New vanity

(2000)

Old vanity

(1997)

It seems my vanity varies inversely with beauty. Once upon a time, I was a looker. I was cute for a long time (and some days I'm still cute), but I had a solid year or two right around 20 of of being pretty close to a knockout. I was pretty enough that it wasn't unusual for a group of men to just stand there and listen to me babble on giddily for hours. It seems impossible now. These days, I'll see a pretty girl surrounded by a crowd of men, and sometimes I'll listen in to see what they find so intriguing. It's never very interesting, but if you watch her talk instead of just listening, it's mesmerizing. What does the pretty girl have to say? Anything funny is funnier from a pretty girl; anything smart is smarter. I was far more interesting when I was pretty.

(I was never pretty enough to have that effect on women, by the way. David U's child bride is. I chatted with her the other night & she's painfully pretty. It's strange. It's not that she's not smart or interesting; it's just that it doesn't matter. She can talk about anything and people would listen.)

As I inch closer to 30 (September 3: send presents), unless I try really hard, I'm an old bag: dumpy and lumpy and puffy. My eyes have grown closer together and my fingers are fat and sausagy, my palms are like butterflied pork chops, my feet are flat hairy meat hooves. I have Clydesdale ankles and blubbery knees and an ass that has surrendered to gravity. My lips are tighter and my skin is dull. Everything between my waist and ankles looks like it's made of boudin.

The worse I look, the more obsessed I become with how I look. I'm too lazy to actually do anything about it unless I'm going out for the night, but I think about it all the time. I'm Blanche Dubois. No, that's not who I mean. That other Tennessee Williams faded Southern belle. Laura's mom, you know—the one who was always always going on about the gentlemen callers & how she was the belle of the ball. That's me—batting my eyes and preening and assuring everyone I used to be pretty.

I'm pathetic.

Old vanity