The selfie of Dorian Gray

[Content note: substance misuse, suicide, transphobia]

Picture this: Dorian Gray, 25, gorgeous bachelor of the Brighton gay scene #handsomeAF #queen #slay. Picture his blazing blue eyes set above aquiline nose and a rosebud pout of a mouth. Cheeks ready to blush under the lick of glitter from a make-up brush. Deep gold locks styled to perfection. Forehead wide and empty as a summer sky #beautynotbrains #imageiseverything #skindeep.

Picture this: Dorian perched on the sleek leather and chrome of a barstool in the Poison Ivy, margarita in one hand and phone in the other – twin totems of the god of the gay bar. Picture his thumb hitting the camera app (muscle memory leads him there always) and hovering, now, over the shutter button. Picture him pausing for a fragment of time to check the image on the phone screen: it is, as always, empty perfection.

Click!

There it is: the button is pressed, the shutter closes, the selfie is taken.

And all around him life continues in the Poison Ivy: the disco-ball spins, Lady Gaga roars through overamplified speakers, a drag queen at the bar wipes lipstick and white wine from a red twist of a mouth.

But for Dorian Gray, life has stopped. Here. Now. In this moment – the moment the selfie was taken #liveinthemoment #lookgoodfeelgood #selflove. Because, as he licks the salt rim of his margarita glass from perfectly glossed lips, Dorian realises that he has taken the best selfie ever.

What is it about this selfie that makes it so exquisite? Is it the background of dancers blurring to hot whorls of colour? Is it the shards of light from the disco-ball falling like a shower of diamonds across the face? No, it is the face itself, caught at the very moment of its blooming, like a young rose, beautiful.

Dorian knows, the instant he sees the selfie, that there, right there in front of him, swimming in a million pixels, is the great truth he’s searched for his whole life: beauty.

‘What would you like?’ the barman asks, plucking an olive from a discarded martini glass and popping it into his lipsticked mouth.

‘I’d like – ’ says Dorian, ‘I’d like it if this selfie aged instead of me…’

‘You what?’ the barman hollers over Gaga’s jagged vocals.

‘I’d like another margarita,’ Dorian says.

*

But Dorian’s wish came true. Picture this: years later, Dorian is flicking through his phone when up pops the selfie #throwback #memories #tenyearchallenge. Picture Dorian, 35 and still on the cusp of blooming like a young rose, locking eyes with the image of his 25-year-old self.

But not the image as he left it, 10 years previously. No. For etched into the selfie, right there in front of him, are the tidelines of age – wrinkles beginning to show on the forehead, the skin wilting around the aquiline nose, twin creases either side of the rosebud pout of a mouth.

Dorian sees too a certain sneer, a certain curl of the lip, not present in the original selfie #bitchface #meangirl #judgingyou. Was it the many times he’d put others down on the basis of their looks, the many ugly comments he’d made on another’s “ugliness”, that had written that sneer into the selfie? Did the curl of the lip evidence a life lived in selfishness, selfie stick in hand and judgement in mind?

Dorian swipes off the selfie, a cold sweat of horror breaking out on his preternaturally youthful brow. He tries putting a softening filter on the selfie, hoping to erase those harsh lines. But the app glitches and increases the contrast on the image, only etching those lines deeper into brow and cheek. Like a Narcissus staring into troubled waters, Dorian recoils in disgust from the sight of his own image #uggo #notfeelingcute #badhairday.

He clicks off the app, fingers barely shaking, and runs to the bathroom. Looking into the perfect circle of the stylish chrome-rimmed mirror #homedecor #interiordesign #trendsetter, Dorian scours his face for wrinkles, blemishes, imperfections. But he finds, as always, the same strange youth, the same pure beauty, that is synonymous with his reputation in gay-bars from the pier to the marina.

Hands clammy on the cold porcelain of the sink, Dorian exhales and spits from his perfect mouth the salivation that warns him he will vomit.

