“If only I’d known how hot I was, I could have shagged half London!”  This is my friend Neil’s perennial cry whenever he’s feeling drunk and maudlin (that is, most weeks from Friday to Sunday lunchtime).  Convinced that he’s gone to seed at the pensionable age of 35, he’s forever looking at photos of his younger self with dewy-eyed admiration, wishing that he’d been conscious enough of his former good looks to have got his end away more often.  Nowadays, the weight of beer and cake just won’t drop off him any more, he insists, as he jokingly hoists his non-existent moobs to wonderbra height as proof of his decrepitude.

I know Neil’s moans are partly self-mocking – the only difference I can see on him since his twenties is that his hair’s getting wispy on the crown while his belt’s been let out a few notches.  Certainly, when we met he did have a distinctive angular prettiness – imagine if you can the love child of Gwyneth Paltrow and Mackenzie Crook – but that hasn’t disappeared, it’s just sharpened into something craggier and a little more extreme. I suspect his nostalgia for his former self is really about looking back to the days when he was single (he’s in a long-term relationship), when he was actively out there seeking and granting attention.

I do understand where he’s coming from, though.  When I came out aged 18, it never really occurred to me to think of myself attractive – with teenage zits refusing to move on and the scrawny physique of a junkie-in-training I considered my body a sort of chrysalis, a temporary cocoon.  Though stuck for a moment pupating between adolescence and adulthood, I would soon shake off this unlovely shell to emerge as the gorgeous butterfly I really was.  Looking back, like Neil I now realise that there was nothing whatsoever I needed to slough off, I was okay, even good, as I was.  There were probably guys around who were keen on me, but I suppose I was too shy or self-involved to notice, waiting as I was for the “real me” to arrive.

Does that matter?  Not really.  Like many men, I’ve found that my thirties are proving a halcyon period for me, giving me few reasons to cast wistful glances back into my past.  Sure, I may have a few more crow’s feet and a few less teeth, while I found two snow white hairs growing out of my shoulder recently.  Nonetheless, I’ve received more generous appreciation and enthusiasm from other guys than I ever did when I had bag-free eyes and a teensy waist.  Curiously, it seems to be younger men who show the most enthusiasm – experience is an attractive commodity when you have none yourself.  Could it be that the more comfortable you are in your own skin, the keener other people are to touch it?

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