rm | i know it's just the war

i know it's just the war

I'm walking home with a sack of groceries, and as I pass down a block I pass down several times a day every day a man from a group of people hanging out there takes a handful of change out of his pocket, shakes it like dice and then pours it out on the ground. $1.37, but reading the results he informs me, "The signs say you will always have that ugly, retarded face and there is nothing you can do about it." The people he is with, of mixed gender and race, and all between the ages of about 20 and 35, laugh. I ignore it, and try tell myself it's just the war, not the one in Iraq, but the one that happens every day in New York about gentrification, race and money. I know half my neighborhood hates the other half and vice versa, but mostly, we all keep it to ourselves, except when things get out of hand like in the blackout or when the buildings come down.

It's hard for me to be surprised by these things. It's a rare day when someone doesn't call me ugly. Isn't that strange? It may be a rare day when someone doesn't call you ugly too, you just might not be as tuned in on the streets. Or maybe I'm just lucky.

Sometimes, I think it's because I don't have a modern face. It's such a throwback, the issue isn't that I'm not an MTV hottie, but that I look like someone who should have died decades or centuries ago. Maybe people see me and recognize the dead, and in their fear of mortality declare my features sin.

I wonder about things like that all the time. Strange mystical reimaginings of the casually cruel world. I also wonder sometimes if we hate the Arab world because they gave us the zero. Perhaps we do not see a revolution in math, an efficiency in accounting but an entire people that innovated the language of numbers solely so that we would at long last be able to name our worthlessness.

All of this though just underlines the reasons I don't do so well in the world. I think there's some sort of sublime artfulness under all the random hate and it makes me oblivious, both to the sheer bludgeoning stupidity of it all and of course the fact that I may indeed be ugly.

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I get a similar look on a daily basis - the ' You dont look like the beefcake guy on tv therefore you are ugly '.

Sometimes I believe it.

It's a rare day when someone doesn't call me ugly.

That's hard to understand, both because no image of you that I've seen suggests any justification for the claim and because I can't understand what benefit anyone could expect to get from flinging this sort of excrement at you, even if there were any truth to it. It is as though some people are so desperate to be better than other people that they can only think to try to push other people beneath them.

Adrian

A lot of it is the wonder of New York. I mean, I'd say for most women in this city, it's a rare week if they don't hear it, or at least get some sort of unwelcome, demanding commentary. A lot of it's just the frequency of human interaction here. Why I'm the lucky winner in the way I am, I'll never ben entirely sure. Maybe because my face is atypical, maybe because my mouth is awlways slightly open so I can breathe, or maybe because I walk around like I just don't give a goddamn shit about anything. But still. It's tiring.

"A lot of it is the wonder of New York. I mean, I'd say for most women in this city, it's a rare week if they don't hear it, or at least get some sort of unwelcome, demanding commentary."

Yeah. You get it a lot more than I do now -- I got it more when I was smaller and thinner -- and I think a lot of it is that you walk around as if you don't give a goddamn shit/nothing can hurt you emotionally.

Actually, I think it's a combination of your size, the unexpectedness of your face (I'm looking for the words, but you know what I mean -- the combination of being out of time, of being striking (in both your definitions and mine)), of being focused on things that probably aren't "Do these men think I'm pretty?", your posture, and again, your focus. I swear, people react to people-with-focus with all sorts of fear/hate responses.

And it is tiring.

I also think this shit happens less in Brooklyn than in Manhattan, but I'm not sure why. Brooklyn is a little more chill and I think the gentrification there tends to be more gradual, versus the out of hand way it is in my neighborhood right now.

I swear, people react to people-with-focus with all sorts of fear/hate responses.

Agreed, and I for one think that's what's really going on here. Maybe it's because I have only seen her in pictures, but I don't think

rm's face is that strange.

Focus scares people, it's foreign to most of them.

I look like someone who should have died decades or centuries ago. Maybe people see me and recognize the dead, and in their fear of mortality declare my features sin.

That's a poetic way of putting it, but I suspect the truth is that some people are just brutal, stupid assholes.

I happen to think you're lovely.

Thank you.

/HOMER ON
Yay, brutal, stupid assholes!
/HOMER OFF

Sorry, extra punchy today.

*blink*
*blink*

Um.
I've had my fair share of being called ugly/a dog/fat, but I don't hear it every day, and I'm shocked that you do.

I don't think you've a typical face, no - you have shared so many different visions of your look over the years, but ugly? Not in the least.

I wish I understood the world.

Some days I'm glad I live in Chicago. I think that you and I have a rather similar look, actually, but I've never attracted the sort of negative attention you describe here. When I was a young actor, it did trip me up a bit to look the way I do, but with 30 right around the corner, I anticipate that won't be a problem much longer. I can finally play the roles that my looks suit--roles that no one would have cast me in when I was in my teens and twenties.

I think you're splendid looking, anyhow.

Thank you.

I have to say, this happens to me no where else I've been -- not the West Coast, not Sydney, not DC, Chicago or on a fucking bus to Texas. It's just fucking NYC. It's the weirdest shit.

And yeah, I'll turn 33 this year. Now if I just didn't look like I was 24, I'd be set.

