confidence. With confidence, I also finally started standing up straight and my back corrected itself, and I grew to my current height, 5'10''!
Now just to be clear, I didn't do this for ANY one but myself. We, as people are constantly evolving and trying to find ways to better ourselves, whether it's going to the gym or eating better, etc. And so I didn't feel at that stage in my life I could truly have the confidence to attain my ambitious goals if I were constantly in self doubt. I wanted to remove that doubt from the equation. And sure enough, after that procedure, things worked themselves out and I forgot all about it up until now. Catching 2 quick scenes from ROXANNE opened the floodgates and reminded me of all of the above.
It's funny, I was sharing these stories with my friend AJ a few days back. And we started playing the hypothetical game. What if you had a time machine, what would you go back and change? What would you do different? I'm sure on instinct, your brain would immediately produce a dozen examples of things you wish you could go back and do all over again. But the more we both started talking about it, the more we realized, well wait. Won't that change who we are today? Think about it. The person you were as soon as you woke up this morning. Imagine changing one tiny detail from your life and that wouldn't be who you are today anymore. Would I have followed a different path had I not gone through all of the above experiences? Would I have started Icons Of Fright? Would I have even picked up the guitar and felt the need to write songs? Would I have had the courage to follow through on some of my crazy dreams over the years? Every experience you go through makes you the person you are today. That's when I realized I don't want to change a damn thing.
I am the person I am meant to be, and that's just fine. Take it or leave it.
*For Joseph Merrick, Rocky Dennis and Vincent Van Gogh, Don McLean's "Vincent (Starry, Starry Night):"
