And if you ever saw it

I have just put a dear old friend on a plane back to Frankfurt and have been looking through the pictures she took while here.

I am horrified.

I have a big red nose. Like, a BIG. RED. NOSE.

I'm a kind of bipedal Rudolph, as it turns out, and no one told me. Perhaps they thought that I was a secret drinker of closet martinis. (Not so often as all that.) And here was me thinking that I was pretty well preserved for someone of my grand age: not so. It's not the grey hair (which I am always telling myself is silver)--it's that I look like WC Fields.

So now I am in search of the finest anti-red-nose cosmetics on the face of the earth. I'll even consider the shockingly priced French stuff. What I need now are options. Options, I tell you. If you have any, send them. Homeopathic, aromatic, shamanistic, mud-related, Latvian, made from civet poo: I am no longer proud.

And just in case you have never read it before, here is my favorite nose poem, for which I have new fondness. It's by Richard Brautigan.

"My Nose Is Growing Old"

Yup.
A long lazy September look
in the mirror
says it's true.

I'm 31
and my nose is growing
old.

It starts about 1/2
an inch
below the bridge
and strolls geriatrically
down
for another inch or so:
stopping.

Fortunately, the rest
of the nose is comparatively
young.

I wonder if girls
will want me with an
old nose.

I can hear them now
the heartless bitches!

"He's cute
but his nose
is old."