For years, I was eleven years younger than I actually was. Not emotionally. Legally. I had the driver’s license to prove it.
I Lied About My Age for Decades. Here’s What It Taught Me
I have always believed age is somewhat negotiable.
Apparently, at one point, I believed it was legally negotiable.
There was a period of my life when the birth date on my driver’s license made me approximately eleven years younger than I actually was.
Eleven.
Not two.
Not the perfectly understandable vanity adjustment of shaving off three years.
Eleven years.
And I kept it going for decades.
My friends didn’t know.
People I worked with didn’t know.
Boyfriends didn’t know.
Some of the men I slept next to every night apparently had no idea they were sleeping with an older man.
I don’t know whether that makes me a liar, an optimist or a pioneer in personal branding.
Probably all three.
I Learned It From My Mother
Naturally, I blame Mom.
My mother was beautiful.
She was also determined not to get old.
These two things were related.
When I was growing up, Mom would tell me that if anybody asked her age, I was to say:
“Thirty-six.”
I don’t remember how many consecutive years my mother was thirty-six.
Several.
Possibly a decade.
But Mom didn’t think of this simply as lying.
There was a philosophy behind it.
She believed that if you told your mind and body you were a certain age, and you genuinely believed that age looked and felt a certain way, your body would cooperate.
Mind over matter.
If you think old, you become old.
If you think young, you stay young.
Obviously, this isn’t accepted medical science.
It was, however, Marie Science.
And I believed in Marie Science.
Still do, a little.
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Then I Took It Too Far
Most people who lie about their age simply lie.
Amateurs.
I somehow managed to get the lie onto my driver’s license.
This was back in California, during an era when apparently the Department of Motor Vehicles and I had a much more casual relationship.
So the fictional age became official.
And once you’ve managed to get the government involved in your delusion, there’s really no reason to stop.
By the time I moved to Chicago at thirty, my official age and actual age were living entirely separate lives.
I was young.
Then I was younger.
And eventually the difference became approximately eleven years.
The remarkable part is that I didn’t think this was particularly sinister.
I thought it was funny.
I also looked young.
Which helped.
I took care of myself.
I worked in the beauty industry.
I understood hair, skin, clothes and presentation.
And, most importantly, I had been raised by a woman who taught me that chronological age was information best regarded as a suggestion.
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The Government Eventually Ruined Everything
Then came 9/11.
The world changed.
Identification became considerably more serious.
Suddenly documents needed to agree with other documents.
Birth certificates.
Social Security.
Passports.
Driver’s licenses.
Apparently the United States government had no interest in my mother’s theory about communicating one’s preferred age directly to one’s cells.
The numbers had to match.
I knew the party was over.
Eventually my actual birth date had to rejoin my legal identity.
Fine.
But there was still another problem.
I had to tell everybody else.
Naturally, I Turned It Into Content
Years later, I had become Mafia Hairdresser.
The writer.
The hairdresser.
The speaker.
The online personality.
The brand.
And social media had become a hungry little beast.
Content.
Content.
Content.
Content.
Anybody building a public identity online today understands this.
You don’t simply make something and tell people about it once.
You feed the machine.
Another post.
Another photograph.
Another thought.
Another story.
Another email.
Another blog.
Stay visible.
Stay interesting.
Stay alive.
Back then, I was doing this across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, Google+ and an email list of around 5,000 people.
Yes.
Google+.
That’s how long ago this was.
And apparently I decided I didn’t have enough content.
So I came up with a perfectly reasonable solution:
I would write a blog every day for fifty days.
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Because One Blog a Day Wasn’t Enough of a Commitment
The project was called 50 Days of 50.
For fifty consecutive days leading up to my fiftieth birthday, I would publish one chapter about what it felt like to turn fifty.
Then I would gather all fifty chapters together, edit them and release the whole thing as a nonfiction ebook.
Because apparently I had confused “I need some social-media content” with:
“I should write an entire book in public while also working for a living.”
This is the kind of idea I have.
Still.
I wish I could tell you I’ve matured.
But look at what I’m doing right now.
I’m writing blogs to promote a memoir and podcast, which will become Pinterest posts, Instagram material, TikToks and eventually long-form videos while I work on another podcast and another book.
Apparently the technology changes.
Jon-David does not.
Then I Came Out of the Closet
Again.
A few days into 50 Days of 50, I revealed my age.
My real age.
I thought people would find this hilarious.
I was wrong.
Some people were pissed.
Really pissed.
My original chapter records that friends became angry and that some former boyfriends actually stopped talking to me for a while.
This surprised me.
Why?
What was the problem?
They should have been thrilled.
They hadn’t dated an old-looking younger man.
They had dated a young-looking older man.
That’s better.
I had exceeded expectations.
You’re welcome.
Apparently they saw things differently.
Something about trust.
Details.
I Understand Why They Were Mad
Now.
I do.
If you’ve been in a relationship with someone, you assume certain basic biographical information is accurate.
Name.
Age.
Whether they’re married.
Whether they have children.
Whether they’re wanted in another state.
Things like that.
So I understand why some people felt deceived.
I had lied.
There’s no clever way around that.
But there’s another part of me that still thinks the whole thing is completely hilarious.
