I have no idea what I look like. I could not describe my face to you if given ten thousand words and a bottle of Dewers. My ex-girlfriend suffered this travesty with me throughout our entire relationship and tried on numerous occasions to get me to see myself in the mirror. But the shadows of my reflection were like waves to me, blurred and thick with an ambivalent, nondescript nature that was, to me, ugly in its plain-ness. I am still peering into that glass, squinting to see who squints back, and I am still unable to make one detailed observation about the face that belongs to me. Ask me what I look like. I will refer you to an online photo. I cannot describe my physical features, despite a somewhat expansive vocabulary and a sometimes colorful way with words.
     This is the main reason photographs of myself make me cry. I know that film has captured the essence of the people in my family, in my life. I know that film has photographed perfectly my girlfriend and her family, my son and me, when we all ventured to Disney World last month. I recognize each of them. I see my girlfriend's beautiful face, her pretty smile--and I feel my heart warm at the memory of her, though she is far away--but it is her, every detail is her face, every line shapes the soft contours of her expression. I know that face. I love that face.
     And then, a photograph of me makes me suck in my breath and look around quickly. I cannot possibly be that hideous. I cannot possibly be that grotesque. If I were, wouldn't children run screaming at the sight of me? Wouldn't people look away from me? Would I have ever gotten a job that serves the public so closely if I was that ugly? How could it be that I was the only one seeing it? How could it be that no one else, not family or friends or lovers, could see how wretched and disgusting I am?
     "Are you okay?"
     I was crying. I was crying, right there at the photo counter at Sam's. I looked up to see a cashier--yeah, now there's a cashier. "Excuse me?"
     "Are you okay?"
     "Yeah," I said and motioned towards the pictures. "Old photos. Some of my dog, that died."
     On the way home, I tore the photos of me into a thousand pieces and fed them to the evening, bit by bit, out my window, like the ashes of cremated bone.