this is who I am

In response to my refrigerator post, an anonymous commenter remarked:

I didn't picture you looking like that. Your hair is too short and you're too skinny. And you don't look bitter.

It baffled me a little, mostly because I am the me that I am, and I can't really envision another me, much less one that apparently resembles Glenn Danzig. (I do have recurring dreams where I have swapped bodies with Tommy Tune, but the less said about that, the better.)

Don't get me wrong; I wasn't offended by the assertion that I did not resemble this person's mental picture of what a "bitterandrew" ought to resemble, but just so we're all on the same page I would like to clarify a few salient points.

1. I am skinny. I always have been, and will probably always be, if my fifty-something father's wiry physique is any indication. I'm 6'3" and currently weigh just shy of 150 pounds. That's actually a twenty pound increase from my pre-marriage weight of 130 pounds. This means that I can no longer suck in my chest and place (and hold) a tangerine under my ribs.

Belle and Sebastian - String Bean Jean (from the Dog on Wheels EP, 1997; collected on Push Barman to Open Old Wounds, 2005)

2. I keep my hair short. Apart from the sugarbowl haircuts that were my birthright as a child of the 1970's, I have only had long hair during two periods of my life. When I started junior high, I let my hair grow long as part of an unplanned experiment to see how many times could I possibly be called "hippie" or "faggot" by my classmates. (I quit counting when the totals neared an actual infinity.)

I had it cut off in the beginning of my sophomore year, and wore my hair short (and progressively punkier) until the mid-1990's when I kept the back short, and grew the bangs down over my chin. (You can see it in transition here.) I kept it that way until I was thrown out of/quit graduate school in the fall of 1997, and have kept it buzzed close ever since.

It's partially a vestigal affectation of my punk rock days, but the buzzcuts are also due to the fact that my hair has no body whatsoever, and no matter how I try to style or shape it, I always end up looking like either George Peppard in Banacek or Hawk from Buck Rogers.

The Who - Cut My Hair (from Quadrophenia, 1973)

3. I am bitter, but I am also a happy-go-lucky guy. What the hell does a bitter person look like, anyhow? Like they're perpetually constipated? (I would have said "or like a Rob Liefeld character" but that would have been redundant.)

My cynicism has been tempered with a certain degree of fatalism so as to not mire myself in the bog of despair. It's fine to be pissed off, and there are no shortage of things to be pissed off about, but I refuse to let it stain my soul. That's just letting the bastards win. My bitterness and cynicism are the manifestations of a bruised idealism tempered by experience and empiricism but refuses to give up the last sparks of hope.

The English Beat - Tears of a Clown (from I Just Can't Stop It, 1980)

To sum up:

bitterandrew = a bloodied, but unbowed stick figure of a man with a crewcut and questionable tastes in music