Because I wasn’t trying to steal anybody’s inheritance.
I wasn’t creating a fake identity to rob banks.
I just didn’t want to get old.
And I had been raised by a mother who thought you could negotiate aging through sheer force of will.
What did everyone expect?
About My Name…
Age isn’t the only biographical detail I’ve edited.
I was born Jon David Elshere.
Then I became:
Jon-David.
That’s it.
No last name.
Oh, and my dad’s name is John. So mom, and everyone in my family called me Jon-David. Or little Jon. You can guess which moniker I insisted everyone to call me.
When I decided that I would begin acting, (I was already a writer), I didn’t particularly like my surname. It didn’t look good on a book jacket. And Elshere is not very “marquee.”
So. I chopped the E-name off.
My parents gave me their blessings, although each warned me that the other parent probably wouldn’t like it.
Apparently nobody wanted to be held responsible for what I was about to do.
Smart.
Today, I admit that eliminating my last name was perhaps not my greatest administrative decision.
Cher can do this.
Sting can do this.
Madonna can do this.
They presumably still possess perfectly functional legal surnames when a website demands:
LAST NAME — REQUIRED FIELD
I went all in.
One name.
Hyphenated.
No surname.
Try explaining that to an online credit application.
I’ve Always Lived in a Dream World
And this is the part I don’t regret.
I’ve spent most of my life inventing myself.
Sometimes literally.
I invented Mafia Hairdresser.
I turned parts of my life into novels.
I became a salon owner.
A writer.
A speaker.
An actor.
A producer.
An online personality.
I moved across the country.
I changed careers without actually leaving my career.
I changed cities.
I changed my name.
I apparently changed my birth date.
I have always possessed a slightly unreasonable belief that reality can be edited.
Not ignored.
Edited.
If I don’t like this version, maybe I can write another one.
That quality has occasionally gotten me into trouble.
It has also given me my entire life.
The World Calls This Branding Now
That’s what makes the old 50 Days of 50 project so funny to me.
At the time, some people probably thought I was ridiculous.
Why are you constantly posting?
Why are you writing blogs?
Why are you telling strangers stories about yourself?
Why do you need an online persona?
Why do you need all this content?
Today?
Every author is told to build a platform.
Every business needs content.
Every public-facing professional needs social media.
Authors make videos.
Doctors make videos.
Lawyers make videos.
Hairdressers make videos.
Grandmothers make videos.
Your dentist may currently be dancing on TikTok.
We all became Mafia Hairdresser.
I was simply early.
And probably louder.
But Something Else Happened During Those Fifty Days
I thought I was creating content.
I didn’t realize I was creating a record.
My mother became part of that blog.
She was reading it, which shocked me.
At one point she actually withheld information about an upcoming surgery because she didn’t want me writing about it.
“Honey,” she essentially told me, “I didn’t want you writing about my surgery in your blog.”
I was astonished.
My mother was reading my content?
She pointed out that I’d practically broadcast the thing to the entire world.
Fair.
And then, naturally, after she specifically asked me not to write about her surgery…
I wrote about her surgery.
I am who I am.
What I couldn’t possibly have known was that those silly daily posts would eventually become a record of the final chapter of my mother’s life.
The memoir I’m writing now can return to what I wrote then.
The ridiculous content machine accidentally became history.
Maybe That’s Why I’m Doing It Again
Here I am.
Writing blogs.
Again.
Creating content.
Again.
Turning my life into stories.
Again.
Except something has changed.
At fifty, I thought I was being radically transparent by admitting my real age.
Now I look back and think:
That was transparency?
Cute.
How I Killed My Mother goes places that 50 Days of 50 Jon-David wouldn’t have gone near.
Maybe that’s what getting older has actually done for me.
Not made me old.
Made me less afraid of the truth.
I’m Still Not Particularly Interested in Acting My Age
I don’t think of myself as a number.
I don’t wake up thinking:
What is appropriate behavior for a man my age?
That sounds exhausting.
There are things I understand differently because I’ve lived longer.
There are things my body understands differently whether I approve or not.
But internally?
I’m still inventing things.
Still making plans.
Still believing another adventure is coming.
Still deciding I can write another book.
Launch another podcast.
Make another video.
Create another version of my life.
And I still believe some of what Mom taught me.
Tell your mind you’re old all day long and eventually it may believe you.
Tell yourself your best years happened twenty years ago and you’ll probably stop looking for better ones.
I’m not doing that.
I’ll acknowledge my chronological age when legally required.
Emotionally, the matter remains under negotiation.
And if you need the exact number?
Ask the government.
I’m retired from answering.
Listen to How I Killed My Mother
How I Killed My Mother is a memoir podcast about mothers and sons, depression and hope, family and forgiveness, caregiving, spirituality, humor, death, and the uncomfortable business of discovering who we really are.
The podcast also became the foundation for my upcoming memoir, How I Killed My Mother.
This isn’t a story about having all the answers.
It’s about what happened when I finally started asking myself the questions.
If you’re standing at the bottom of something right now, I can’t tell you how long your climb will be.
I can only tell you that I’ve stood at the bottom, too.
Climb with me.
— Jon-David
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