Reasons To Be Beautiful (1) Love hangs herself With the bed sheets in her cell Threw myself on fires for you 10 good reasons to stay alive 10 good reasons I can't find His kiss was like cardboard, or maybe the stuffed animal I used to practice on when I was twelve. I tried to remember a time when it had felt like kissing a man; when it had been animated and meant something. His tongue was thick and warm, but it was a foreign object. My body warred, wanting to reject it, wanting to embrace it. My mind quite simply didn't care. I wondered if the reaction of my body was a reproductive response to stimulus, if it was nature's trick in order to insure that a reasoning mind's biological imperative to procreate was not ignored. I wondered if I had remembered to put fabric softener in the last load of laundry. I wondered if I had any bullion cubes tucked into a cupboard somewhere; they would add a nice flavor to the rice Martha Stewart had assured me was the perfect compliment to the honey glazed pork chops I had in the broiler. I wondered if Cruz would be home in time for dinner. I wondered if the vegetable was burning. I almost missed it when he stopped kissing me. He disappeared into the vacuum of the television room and ESPN and I rescued my peas from immolation to the gods of the open range. Did anyone really like peas? Sure, they were edible...but like? I thought about it a moment: sad, green, globular orbs. Richard's mother slapped hunks of butter on them until they swam in an unattractive, yellowy soup. I hadn't used to do that. I also hadn't used to fold socks into perfect round balls, fishcakes hadn't always been Thursday's weekly fare, and once upon a time I did not know how to crochet. I conceded that I had very possibly become Richard's mother...without the sciatic problems. "Mom!" the bellow announced my fourteen-year-old son nanoseconds before his moose-like tread gave him away. I wondered when I had stopped thinking of him as a miracle and began thinking of him as a noisy stranger who never stopped eating and left his gym socks in abstract locations. "Cruz, leave your shoes on the service porch!" I bellowed back. The nice soccer mom with the eighties perm had given him a ride from practice, which meant he probably had yet to discard his cleats. The super secret third eye mothers get when their children turn about a year and a half provided me the opportunity to see his disgusted huff of a sigh and disgruntled eye roll—as if I did not have the chance to see it live and in person a good thirty times a day—through the wall behind the refrigerator. "What's for dinner?" "Pork chops." My son's dark, spiked head popped ferret-like out from behind the doorframe leading into the laundry room/service porch. "Did you make rice? Because I've got to have rice, Mom." "Yes, I made rice," I rolled my own eyes, not caring if he saw it or not. The little bastard was in his Asian phase right now. Half-white, speaking barely three words of any recognized Asian dialect, the closest Cruz came to genuine culture was recently binge eating a lot of rice, hanging out with Koreans, Philippinos, a few Japanese kids, and reading Honda Tuner with the avid fanaticism of a barely pubescent teen who can't even drive yet. I served rice and peas for dinner to make both of the men in my life happy. Cruz could barely eat the rice because of the beef flavoring brought by the bullion seasoning; real Asians eat white rice, he informed me. Richard was a real Asian, but he ate his peas in carefully measured bites; a little butter-soup escaped the confines of his spoon and slid down the corner of his mouth. He had French kissed me today. Did that mean he wanted sex? I cut my pork chop into tiny geometric cubes. It was dry and tough, but sticky with its honey glaze. That was kind of like sex; not dripping, just sticky enough to be moist outside, but stick a fork in me and... We had eaten enough. I stood up to gather the plates of the table; caught a glimpse of the picture we made in the full-length mirror by my mother's nice oak hutch. We were the lie of Normal Rockwell—may the bastard rot in hell. I had a good husband. I had a handsome son. I had a Buck, the obligatory Golden Retriever outside. I had a nice house in the suburbs of Maryland. I had a white picket fence. My neighbors brought us cookies when we moved in. I had a college diploma tucked away somewhere. I had a good set of china, and lots of lace doilies scattered around the house. I had a fucking mini-van, for Christ's sake. I remembered when we had owned a milk-crate instead of an entertainment center, when we had to wrap the TV antenna—or was the plural form 'antenni'—in foil, when our mattress had seen more wear than a Vietnamese hooker. I remembered owning a Volkswagen bus. I remembered thinking duct tape could fix anything. I remembered when Richard and I had still bothered to look at each other. I remembered when I was not a pork chop. Richard did want to have sex that night. I climbed into bed in my least inspiring flannel gown. Its cut was billowing and high-necked, almost Victorian in style. He spooned against me, his cock stiff and jutting like the prow of a ship, leading the way into the night. He wasn't holding me; he was letting me know what he wanted. He teased me for a while, or maybe his aim was just impaired, because he rubbed around for a few minutes before wedging himself inside. I came to the conclusion that we had just had foreplay. My hands reach for their place on his spine, the bony knobs of his vertebrae rolling under my fingers. He sawed back and forth inside me and my body began to react, finding its place in the act. He panted on me, hot, humid breaths forcing their way into my mouth. I lifted my hips, taking him deeper inside. He sped up, his dick shutting down his brain. I groaned as his frantic movements ground his