The Selfie of Dorian Gray

Dorian took such a nice selfie of himself at the Huntington Gardens in front of the Shakespeare statue, with his selfie stick.

“I am so young and good-looking,” he said to himself.

Then he went to the Apple Store in the Glendale Galleria and had a strange encounter with weird guy at the Apple Genius bar who was trying to help him with his iCloud account. When the man took Dorian’s iPhone, he happened to notice the selfie and he gasped.

“So hot!” said the man.

“Thanks,” said Dorian.

Dorian thought that was a strange thing for him to say. Then the man — who was older — told Dorian that he shouldn’t waste his youth because one day it would be gone. Dorian thought that was another strange thing to say to a guy at a genius bar. Anyhow, he got his iCloud account fixed and went home, and looked at the selfie again, remembering the conversation.

“How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this selfie will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June…. If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that — for that — I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!”

Cue some magic music. Dorian got his wish! His selfie would get older but he would stay young and beautiful!

He went out and did some terrible things. And the selfie got all twisted and cruel looking. A girl killed herself because she loved Dorian so much but Dorian wanted to fool around some more and couldn’t commit.

Then one day he had another problem with his iCloud and he went back to the Apple Store in the Glendale Galleria. He saw the same weird old guy and handed him his iPhone.

“Dorian, what happened to the selfie?” said the guy, who had rudely gone straight into Dorian’s photos and looked at the twisted horrible selfie that had once been so pure and divine.

“None of your business, weird old guy!” shouted Dorian, and he grabbed his iPhone and ran away.

But he felt worried. He decided to hide his selfie so nobody would ever find out about its magic power. He copied it as a jpg file onto a thumb drive, deleted it from his phone, and put the thumb drive up in his attic. (Oh and yes, thank you, he did remember to also delete the photo from the “recently deleted photos” tab of his photo albums. You know if you don’t do that the deleted photos stay on there for like 30 days, right?)

“Now no-one will ever know the strange power of my selfie,” Dorian thought happily.

Years passed and Dorian didn’t age a bit. Everybody else got old and ugly. And once in a while Dorian would take his laptop up to his attic and plug in the thumb drive and look at the selfie. Sure enough, it was getting old, wrinkly and hideous.

But the brother of the woman who had killed himself was one day getting his hair done when the young looking Dorian walked in. He recognized him.

“Dorian, you look so young!”

“Yeah, I take Resveratrol and an NAD precursor supplement called Basis,” Dorian lied.

“Anyhow,” said the guy, “I’ve never recovered from what happened to my sister. I might have to avenge her.”

“Oh shit,” said Dorian, and he ran out of the place.

But now he was scared. He went through a bunch of mental gymnastics to try to make it right. And he pretended to become regretful and repentant. But sure enough, when he went up into the attic, the selfie was even more cynical, twisted and hideous than ever.

“Fuck it, this can’t go on,” said Dorian. He opened the photo in Photoshop and he ran a bunch of filters. He was actually pretty good at Photoshop, and soon the selfie looked young and beautiful again, just like it had that day at the Huntington Gardens. But Dorian could tell, just by looking at his wrinkled hands, that the magic had reversed on himself.

He went downstairs. A man broke into his house with a gun. It was the brother, come to kill him.

“Who are you!” said the brother.

“I’m Dorian,” he said. “Go on, kill me, I’m old and disgusting now and my youth is gone. What’s the point in going on?”

“Oh you’re not so bad,” said the brother. “I have some good skin creams that can make your wrinkles go away temporarily. And I know a good plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills.”

“I thought you were going to kill me,” said the confused Dorian.

“There’s a thin line between murderous hatred and slight homoerotic attraction,” said the brother.

So that’s how the two started living together. Dorian got some surgery and now he looks like one of the Siegfried and Roy guys, you know, the lion tamers who got eaten by their own lion.

But they’re happy.

“Thank God for Photoshop,” said Dorian, at their six month anniversary. “Probably saved my life!”

They printed out poster size the photoshopped selfie that looks so good and they put it in a gold frame above the fireplace.

Every now and then Dorian looks up at the young man in the photo and sighs…it’s a bittersweet ending. He wishes he was young. But he’s glad he’s not dead.

In other words, he’s just like the rest of us.