The aging body

​We are immediately judged by the flesh suit we wear, it's color, age, perceived beauty and what I call the fuckability factor. It changes as we change-pregnant-weight changes, age. It is the first assessment we automatically make when most people encounter someone they do not know.
 
I live in Santa Monica; CA and it is here that I came to terms with aging. I landed just as they shut the city down for Covid. It is always a challenge for me to connect when I land somewhere and this place and time was one of the hardest adjustments I've had to make.

There were a lot of factors why people did not respond to me, the masks and the general discontent of the area. I observed how LA mirrors a lot of societies basest desires from sex to money and I had neither. Eventually I have made some friends, mainly through my dog, Bruno 

In general people looked through me. I felt like a ghost, so I became a ghost with my camera and the ability to do street photography, and also shoplift. I swear no one notices me. 
 
What was first jarring, became a way for me to become an observer of humanity. To help me cross from middle age into being a senior, I started doing nude selfies, not to be sexually explicit but to explore my body and the changes I see. I want to find beauty in the journey written across my body instead of the despair I was feeling and the temptation of cosmetic surgery. 
 
I felt it was a sign when the first plastic surgeon I approached said they would not do a facelift because I was HIV positive, (which is ridiculous since I’ve had undetectable viral load for 20 some years and cannot give this virus to anyone even if I wanted to). 
 
I have found that there are a few views I have encountered around HIV; people 45 or so and above immediately think of the 90s version of AIDS instead of the manageable, non-transmittable 2023 HIV infection. I have become used to the stigma of this disease over the course of the last 33 years. It still stings but it has also led me down paths I do not think I would gone.
 
I never expected to live this long. A year after being diagnosed HIV positive I was diagnosed with an acute, often fatal, auto immune disease that almost killed me several times. But alas here I am 63 and alive, alone and been preparing to die for decades. I am not afraid of death. I welcome it. Not in a suicidal way but in a journey ended way. 
 
These photos are my attempt to see myself in many ways. I cannot post them on any social media as they would be banned right away. I want to celebrate my body and show some of the angst and despair of aging.  ​