The call hit my ear like a sonic boom. “Abe,
wake up.”
My voice was creased with morning tiredness, but I managed to call back that I’d be down in a second.
I thought, pleasantly, that I sounded a little more masculine than the day before – a little more like a man. I thought that I might’ve Aged a lot. But, when I looked to my left -- force of habit, I guess -- I saw rain. A mob of raindrops falling at the same speed, in the same direction, towards the same fate… I thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever saw. That's how I knew. You see, once you’ve lived awhile, you realize that there are things in this world -- millions upon millions of things -- that are far more beautiful than a rainstorm.
Nobody wakes up the same age. Never. Yesterday always plays like a dream, and even though you know it’d happened, it’s lost -- like smoke on a windy day – everything, lost, except for the umbra of adventure. Of course it’s hard to tell how much you’ve Aged exactly, so we leave up to our peers, our family members, our neighbors to perceive our age. And it’s always been this way. Mom used to tell me stories – myths -- of a time when people aged progressively; of a place where age wasn’t elusive and illusive. But if there was such a place or ever such a time, it definitely wasn’t in this universe nor within the immediate horizons of our lives.
I laid in bed, bleary eyed, the pea green of the walls and the white of the Romanesque moldings blurring together like an ebbing Caribbean tide. My hands felt the smallness of themselves as they clenched and unclenched. I thumbed the gathered skin in my palms, the fleshy rose petals of newborn Spring, and thought about all of the things in the world that were more beautiful than falling rain. Frosty grass, exploding volcanoes, Mont St. Michel, the Fjords, redwoods…
I literally rolled out of bed, my body hitting the dark, oak floors with surprising force. It must have been considerably loud because Mom called up asking if I was all right – had anything fallen? I didn’t answer, and she didn’t call up again. Already I felt a hot pulsing on my kneecaps and I reclined on my butt to inspect the veiny, violet patches painting their way across my shins and knees. They looked especially harsh in the shadow of my bed and against the paleness of my skin, but by the time I moved to the bathroom, the pulsing had resigned to an ache.
I splashed some water on my face, rubbed the nooks behind my ears with some warm water, and hurriedly brushed my teeth. I ran my fingertips over each front tooth’s nacre face and relished the youthful pointedness of the canines. I glanced down at my legs, skinny and birch-tree-white, and against the harsh fluorescence of the bathroom light, the bruises were already like wraiths exposed to the sunlight. I stared ahead, inspecting the pocked wall where a mirror might’ve hung.
Most families didn’t put up mirrors, but that didn’t make me feel any stranger for not having one. Of course we owned small pieces of glass so we could tidy our hair and – when the rare occasion ever arose – for women to do their makeup. However, none of them were bigger than a child’s fist. I’d only used a real mirror once before – a full-length one --at the city fair. Lil and Happy had gone before me and swore it was the coolest thing they’d ever seen.
“Holy crap,” Lil had said, palming her cheeks in delight, “I thought my eyes were gonna melt,”
“They probably would’ve if I weren’t there.” Happy struck a pose wearing an expression that screamed “Transvestite Pin-up Girl” with one hand on his hip, the other on the dome of his head, and one foot pointed outwards. He looked rather awkward because of his chubby calves and equally obese arms but, of course, he didn’t fail: I laughed, much to the chagrin of Lil. She never could take any sort of joke about her looks.
They were younger than me that night, probably in their pre-teens, and I was somewhere in my middle teens. They raved about the mirror some more, but as they tried to out-talk the other, their words began to melt together, and I gave up listening to them. But they wouldn’t be placated. They practically shoved me into the booth so I could see what they were talking about. I resisted a little, grabbing the frame of the doorless threshold and thrust my butt out. I kissed the curtain draping the doorway as I practically screamed for them to stop pushing me.
In truth, it scared me. The mere idea of looking myself in the eye had made my throat tighten and my stomach spasm. I wondered if I was ugly. I saw people everyday – ugly people, beautiful people, fat, and petite – and I wondered if they’d still choose to live if they knew how unattractive they were. Lil and Happy weren’t bad looking. I’d been friends with them ever since day two (quite literally) and the siblings had always shared attractively wide blue eyes and flaxen hair which remained the same no matter what age they were. And, although Happy was a little pudgy and Lil was quite lithe, they both wore their respective builds quite well.
