Flesh Wounds (excerpt)
I notice her noticing and I brace for disaster...
The first breezes of puberty are turning into actual wind, and as they blow they ruffle the dark hairs that have suddenly appeared on my chin and upper lip. My strategy for coping with these unsettlingly masculine sprigs is to ignore them and avoid mirrors, because I have no idea whatsoever why they’re there or what to do about them. Not for the first time I wish I were the kind of girl who did, or who even had friends who did, or maybe if I were someone who was allowed to read fashion magazines that had advice about beauty stuff. I’m not though, and I don’t.
The first person to notice them other than me is one of my classmates at school, one of the junior high mean girls. She is good at her job, which is to immediately, gleefully report any deviance she notices amongst the girls to her imperiously slim capo, the captain of the gymnastics team whose skin and hair are always perfect and whose designer jeans are always the right brand.
I notice her noticing and I brace for disaster.
I usually try make myself as unremarkable and invisible as possible, a thing that is never as easy as it seems like it ought to be. I know better than to let myself speak too freely or let it show too much that I’m smart, but somehow I end up running my mouth anyhow. The fat I can’t hide, but thanks to a doctor’s waiting-room magazine I have memorized a set of poses and angles that are supposed to be flattering. I use them constantly. They don’t really work, but I do them anyway. So do some of the other girls in my junior high school, I’ve noticed. It’s one of the only things we have in common, though of course none of us are going to say so. But knowing we share this, however stupid, helps me pretend I’m like them.
That’s my strategy. I pretend I’m like other people and do my best to say the things they want to hear and often it works. Whether or not I know what I’m pretending about is immaterial. I nod and agree about songs on the radio that someone else loves and I haven’t heard, TV shows I’ve never seen, clothes I don’t stand a chance of fitting into from manufacturers whose names I know only because I’ve seen them in ads. People like affirmation so I affirm them. It’s not hard to claim to like the things someone else likes, or to nod empathetically about the things they don’t. People like affirmation, and so they like me. The various lies required are just the cost of doing business.
Lying is a survival technique. Who I am isn’t important. Neither is what I like, or think, or want. I learned that from my mother. It doesn’t even feel like lying. It’s effortless, and utterly familiar to silently shift into some other person, the person I would be if such-and-so were the case. If I cared about Duran Duran, or wore jeans, or liked boys, or understood anything at all about how to be the kind of teenaged girl it was very clear I was supposed to be and wasn’t. There’s no cognitive dissonance, or at least I’ve learned how to not feel it. It’s not important. What’s important is doing my damnedest to be exactly who other people want me to be. Though I know I’ll always eventually fail, it still works a lot of the time.
