Toward the end of my teens, it began to dawn on me that my face was probably fully formed. That no radical change was forthcoming. That even back when I still held out hope, my features were meanwhile settling, treacherous, into a mediocrity which surprised, humiliated, crushed me. In other words, I was not going to be any great beauty. I was only going to be what I was: attractive occasionally, like most people, relative to whoever happened to stand nearby.
Being average-looking is, by definition, completely normal. I could not have discovered I was plain without discovering K was pretty. She is my friend of many years. Back then, it obsesses me: how we make each other exist.
We attend elementary school together, then high school. She enrolls at a nearby college. Her tall grants me my short; my plump her skinny; her leonine features my pedestrian ones.
I resent her as much as I exult in her company. In between us, and without words for it, the female universe dilates, a continuum whose comparative alchemy seems designed to confront me, make me suffer, lift her up. Her protagonism diminishes me, or does it?
I confuse myself for a long time thinking I am the planet, and K is the sun. It takes me a long time to forgive her. Comparison steals my joy, but it also gives me a narrative. All in all, it feels radical to make a world together, she and I, a silent tournament of first kisses, compliments, report cards. I live at a fixed point from K, her lucky arms, her lucky neck, her lucky elbows. I pursue beautiful friends like some women do men who will strike them in bed at night.
