Beneath His Mask

He had the sexiest mask.

It was the first thing I noticed, standing there in my creep corner, six feet away from the rest of the world. Impossible to ignore, it stood out, the stark, solitary red element in a black and white photo.

I thought I’d seen them all in these past six months. The surgical masks and N95s, typically donned by healthcare professionals and vigilant germophobes, had sold out two months in, back when we’d still classified 2020 as an actual year. It’d become a trend, later – a chance to play pandemic dress-up. The fashion world had doled out tips and varieties, recommended the best masks for running, for cycling, for that daring dash into grocery store aisles.

I’d taken to recreating some of the best looks, from the debut of the crochet mishaps – stretches of woven thread that enabled easy transmission of free speech and spit flecks – to the rebirth of the beak-like plague masks, using only my makeup tools.

A beauty guru, the artistry of some of the more extreme concepts had appealed to my creative side, and I’d accepted the challenge with manic gusto.

I’d fallen into a searching frenzy, on the lookout for out-of-this-world mask designs to replicate, the boredom of being cooped up at home for an indefinite period of time swallowed by this new fixation. The cycle of evolution of the masks spawned inventive ideas that fed my interest until eventually, the enthusiasm petered out.

Until now, both my eyes and my brush hand were somewhat bored, cataloguing the most artistic ones on a purely have-to-do basis, deeming everything I saw as of ‘meh’ quality.

But his.

His sent me tumbling back down the rabbit hole.

It wasn’t novel, nor was it too overt. It was just a scene taken from one of my favourite animes, but the detail drew me in. Rendered in 3D, it seemed to have been originally done as a painting, probably from an oil acrylic medium, yet crazily looked like digital art. Obviously made specifically for masks, the scene depicted followed the curvature of his jaw, and no matter what angle it was taken from, the picture seemed to rotate with you. Unlike most masks I’d seen with artwork on the surface, this one lacked the shiny reflectiveness of those made from cheap plastic, nor did it seem to be a product of digitized print. The detail was phenomenal, somehow looking even more dynamic than the animation scene itself, the care taken on the finer points like that of a calligrapher. I needed to know more about the owner, and if possible, the artist behind it.

Without even realizing it, I’d migrated from the management-designated ‘X’ taped to the floor.

“Hey,” I blurted, the epitome of suave. “Cool mask.”

He was perusing a shelf of impulse goods at the checkout counter before his head jerked up at my muffled observation. A surreptitious glance measured the feet of distance between us.

He subtly stepped back. The half-air-half-chips bag of Lays clasped in my hands crinkled in second-hand embarrassment.

“Thanks,” he mumbled back.

I tried again, hoping his guardedness was because of a fear of the dreaded Covid-19 and not from an aversion to potato-chips-wielding design fanatics, “Gon, right? From Hunter x Hunter?”

His gaze was much less wary and filled with a little more interest (I hoped anyway) when they returned to me. He set his basket on the floor and began the process of unpack-and-cash.

“Uh, yeah. The scene when he gets all the power he’d ever get. From the 2011 animation. One of my favourites.” Was it me or had his voice gotten a bit louder?

“Yeah, I recognized it. Did you get it commissioned or…” My intent was plain to all. Even the cashier snorted from behind her shield.

He took some time to answer while he paid for his goods and began to bag them himself (the local grocery store was short-staffed as a result of the quarantine order), and I hurriedly placed my snack and beverage on the conveyor belt.

“Sort of. I made it.”

My happiness at meeting another creative in what felt like the end of times was so unreal that I practically started to vibrate I was so giddy. I probably looked deranged. I made a concerted effort to keep still and maintain my distance in case I scared him away.

“Really? I’m a little bit of an artist myself,” I realized how that sounded and remedied my statement. “I’m a makeup artist. That’s obviously not on the same level as your,” I gesture at his mask, “sort of thing, but it’s alright.”

“Oh?”

I think he smiled, though it was hard to tell. The mask shifted around with the movements of his words, and my only point of reference was the faintest crinkling of skin at his temples.

My items were already rung up, so I paid, snatched them up and waited for him to grab his bags. I shuffled along when he was done, trying to keep the distance and conversation going as we headed to the exit. 

We both manoeuvred the items in our hands to receive sanitizer gel at the dispensers placed at opposite ends of the automatic doors, then walked in the direction of the parking lot. The heat immediately welcomed us, in direct contrast to the cool environs of the grocery store. We turn to each other just outside the store, away from the trickle of shoppers and employees, but near enough to the building that we’re still cast in its shade.

“You can look me up,” I invited, then gave him the name of my Youtube channel and Instagram handle.