I had tried asking them what I looked like, even for the most general of descriptions. Lil flushed in the face when I asked, mumbling something and walking away before I could ask again. Happy frowned and looked as if he were searching for the right adjectives, but he only said that he wasn’t gay -- he didn’t judge other guys’ looks.
That’s when it got me thinking: was I to take their silence in a bad way? Were they too embarrassed to let me, their best friend, know that I was ugly -- maybe even hideous?
The little that I know about my appearance, I owe to my mom. She told me that I had hair the color of loam and my eyes were like freshly procreated ash. I obviously could feel my own physique, but that changed daily. And my face … that was difficult. My mom told me I was the most handsome boy/man/young adult she’d ever seen, but she’s my mom. She has to say that. In my mind’s eye, descriptions didn’t come together to form one solid picture, but instead the details floated around each other like an abstract painting, the pieces malleable -- able to be put together a million different ways.
Well, the pieces came together when Lil and Happy shoved me through the booth door. It was a ramshackle kind of structure made of just four wooden posts, both ceilings and walls draped in black polyester. The booth owner, who sat outside with a cigarette in hand and wearing a murderously serious expression, had staked out the area beside the carpet slides. It was a remote area that was quite detached from the main fair area, but not remote enough to explain why nobody else was waiting in anticipation for their turn to gaze into the mirror. Wasn’t anyone else curious to see what they looked like in the least bit? Or were we just crazy kids, the only ones in the entire world who gave a rat’s ass about what we looked like at all.
My voice was creased with morning tiredness, but I managed to call back that I’d be down in a second.
I thought, pleasantly, that I sounded a little more masculine than the day before – a little more like a man. I thought that I might’ve Aged a lot. But, when I looked to my left -- force of habit, I guess -- I saw rain. A mob of raindrops falling at the same speed, in the same direction, towards the same fate… I thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever saw. That's how I knew. You see, once you’ve lived awhile, you realize that there are things in this world -- millions upon millions of things -- that are far more beautiful than a rainstorm.
Nobody wakes up the same age. Never. Yesterday always plays like a dream, and even though you know it’d happened, it’s lost -- like smoke on a windy day – everything, lost, except for the umbra of adventure. Of course it’s hard to tell how much you’ve Aged exactly, so we leave up to our peers, our family members, our neighbors to perceive our age. And it’s always been this way. Mom used to tell me stories – myths -- of a time when people aged progressively; of a place where age wasn’t elusive and illusive. But if there was such a place or ever such a time, it definitely wasn’t in this universe nor within the immediate horizons of our lives.
I laid in bed, bleary eyed, the pea green of the walls and the white of the Romanesque moldings blurring together like an ebbing Caribbean tide. My hands felt the smallness of themselves as they clenched and unclenched. I thumbed the gathered skin in my palms, the fleshy rose petals of newborn Spring, and thought about all of the things in the world that were more beautiful than falling rain. Frosty grass, exploding volcanoes, Mont St. Michel, the Fjords, redwoods…
I literally rolled out of bed, my body hitting the dark, oak floors with surprising force. It must have been considerably loud because Mom called up asking if I was all right – had anything fallen? I didn’t answer, and she didn’t call up again. Already I felt a hot pulsing on my kneecaps and I reclined on my butt to inspect the veiny, violet patches painting their way across my shins and knees. They looked especially harsh in the shadow of my bed and against the paleness of my skin, but by the time I moved to the bathroom, the pulsing had resigned to an ache.
I splashed some water on my face, rubbed the nooks behind my ears with some warm water, and hurriedly brushed my teeth. I ran my fingertips over each front tooth’s nacre face and relished the youthful pointedness of the canines. I glanced down at my legs, skinny and birch-tree-white, and against the harsh fluorescence of the bathroom light, the bruises were already like wraiths exposed to the sunlight. I stared ahead, inspecting the pocked wall where a mirror might’ve hung.
Most families didn’t put up mirrors, but that didn’t make me feel any stranger for not having one. Of course we owned small pieces of glass so we could tidy our hair and – when the rare occasion ever arose – for women to do their makeup. However, none of them were bigger than a child’s fist. I’d only used a real mirror once before – a full-length one --at the city fair. Lil and Happy had gone before me and swore it was the coolest thing they’d ever seen.
“Holy crap,” Lil had said, palming her cheeks in delight, “I thought my eyes were gonna melt,”
“They probably would’ve if I weren’t there.” Happy struck a pose wearing an expression that screamed “Transvestite Pin-up Girl” with one hand on his hip, the other on the dome of his head, and one foot pointed outwards. He looked rather awkward because of his chubby calves and equally obese arms but, of course, he didn’t fail: I laughed, much to the chagrin of Lil. She never could take any sort of joke about her looks.
