After a certain age, the body becomes a passive-aggressive colleague.
It still turns up for work every morning, but it begins introducing small changes without consulting us. A new fold. A mysterious ache. A part that worked perfectly well until yesterday and has suddenly decided to go part-time.
Gravity, meanwhile, approaches its responsibilities with frankly excessive enthusiasm.
At first, we try to ignore it all.
We change the lighting.
We change the mirror.
We change the angle.
We discover that some photographs work better when taken slightly from above, preferably during an eclipse and by someone who loves us very much.
It is not necessarily vanity.
It is disorientation.
For years, we have lived in a body we thought we knew. Then, almost without warning, that same body begins speaking a new language.
In the gay world, the matter becomes even more complicated.
The body is not simply a body.
It is a presentation.
A business card.
Sometimes, unfortunately, a CV.
Height, weight, age, gym routine, photographs, measurements and preferences are displayed like professional qualifications. Before discovering whether someone is kind, funny or capable of holding a conversation without sending unsolicited anatomical photographs, we already know how many times a week he works out.
At twenty, the body is treated like a promise.
At fifty, it becomes a United Nations negotiation.
You have to explain.
Compensate.
Prove that you have “kept yourself well”, an expression normally reserved for historic buildings and antique furniture.
“You look good for your age,” people say.
It is meant as a compliment.
And often it is.
But it contains a curious assumption: that your age is something you would normally be expected to wear badly.
Like the wrong jacket.
A sartorial offence.
There is nothing wrong with desiring a beautiful body.
Beauty exists. Attraction exists. Preferences exist, and they cannot be established by government decree.
The problem begins when the body becomes the only evidence accepted as proof of our value.
When we stop asking how we feel and begin asking only how we look.
When every photograph becomes an examination.
When silence on an app feels like a clinical assessment and rejection becomes confirmation that something inside us has expired.
An adult body carries marks.
It could hardly be otherwise.
It has survived nights that lasted too long, unsuitable jobs, house moves, relationships, losses, sudden enthusiasms and periods when dinner was treated as a form of therapy.
It has endured dietary fashions, gym memberships used with tremendous commitment for eleven days, and promises made every January in front of the mirror.
An adult body is not incomplete.
It is documented.
And yet we often continue to look at it as though it still has an examination to pass.
We concentrate on the distance between what we are and what we think we ought to be.
Thinner.
Firmer.
Younger.
More like the person chosen to advertise underwear which, in real life, probably requires technical assistance to put on.
Comparison is a very efficient machine.
It will always find someone younger, taller, more defined or simply better lit.
No matter how much you improve, the machine will find a new candidate against whom you can feel inadequate.
It is designed never to let you win.
For a long time, I thought the answer was to correct the body.
Then I realised that, at least in part, it was the way I looked at it that needed correcting.
That does not mean giving up.
Looking after ourselves matters. Moving, eating well, sleeping and listening to the body are forms of respect.
But there is an enormous difference between caring for a body and punishing it because it no longer resembles the one we had at twenty.
A body should not be forced to apologise for having carried us this far.
Liberation begins when we stop believing we have to earn it.
We do not have to earn the right to inhabit our own body.
We do not have to win permission to be desired.
We do not have to introduce ourselves with a prepared list of defects, like an unusually pessimistic estate agent.
We can enter a room without sending an apology in ahead of us.
Of course, we will not appeal to everyone.
We did not appeal to everyone when we were young either, although memory has a habit of remastering the past with better photography.
Some men will continue to look exclusively for younger bodies.
That is their right.
Just as it is our right not to turn their preference into a universal verdict.
The fact that someone does not desire my body does not make my body undesirable.
It simply means his desire is travelling in another direction.
Not every train we fail to catch is a deportation.
With age, we can learn something that seemed almost impossible when we were young: we are choosing too.
We are not merely waiting to be approved.
We can ask whether we like the gaze directed at us.
Whether the person in front of us sees a human being or is simply checking a list.
Whether the desire being offered contains curiosity, respect and presence, or merely urgency.
Being looked at is not always the same as being seen.
A young body can attract attention.
A lived-in body can tell a story.
This is not a consolation invented to make ageing sound more elegant. It is a different form of attraction.
Some bodies become interesting precisely because they do not appear to have come out of a packet.
They have expression.
Character.
Memory.
They do not promise perfection. They promise reality.
Perhaps the real change comes when we stop treating the mirror like a courtroom.
A mirror does not pass judgement.
It reflects light.
Everything else is added by us.
We can continue using it to search for what has changed, or begin recognising what remains.
Presence.
Sensuality.
Humour.
The ability to approach another person without pretending to be someone else.
The adult body is not sexy despite showing the passage of time.
It is sexy because it shows it.
It is not a CV that must constantly be updated.
It is not an application.
It is not a test to be passed.
It is the place where we have lived everything that brought us here.
Perhaps it is time to stop assessing it.
And finally begin inhabiting it.