pelvis between my legs like a sporadic vibrator. He jerked inside me, once, twice, thrusting deeper, and then spurted. It felt like warm buttermilk and I gasped. I jerked my hips up sharply to bring myself over. I came. I was unimpressed. I wondered why my body had bothered. I wondered if it was to induce the milking spasms in my vaginal muscles. I wondered if it was Nature's way of insuring that the biological imperative was not ignored. It didn't matter. It doesn't matter, I told my body silently. He's fixed. Give me a reason to be beautiful So sick in his body, so sick in his soul And I will make myself so beautiful And everything I am... I brought her cookies on one of my good china plates when she moved in next door. I saw the U-Haul truck pull into the McClure's former driveway. It was one of the small ones; a faded mural racehorse strained in profile on the side of the trailer. She got out, a tiny little redhead dressed in black running pants and a black tank top. Two white stripes ran vertically down the outside of the legs; and nobody had hips like that outside of magazines. If she was over twelve, I might have to hate her. I peered out my dining room window like the nosy neighbor on Bewitched. I saw nice arms, and a bright red and green and gold snake wrapped around her left bicep. I saw flame red hair that had to be out of a Clairol bottle. I wondered where her parents were. Her parents never showed. I guessed maybe she was not twelve. Cruz had a soccer game, so I didn't get around to making cookies until the following Monday. When I did, they were white chocolate macadamia nut cookies. Yes, it was just a fancy way of doing chocolate chip...but cookies say a lot about a person. Oatmeal is boring, chocolate chip is passé, white chocolate macadamia nut is passé with a twist, and that was me in a nutshell. So what if the twist was mostly in my own mind? There was a part of me that still read romance novels and knew that I, just like the Lady Gwendolyn St. Eire, would have kneed the dastardly but dashing pirate "Lance" in the privates the first time he tried to ravish me, and that I, just like the Lady Gwendolyn St. Eire, would have eventually succumbed to his throbbing manhood and turgid desire. It was the part of me that knew I was more than just a pork chop, that I had a twist, even if it were only in my own thoughts. I was babbling to myself, nervous as usual at the prospect of meeting someone new. I fortified myself with the knowledge that I made excellent cookies. I worried that maybe she would keep my good china plate. It would break one of my eight settings. She answered the door before I was ready. I had been standing on the porch too long, almost deciding that she was out or busy. I had decided to ring the doorbell once more just to be certain and my finger was out, poised to punch the button one more time, when the door swung open and she stood there. It was hard not to stare. She was not what usually moves into cul-de-sacs in Maryland suburbia. Flame colored hair was what would always come to mind when I thought of her. A little past the shoulder, long, straight layers framed her face and brought out the milky complexion of a true redhead. Her eyes were hazel and blue and green and deep set, her mouth full, with an elfish mobility and curl at the corners. She was not as young as I had thought; lines as delicate and fine as a Chinese fan unfurled at the corner of her eyes and bracketed her mouth in something between dimples and laugh lines. Her mouth was not smiling. The quizzical, half-ironic smirk she had worn upon answering the door was melting away like an ice cream scoop running down the sides of the cone. She looked at me like I had punched her. I thrust out my plate of cookies in the universal sign of neighborly peace. "Welcome to the neighborhood," I said. She looked at me blankly. "Hi," I tried again. Her expression still looked shell shocked. Maybe she was from DC, were your neighbors wanted to mug you, not bring you baked goods. "I made you cookies," I said, wondering if she could talk. I tried to remember whether or not I remembered any sign language from college. I was fairly sure I could still finger spell... She finally accepted the outstretched cookies, murmured a subdued 'thank you'. I thought she was weird. She came to my house the next day, my good china plate tucked under her left arm like a football. She was like an entirely different person. She apologized for being such an idiot the other day; she had been having sinus trouble and was half-comatose from a Benadryl overdose. She smiled, she laughed. She complimented me on my cookies. Her nose crinkled at the bridge when she thought I'd said something funny. Her eyes were mostly blue that day, bright and inquisitive. She still looked out of place. She had a little gold hoop in her right eyebrow and I knew at least one tattoo, hidden today by the sleeves of her white knit polo shirt. Her jeans were faded and comfortably fitted, rolled inexplicably halfway up her calf. A white pua shell necklace encircled her neck, a brown beaded anklet rested just above her right foot, and three oblong green and black marbled beads were threaded through a black leather thong to make up her bracelet. She looked like one of those eternally young people who can get away with dressing like a teenager even when they are thirty. She was thirty-two and she came back the next day. There were a lot of next days. Richard did not like her. There was something about the way her mouth curled up naturally into those knowing smirks that grated on him, so eventually I started going over to her house and she stopped coming to mine. Hers was bare, compared to mine. A cheap Ikea couch, a cheaper kitchen table, a mattress on the floor. It was also a hundred times more vivid. She painted. Canvasses peppered her walls: fairy