I presume that when we're in our 40s, we'll be glad of our youthful appearance. I agree that it's difficult now, though. I'm itching to look old enough for Medea and Margaret and all those other ladies that people have been telling me for years that I'll be perfect for someday, just not yet.

and of course the fact that I may indeed be ugly.

Bah! Bah! I say!

So many of the people I see on TV - these MTV and tabloid caricatures, these icons born out of some porn flick pastiche - are horrendously, commonly ugly. Or, perhaps merely brazenly unattractive.

What does a face suggest? I look at the goddesses of celebrity held aloft, and most of the time, their faces suggest nothing more to me than an upscale porn star. Most of the time, they suggest nothing more than merely sex - and bad cliched trashy sex at that. Their faces are perfectly suited to suggesting nothing more than what any one could contemplate.

I liked the poetry, as it were, in your words above, though, and I think in some ways you're close to what the problem is for these people. Your face suggests more than merely a body. Your face suggests stories and ideas and places and feelings that they'd actually have to think about and become a part of to understand in any real way. The random MTV visage doesn't stir that in them: they're just pretty empty faces or trigger some snarled thought that amounts to "I'd hit it." They don't have to engage these other faces on anything more than a hormonal or reptilian level.

But, anyway, bah! I'd rather, if you'll pardon my sentiment here, gaze upon your features and ponder the meanings and potential narratives and histories and the rare beauty found within than to spend half a minute trying to figure out why Britney Spears' face makes me worry something may crawl out of it and attack me.

I think most of those "MTV hotties" are absolutely foul!
Which neighborhood is this, by the way? Only because as you probably know, I've been to NYC 4 times and I am in love with the city, and feel I am "coming home" every time I visit. You probably understand considering you feel that same love for Sydney.

But yes, I saw things in NYC that I would never see in Sydney, and it both shocked and intrigued me. No wonder people become so goddamn hard there -- as we Aussies imagine anyway. I did come back to Sydney feeling slightly empowered, but also very bored because the city wasn't fast and aloof enough for me. Though, sometimes those Aussie yobs can be just as harsh too.

This is in the East Village -- yesterday on 3rd just west of C to be specific.

The weirdest thing for me about Sydney, well there were several, but one was the lack of homeless people (I saw three the entire time I was there, and I was _everywhere_), and the other was the glitter/gutter factor -- there's a lot of really skeevy stuff in or just around the corner from some really nice neighborhoods -- hence my fascination with Darlinghurst. Your city's relationship with sexual commerce could not be more different than mine.

In Sydney the number one non-political thing I got as an American was a "of course you can be famous, you're American, it doesn't occur to you that you shouldn't be." And I thought that was so fascinating, this belief that it's just a choice, and one that so many of the Australian performers I met felt they didn't have a right to make.

Next time we're each planning to travel we should maybe discuss an apartment swap.

I'm told that one of the reasons the contemporary standard of beauty is "pretty=thin" is that as women have become more empowered, there's a competing pressure to make us tiny, tiny as in "physically frail and helpless."

From your pictures you seem to carry yourself outside that dichotomy-you're a slender woman who is absolutely unapologetic about taking up space in the world. Perhaps some attack that because they are unable or afraid to process it.

Panache rules!

I'm pretty sure it's because you're interesting. I haven't yet met you, but you radiate 'player character'. The NPCs get jealous . . .

Weirdly unpleasant, such behavior.

I just don't see it.

This is a really beautiful piece of writing on all sorts of levels.

Random cruelty like this makes me want to head out and do vigilante justice on the people who perpetuate it. I'm amazed that your skin is tough enough to throw it off as you appear to be able to do.

When I was thinking about cities, places I want to visit, I discovered that although I'd love to come to NY deep down I'm afraid of going there. I'm afraid I'm somehow too soft to even be there. This is kind of strange since I've done lots of traveling to many different places and I generally don't feel anxious or uncomfortable.The idea of being in NYC makes me feel like a dumb, unsophisticated turnip and no other place I've contemplated seems to do that.

I can more or less throw it off now, although there's always this 90 seconds of truly muderous, insensate rage -- I mean, where I just want to rush up to people and start beating them over the head -- I can't even articulate it -- it's a scary feeling, and one of the things I don't like about New York.

Have you really never been to NYC? I think most neighborhoods where you would be alone you'd be unlikely to encounter this sort of stuff (they're too crowded for anyone else to focus on anyone else enough for this shit to happen) -- anywhere else, you'd probably be appalled by watching a NYC'er handle it... there's a whole lot of "no, no fuck YOU," laughter about it.

I lived on Long Island (Suffolk County Air Force Base) for a couple of years in the early 60's but the only time I was in the city was when my dad took me there on a day trip for my 5th birthday. A loooong time ago.

I guess I would probably be fine once I got there - I'm a chameleon of sorts and as a result it's likely it wouldn't take me long to develop a NYC persona. I can do a fuck you war as well as the next person if that's the way it works! heh. The hub and I will get there eventually and he's great at fitting in anywhere after a lifetime of international travel so that will help ease any anxiety.

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i know it's just the war

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Hard to understand.

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