I am fascinated by the beautiful who become deformed. Some become bitter, more bitter than those born less pulchritudinous. Most learn to cope with the loss. Some were blind to how much their beauty helped them, the halo of their hotness an invisible bumper softening life. But most cultivated this aspect to some degree. They knew what was up. But none were fully prepared for the anti-halo: the revulsion, the active disgust. They became monsters. This is what it means to be marred.

In 1715 England, none were more beautiful than Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, whose mind was as fine as her complexion. And she was a hero too in later life, advocating for inoculation after learning of it during her adventures in the Ottoman Empire. But in 1715, she learned what it is to lose beauty, as at the height of her bloom she contracted smallpox and was, consequently, pockmarked. Shortly after, she wrote Town Eclogues: Saturday; The Small-Pox, whose tragic protagonist remarks:

FLAVIA. THE wretched FLAVIA on her couch reclin'd, Thus breath'd the anguish of a wounded mind ; A glass revers'd in her right hand she bore, For now she shun'd the face she sought before.

She ends the poem with some pain-touched humor:

'Adieu ! ye parks ! — in some obscure recess, 'Where gentle streams will weep at my distress, 'Where no false friend will in my grief take part, 'And mourn my ruin with a joyful heart ; 'There let me live in some deserted place, 'There hide in shades this lost inglorious face. 'Ye, operas, circles, I no more must view ! 'My toilette, patches, all the world adieu!

Syphilis was another thief of pulchritude. John Wilmot was widely regarded as the handsomest man of his generation. And like with Byron, it must have been easy to be jealous of him. Not only was he hotter than anyone else, he was cleverer, too - the greatest satirist of his time. He died at 33 while looking like a very old, disabled man. It is believed complications from syphilis were the cause of death. In The Disabled Debauchee, he expresses no regret for his rakish ways and encourages new troops to join the battle:

Nor let the sight of honorable scars, Which my too forward valor did procure, Frighten new-listed soldiers from the wars: Past joys have more than paid what I endure.

Should any youth (worth being drunk) prove nice, And from his fair inviter meanly shrink, ’Twill please the ghost of my departed vice If, at my counsel, he repent and drink.

Or should some cold-complexioned sot forbid, With his dull morals, our bold night-alarms, I’ll fire his blood by telling what I did When I was strong and able to bear arms.

One wonders if the modern fuckboy could have made it in Wilmot's era. Truly, we are in a fallen time. To be a fuckboy then was to court demons and inevitably succumb. It is easy to see why the modern rake is not a poet, as he does not risk much of anything. No chance of marred complexion or hordes of illegitimate children. He is merely sorted by hotness by computers and swiping hands; he plays this game until the repetition begins weighing on his soul. Any poems he writes are free verse and read only by the women who are infatuated with him. Almost reluctantly, he finds a wife and has children - who delight him until his inevitable mid-life crisis.

And in this way the modern fuckboy shares a demon with his past counterpart: age. To exist is to slowly become deformed, to rot. To rot is to be diminished by each second. Eventually you're so rotten you die. We can see what age does to a lothario in Casanova's memoirs, which are an interesting contrast to Wilmot as Casanova was not particularly handsome, an extraordinary mind behind an ordinary face. Still, it is one thing to be plain and it is another to be old and ugly.

Many who have not read his memoirs assume them salacious works when they are, really, just a fascinating sketch of the culture of the aristocracy of the time. Extremely worth reading. Their hero is this decrepit narrator, this broken old man who like Wilmot is proud of his syphilis scars and who goes on extended rages (in between tales of his young life scamming his way into the highest of circles) about how the modern young women in his environs think him completely ridiculous.

This is described well in the introduction in the version on Gutenberg:

Casanova, his dress, and his manners, appeared as odd and antique as some “blood of the Regency” would appear to us of these days. Sixty years before, Marcel, the famous dancing-master, had taught young Casanova how to enter a room with a lowly and ceremonious bow; and still, though the eighteenth century is drawing to a close, old Casanova enters the rooms of Dux with the same stately bow, but now everyone laughs. Old Casanova treads the grave measures of the minuet; they applauded his dancing once, but now everyone laughs. Young Casanova was always dressed in the height of the fashion; but the age of powder, wigs, velvets, and silks has departed, and old Casanova’s attempts at elegance (“Strass” diamonds have replaced the genuine stones with him) are likewise greeted with laughter. No wonder the old adventurer denounces the whole house of Jacobins and canaille; the world, he feels, is permanently out of joint for him; everything is cross, and everyone is in a conspiracy to drive the iron into his soul.

And Casanova-the-writer half-knows he is now displeasing. He half-knows he can never again be as he was. But he still goes through the motions. His only pleasure in life is his recollection. And perhaps that was the only heaven one could hope for born before a singularity offered a religion with a plausible mechanism of action: pleasant recollections in one's dotage. A highlight reel of youth enjoyed ad infinitum. If this was heaven, then few did better in life than Casanova. Is this wire-heading? One wonders. I suppose if it is wire-heading, it is earned wire-heading.

The most ironic form of marring is the plastic surgery addict or victim. Here vanity accelerates what it most fears. Plastic surgery is an interesting art, and it can do much good for one's appearance. But there is an element of butchery to it. "I am a butcher. I am a Michelangelo," you can imagine one of that profession exclaiming. And it is a chancy endeavor as all surgeries are.

Of most interest to me of the two is the addict. The standard explanation is they have Body Dysmorphic Disorder. This seems both wrong and unpoetic to me. They may claim to think themselves beautiful, but so does the morbidly obese woman who, on losing weight with GLP-1 agonists, would rather die than return to what she claimed to love. The addict, in my mind, is coping. And what they really are is an amateur artist. Consider the following images:

Really, elaboration isn't needed. But it is clear to me her face is the result of inexpert revision, piecemeal procedures from whatever surgeon would listen to her unschooled opinion on what she needed done. The lesson here: unless you are an artist and anatomist, delegate these things to an expert, to an established butcher-Michelangelo with a keen eye for human beauty and a holistic vision for how they're going to stitch, freeze, and sear your decaying flesh into some hollow simulacrum of vitality.

Or just wait for technology to get better. For everyone to become fair. For the boomers to return to the youth which made their follies so charming. Rock and Roll, once a celebration of youth and beauty is today an aged farce. Watch a modern Rolling Stones concert on YouTube or - if you really want to be truly depressed - watch AC/DC or maybe The Who's Pete Townshend screech, in stepped-down tuning, "I hope I die before I get old."

But nanobots can fix them. They can be what they were once more. The eternal boomer young again, this ancient music played by ancient youths.

It is a beautiful dream. Let us pray for it. Let us pray we become as the elves are. Let us pray for the modern Casanova, who lives only in his recollection. Let us pray for the plastic surgery addict, who ruined herself in a noble pursuit. Let us pray for the pocked and scarred. Let us pray for the poet whose countenance is no longer as sharp as his wit. Let us pray for the pretty woman robbed of her face. Let us hope youth springs eternal. Let us hope all those marred by time and circumstance can become as they were and, better, what they want to be. Made more whole than whole.

A beautiful dream. And a good one! If anyone tells you otherwise, ask them again with a cure in hand. They will learn to dream, too.