Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Do you know who you look like?

When I met Clay he was at the tail end of recovering from a terrible bicycle accident. He was riding along the street and was struck from behind by a car. The person driving the car sped off and left Clay, who was then 18, lying on the road unconscious.

Thankfully his injuries were not life threatening, but his face would be forever scarred.

The flesh was torn from his cheek, eye, lip and chin on the right side of his face. The doctor's stitched him back together and he went home to recover. He couldn't eat solid foods for a couple weeks due to his swollen face. Clay quickly lost twenty pounds, and as you can imagine, he really didn't have twenty pounds to sacrifice.

The young Clay I met in drawing class was painfully skinny. He had a deep purple scar on his right cheek bone that was hard not to stare at when I was talking to him.

When goatees and sideburns became popular in the early 90's, Clay was one of the first guys to jump onto the facial hair wagon. Unfortunately, the skin on his chin and lip that had been damaged from the bicycle wreck were too new to allow whiskers to grow. So he had a rather lopsided beard and strange gap in his moustache.

As the years passed Clay regained a few of those lost pounds, the scars faded and his skin had toughened up enough to allow whiskers to sprout thick and wiry through his scars. That's when he started getting a lot of comments like, 'Do you know who you look like?' As absurd as I thought it was that anyone could possibly resemble Clay, it was hard to deny that there was a striking look of familiarity between this one guy and Clay.




Yep. Hard to deny. There is something very Clayish about Nicolas Cage.





But, honey, you are much cuter, goofier and I'm so glad you still have that scar on your lip....it's very yummy.

13 comments:

Jenni said...

Whenever you've posted a picture of Clay I've thought how familiar he looks. I could never really put my finger on why though. Yup, he's definitely a cuter version of Nicholas Cage. Hopefully with only good Nicholas Cage qualities and none of the annoying ones. Does anyone else have this love/hate relationship with Nicholas Cage that I do? And I bet Clay is funnier. He looks very funny in all the pictures. Um, I meant that in a funny haha real laugh riot kinda way and not in a funny looking way.

Rhea said...

I agree with Jenni, I kept trying to figure out who he reminded me of. It is Nicholas Cage, but cuter. Very cool!

Scary about his accident though. Poor Clay. That must have been awful.

jean said...

I don't see the resemblance but that's good, cause Clay is so much better looking.

Lynne's Somewhat Invented Life said...

It's agreement all around. He's better looking. Now, can he act?

Anonymous said...

I do not see it at all.

And Nick Cage is not very handsome, imho.

Sharon said...

I don't see it either. I think Clay is much more handsome and from the videos I have seen, he can act rings around Nicholas Cage. (OK, I don't have a very high opinion of Cage.)

Becky Meyers said...

i can't stand nick cage, but...i do think clay is a MUCH cuter version of him!!

Rechelle said...

Jesus Christ! I think Clay looks just like the white anglo saxon version of Jesus Christ in that particular pic.

Jean Martha said...

There's a resemblance but Clay is much cuter than Nic Cage, and I'm assuming doesn't have as big an Elvis obsession as Nic does.

Unknown said...

You know, I've thought Clay reminded me of someone but figured it was someone from college or high school or a meeting somewhere! Now we know you are secretly married to Nicholas Cage. But I agree with the above comments--he's much cuter than the N. C. we see on tv. Maybe it's your photography skills. And maybe this explains the strange bedpartner dreams mentioned in the "If my brain could type" post!

Anonymous said...

WAY cuter and i am sure a MUCH lovelier person!!!!Clay that is. I enjoy your blog April! tp

Lori Waggoner said...

Clay has scars?

I think he's received sufficient ego-building remarks from all the gals on here who are ga-ga over him, so I'll restrain myself. It's not easy though, Clay...

melissa said...

Thank you for telling us the us about Clay. Now tell us about falling in love with him. You see I promised myself not to buy any books for myself for 6 months and I'm starved for other peoples romance. I know, I'm sad.