landscapes, craggy glaciers, colors and forms swirling and merging to crash together into a kaleidoscope world that leapt at you in a frenzy a hundred times more compelling than the best art gallery showing. Her moods were like her paintings, as sharp and unpredictable as a roller coaster, dipping and swelling from intense passion to whimsical indifference. I had forgotten that side dishes existed outside of white rice and mashed potatoes; she ordered Thai food and laughed when I fried a good many taste buds in one incautious bite. Sometimes the way she watched me was almost hungry. Richard still watched ESPN. One day, in a fit of productivity, Richard painted the garage. One day she painted me. I knew she was going to do it. She told me...cajoled me, begged me, pleaded with me, actually. When she got like that she was unstoppable, I knew that already. How else do you explain the rollerblading? I wore something pretty that day. I brushed my hair with special care. I brushed my teeth with whitening paste, as if one use would make a difference. I brushed them again in a fit of optimism. She pulled a blanket over her canvass when the light began to fade. She did that everyday until the picture was done. She finally showed it to me. I was thunderstruck. I was also naked. I wasn't sure what I had expected. I did not expect to find myself painted in bold, sensual lines. I stood in unselfconscious abandon in a rainstorm, welcoming the rain like a lover. It cascaded over my body in pearly beads and nearly translucent rivulets. I was curving and smooth and ripe and sexual and she had gotten the color of my nipples exactly right. And that was my new awareness. It added a new dimension to everything. It was my new secret. The way she saw me, the mirror she had held up to my face. I was not Richard's wife, Cruz's mother, a member of the PTA or the soccer mom with the grass-stains in the carpet mats of her Chevy Astro. I discovered my sexuality and freedom and found someone who liked Hemmingway and could discuss James Joyce and could stand aroused and naked in the rain. One night I put curry, chili paste and celery into Cruz's white rice. It bit at my tongue, nipping at it like the sharp, urgent teeth of a lover. It was not Cruz's rice anymore; it was mine. Best of all, Asian kids are supposed to like hot food. I took perverse satisfaction in watching him try to maintain a stoic expression as he ate, and it took Herculean effort to refrain from snickering every time he gulped at his milk. One night I took a bubble bath. I touched myself with slow languid hands; let soap slick fingers glide over my nipples until they were aching and peaked; slid my other hand between my legs. I was wet and slippery and my fingers moved smoothly over swollen lips and slipped into frothy depths and circled the place where my flesh strained and quivered until I arched and whimpered and shuddered into an orgasm so intense I convulsed and sat panting, bent over at the waist, feeling the rapid throb of my heartbeat in places a good deal below my chest. One night Richard began touching me. I let him, because it's what we did, the way things worked, and it seemed only fair. I pretended he was the rain. He came. It was like hot Champaign erupting inside of me, jettisoning a million, tiny, impotent little bubbles. That night my body did not bother trying to go with him. My biological imperative had finally realized the truth...he was fixed. The next day I went over to her house. We ate cheese and French bread and apples and drank a heady, tart white wine on the floor while watching one of her sharply unfocused artsy movies. She watched me suck an errant drop of wine off my fingers after pouring myself another glass; her gaze was funny—hungry and maybe a little angry. I realized that I was wet, and that was the second mirror she held up for me to see myself in. Miles and miles of perfect skin I swear I do I fit right in My love burns through everything I cannot breathe Miles and miles of perfect sin I swear I do I fit right in I fit right in your perfect skin I cannot breathe The music was wild and swirling, crescendo after crescendo building and tumbling down. My head swam with it and I had the oddest sensation...like maybe my blood was boiling in the cauldron mix of ecstasy and enraged pain and guilt pouring out of the speakers. I shook my head and felt my entire body follow it's dizzy arc. I squinted one eye and tried to judge how much damage we'd done to the tequila bottle on the floor in front of her stereo. I hoped I was merely seeing triplicate, because if we'd really drained three bottles of Jose Cuervo down to barely a fourth remaining, we were in trouble. When three of her managed to get to their feet in a drunken lurch, I realized that we were probably safe. When she held out three hands in silent invitation to help me up and I took my best guess and flung three of my own hands at one of them in acceptance, I was fairly certain of it. We made our way to her back porch with interspersed assistance from the walls and her refrigerator. It was the first time I wished she had more furniture. Her cat, Bean, looked at us with implacable feline dislike from the porch railing when we stumbled out; only a cat can turn the act of grooming into a gesture of such immense disdain. She pulled a package of somewhat crushed cigarettes out of her back pocket, the effort almost knocking her over. The hot ashy taste burned and coiled its way down my throat; I coughed. She watched me while she smoked and her expression was sober with speculation. I looked away from her suddenly green cat eyes and took a deep breath, hoping to maybe sober up a little. I smelled rain and concrete and suddenly noticed that I was hearing the sharp stab of raindrops against her porch roof.
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