They were younger than me that night, probably in their pre-teens, and I was somewhere in my middle teens. They raved about the mirror some more, but as they tried to out-talk the other, their words began to melt together, and I gave up listening to them. But they wouldn’t be placated. They practically shoved me into the booth so I could see what they were talking about. I resisted a little, grabbing the frame of the doorless threshold and thrust my butt out. I kissed the curtain draping the doorway as I practically screamed for them to stop pushing me.
In truth, it scared me. The mere idea of looking myself in the eye had made my throat tighten and my stomach spasm. I wondered if I was ugly. I saw people everyday – ugly people, beautiful people, fat, and petite – and I wondered if they’d still choose to live if they knew how unattractive they were. Lil and Happy weren’t bad looking. I’d been friends with them ever since day two (quite literally) and the siblings had always shared attractively wide blue eyes and flaxen hair which remained the same no matter what age they were. And, although Happy was a little pudgy and Lil was quite lithe, they both wore their respective builds quite well.
I had tried asking them what I looked like, even for the most general of descriptions. Lil flushed in the face when I asked, mumbling something and walking away before I could ask again. Happy frowned and looked as if he were searching for the right adjectives, but he only said that he wasn’t gay -- he didn’t judge other guys’ looks.
That’s when it got me thinking: was I to take their silence in a bad way? Were they too embarrassed to let me, their best friend, know that I was ugly -- maybe even hideous?
The little that I know about my appearance, I owe to my mom. She told me that I had hair the color of loam and my eyes were like freshly procreated ash. I obviously could feel my own physique, but that changed daily. And my face … that was difficult. My mom told me I was the most handsome boy/man/young adult she’d ever seen, but she’s my mom. She has to say that. In my mind’s eye, descriptions didn’t come together to form one solid picture, but instead the details floated around each other like an abstract painting, the pieces malleable -- able to be put together a million different ways.
Well, the pieces came together when Lil and Happy shoved me through the booth door. It was a ramshackle kind of structure made of just four wooden posts, both ceilings and walls draped in black polyester. The booth owner, who sat outside with a cigarette in hand and wearing a murderously serious expression, had staked out the area beside the carpet slides. It was a remote area that was quite detached from the main fair area, but not remote enough to explain why nobody else was waiting in anticipation for their turn to gaze into the mirror. Wasn’t anyone else curious to see what they looked like in the least bit? Or were we just crazy kids, the only ones in the entire world who gave a rat’s ass about what we looked like at all.
The
mirror sat on the opposite side of the room. A singular tungsten bulb hung
above it, casting a circle of light around the mirror and the immediate few
inches around it. It was rather filmic. I approached the other end purposely on
a diagonal, afraid that I would pee my pants if I saw myself before we were
vis-à-vis, as if I’d mistake myself for someone else -- maybe a ghoul that had
entered the tent with me. I touched the mirror’s copper frame like a dancer
touching his partner, and when I removed my hand, a greasy whorl stained the
mirror’s limpid surface. On the periphery of its gaze, I looked into the mirror
then as if it would kill me if I looked into it. It was a game of tact and
timing.
And then I moved.
The first thing I noticed were my eyes. They were ashen – or, if anything, more like summer rain clouds banked against each other. My hair was the color of dirt, angled upwards like lengths of wheat facing the sun. My eyelashes were of an even darker color and petaled out in a pretty array. The knobs of my cheekbones jutted out quite sharply, melting into a jawline that was equally angular. I tried smiling, caught a glimpse of white, but then I stopped. It was like trying to smile at a dead person. I stepped back to observe, the pieces of the abstract puzzle coming together to form a painting.
A male Mona Lisa.
I was beautiful.
And then I moved.
The first thing I noticed were my eyes. They were ashen – or, if anything, more like summer rain clouds banked against each other. My hair was the color of dirt, angled upwards like lengths of wheat facing the sun. My eyelashes were of an even darker color and petaled out in a pretty array. The knobs of my cheekbones jutted out quite sharply, melting into a jawline that was equally angular. I tried smiling, caught a glimpse of white, but then I stopped. It was like trying to smile at a dead person. I stepped back to observe, the pieces of the abstract puzzle coming together to form a painting.
A male Mona Lisa.
I was beautiful.
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