Leaning over the toilet, he pukes onto the perfect white porcelain, loops of saliva falling from his face like hot tears of shame and disgrace.

*

Dorian commits himself to a life of velvety pleasures and empty aesthetics. He progresses his modelling career at the London fashion shows #strikeapose #modellife #catwalk. In his spare time, he buys designer handbags in the Lanes and showcases his latest outfits in the bars of Kemptown. At night, the selfie haunts his dreams, mouth twisted in hideous grin, cheek disgraced by defects, brow wrecked by wrinkles – a face defaced by imperfections.

The years pass in a blur of nights spent knocking back shots in Bulldog #cheers #downit #happyhour. But still Dorian’s face stays young.

He courts a beautiful drag queen, name of Sybil, dreams of the lavish wedding they’ll have. In bars they sip sex on the beach together and rate the other twinks on their looks in loud whispers #roastme #2outof10 #fugly. In dark bedrooms with drawn curtains they smoke Tina with hookers and dropouts. At the nudist beach they work on their tans.

But soon Dorian and Sybil are fighting, conversation withering to ridicule and cheap digs. Picture this: the couple at 2am on St James street roaring insults and comebacks at each other with beer-soaked breath like baying stags.

‘You’re a right bitch!’ Dorian screams, ‘a nasty cheap tranny whore!’

He flings his pint glass to the gutter and struts off into the night.

*

Picture this: Dorian is 45 and as his age has increased so too has his reputation for youthful good looks. He launches his own line of face cream #skincare #antiaging #results. He proposes to Sybil, they break it off, they get back together, they break it off again.

The night they call off the engagement for the second time, Dorian sits sombre at the dressing table in his bedroom. He stares into the vanity mirror, his face flawless even in the bright white light of the bare bulbs, searching for flaws, any clue as to why Sybil left him. But he finds, as always, perfection.

The selfie haunts his thoughts like an unwelcome ghost. He pulls out his phone and clicks on the photo app. He pulls up the selfie and finds it more hideous than ever – crow’s feet at the corners of the eyes, scoops of black shadow underneath them, a complex network of wrinkles deep-cut into the face. And still that hideous exaggerated sneer like the face of a horrible puppet.

‘It’s just a selfie,’ he says, ‘it doesn’t look like me! I – I cannot look that bad, surely?’

Reassuring himself, Dorian decides to take action. Why let a selfie ruin your night? Why let a photo curb your self-esteem?

Quickly, before he changes his mind, Dorian clicks on the bin icon.

A message flashes up on the screen: Delete photo?

He pauses for just a fraction of a second, shaking finger hovering over the button, and presses it.

*

Picture this: Sybil, the next day, hungover and contrite and missing her boyfriend, mounting the stairs to Dorian’s flat in her stilettos, heel-clicks echoing in the otherwise silent stairwell. She knocks on the door. Silence. She fumbles in her rhinestoned handbag for the spare key and lets herself in.

Inside the flat, everything is in its usual perfect order. Dorian’s designer coats hang in the entranceway, a half-drunk bottle of Chablis sits on the marble worktop illuminated like a yellow jewel in the beam of a kitchen spotlight. The Dyson tower fan blasts out cool air in the lounge #2000watts #700cubicmetersperhour #ultimatecoolingtechnology. It blasts a jet of cold across Sybil’s fishnetted legs like an icy river or a ghost passing through her.

‘Dorian?’

Silence still.

She checks everywhere and, letting herself into the last room, the bedroom, she finds it empty. She pulls back the bedsheets. Nothing. But seeing the door of the walk-in wardrobe ajar, she opens it to find – picture this: Dorian hanging by his neck from the rail.

At first she doesn’t recognise him. For the swollen purple face of the dead man is ugly, carved with deep wrinkles, pocked with blemishes, the lip curled up in a final expression of disdain.

By his side, there lies his phone.