Published
A friend—though really some kind of a lover—paints a portrait of me based on a photograph. In it I am mid-corn bite, eyes bulbous with delight, cheeks protruding with gluttony. The camera's flash warps my eyes into devilish red orbs. I am 3-years-old in the photograph.
I watch over Facetime as he taps his brush onto a canvas I cannot see, slouches back, observes his work, then looks slightly to the left to reference the original photo, his muse, me. He finds colors in my face l've never seen before—flushed reds that bleed out my cheeks, pink in my nose like a dahlia. I stare at the tiny rectangle of my digital reflection and search for evidence of this palette, but instead find a pale amorphous blob staring back at me. I wonder to myself if my hues have been masked or watered down by the inevitable blacks of life.
I am 30 now. This portrait comes at a time when I have been very abstractly considering plastic surgery. Every few weeks I make a list of rhinoplasty surgeons, fill out a few contact forms, ignore all their calls, and go back to a routine life of only taking pictures on my good side. This is a new insecurity, not one I was born with, and certainly not one I had when I was enjoying that corn.
He turns the camera around so I can see his progress. I look at my small face, or rather its rendering, from this friend—lover—who has seen my current, larger face up close, from every angle. “It's just the undertones,” he tells me.
Crimson, brown, purple, the outlines of my innocence. I squint until it all appears to be one smudge of maroon. It looks like dried-up blood, the kind that would be left behind on the operating table if I were to bleed out under harsh hospital lighting for the medically unnecessary sake of being beautiful, curated, perfect.
“You're an artist, you get it.” That’s what the doctor said to me to account for surgical imperfections. It won't look exactly like the 3D rendering. I unsquint my eyes and stare at him staring at baby me. I stare at baby me.
She has no bad side. She is, after all, the stuff paintings are made of.
