I’ve decided that looking at myself in the car mirror in glaring sunlight is a bad, bad thing. For one, I notice the weird splotches and discolorations that seem to be popping up. It could be that my skin has always looked like this and that I am noticing now because I look in the mirror more than twice a day. I’ve never been one to look in the mirror-like a frontier person or prim victorian or a proliteriat farm worker in the USSR, I used to check myself out twice a day-once in the morning, when I got ready for work, and once at night when I brushed my teeth. Coincidentally, the older I’ve gotten the more interested I have become in make up, foundation and thick moisterizers which promise to hold back the ravages of time, and my smoking addiction. Though Monica would tell me to shut up, I truly believe I have an age spot and am developing another.
For another-the facial hair. Right about the time the crying hormones kicked in, I also noticed the emergence of tough black hairs. Hairs, I am convinced, were I to not catch, would grow inordinately long. It is so wrong and unfair. Why do you get facial hair in your thirities? Can’t it wait until you older and going blind? Tweezers are suddenly necessary for other things besides my eyebrows. Could it be that in ten years I will have a beard? Will I be like that woman I saw in my womens studies class video when I was in undergrad? I was telling my corporate lawyer friend about it and Patty was horrified, promising me that if I grow a beard on a teacher’s salary, he will pay for the electrolosis.
These things(and the appearence of three fine lines on my forehead) have struck at a deeply held conviction that has sustained me all these years-mainly that I will get more attractive as I get older. Looking in the mirror yesterday morning, I wondered for the first time if it was just all down hill from here-maybe, I thought to myself-my most attractive time had already passed. While I’ve always wished I was thinner-well really less fat, or had more delicate features-while I have resigned myself to being the funny/great personality!/eccentric!/Smart! one, and while it is true I might be ever so slightly clumsy- it could be that I am just a black hair and a trip to walmart away from being replusive.
God, I love bitching.
I was mad about Friday until Monday. After my CSAD on Saturday-which sucked and was really hard(I went through 4 pencils) I decided I would give myself over to angst. I went out on Satruday night and wore all black. I meant to just bitch to my friends and then drink, but my night out also coincided with a sad, sad, depressing music night at the bar. It began with one of those plantive indie rockish boy bands sounded nearly exactly like the new radiohead, it then moved into a sad folk band, and ended with a very sad alt country band. LIfe felt meaningless and empty. The friends I was with, happy in their new relationship, bought the cds. I rounded out the evening listening to Martha Wrainwright (BMFA) and Kate Nash). I woke up on Sunday with a hangover and contemplated the reasons why I never like anyone who is nice. Why is it that I find assholes immediately attractive? Why do men with the manners and emotional range of a flea fascinate me? It was a lot to think about before my coffee. I abandoned the effort and watched the loveboat. It was probably the easy way out.