He hesitated, six feet away from me, seemingly unsure about something. After a minute of dawdling where I felt every bit of stalker-girl stigma braid itself into my hair, rustle into my clothes and shrink me down one foot smaller, he finally – finally – nodded. 

“Sure. What’s your name?”

“Oh. Right. I’m Sari. It’s with an ‘i’, pronounced ‘Say-rye’.” 

 “Say-rye.” He enters this information into his phone with a laugh. “Got it. I’m Tao.”

I beamed, we rattled off our numbers, and we skipped the customary handshake, for obvious reasons. With a promise to contact each other, we went our separate ways, and on my end at least, looked forward to the burgeoning of a new friendship.

At first, our back-and-forths were almost stilted, an exchange of two like-minded professionals about the intricacies of their craft. I sent him tips and helpful links into acquiring a larger audience, especially in the shut-down period, flexing my marketing strategies to the utmost. He, in turn provided user-friendly software and invites to community groups, widening the avenues I could take with my hobby.

These interactions soon graduated to a tentative friendship, which was near inevitable as we’d clicked so well and had the same tastes. It reached a point where he’d tease about the different secret techniques he employed to make his work so vibrant and enthralling, and I’d send ridiculous memes, gifs and videos about the most random things. I found a wonderful critic for some of my original ideas, seeing nothing wrong in sending them primarily to him to veto and edit before uploading the videos.

I had already known that I would enjoy our acquaintance – my enthusiastic initiation of contact made that abundantly clear, but the supreme joy I derived from our interactions far surpassed what I expected.

I sent him pictures of failed cooking attempts, his puking emoji serving as an adequate response. He sent me videos of his pets, which were pure canine cuteness. Our phone calls evolved as part of our daily routines

We shared other things of a more serious nature, later on. Updates relating to the Coronavirus made sporadic appearances but took a backstage to most of the other stuff. As we both stayed mostly indoors (apart from our fated meeting a few weeks earlier) and followed the procedures to avoid spreading the disease, we remained largely unaffected. A little backstory into our lives made occasional rounds, spiced by humorous anecdotes about our younger years.

One day, after sending him a hilarious fanart of Levi in maid costume from Attack on Titan, it occurred to me that I’d never actually seen Tao’s face.

All his social media profiles that I’d hunted down in obsessive stan mode had digital art display pictures. His media consisted of photos of his dogs, Simba and Courage, samples of his commission pieces and artwork, and infrequent videos of in-process projects with the movement of hands and occasional voiceovers his only appearances.

The visual media sent between the two of us were mainly clips of my face in different stages of transformation from my end, while his was comprised of artwork and memes.

It had never really occurred to me until right then that he’d deliberately left out clips of his face, and the one in-person meeting we had didn’t really leave much of an impression apart from the mask.

I brought up doing a video chat the next time we spoke. There was no response for a long time.

When he did respond, he told me that he didn’t like photos of himself, and though painfully curious, I let it go.

I was satisfied, at first, but as our relationship grew and developed, I began to feel the need for more.

The quarantine order and the threat of the pandemic had made dating a virtual no-no, but – and I offered this to him with an emphasis on the ‘if’ – if he was interested, we could video chat, wearing masks, just as how we’d been doing the first time we met.

I admit to being absurdly surprised when he agreed.

The day of the video chat, I skipped the doll-up. He’d mentioned that he hated photos, so I assumed that meant he was self-conscious about something physical. Plus, he’d already seen my face in all its stages of ugly. Hence, the makeup was ignored.

Our greetings were shy, the familiarity of our relationship hidden underneath the strangeness of seeing one another, for the most part, face to face. We fell into our rhythm eventually, laughing and talking as if we were on an actual date.

Everything seemed much richer and a lot more genuine seeing the immediacy of his reactions, and I was a great degree more comfortable with my developing feelings.

The mask, unfortunately, was an unavoidable source of distraction. He had to repeat some of the things he said, and I could again only depend on the subtle shifts to determine his expression. I cursed my nosiness, in hindsight, though I wouldn’t necessarily change the ending.

“Is it something that bad?” I tried not to be too prying but made sure that he knew I’d be understanding. I joke, “You can take it off. I promise not to judge you too harshly.”

He stared, for a minute or so, off into the distance. I almost wanted to reach through the screen and wrench it off myself, that impatient monster my mother always warns me about rearing its childish head. I refrained, however, being an adult and all that.

We sat there for so long in silence, mine anticipative and his wary, that I almost called it quits and waved it away.

Then, remarkably, he did it. He reached up slowly, so very slowly, and put his hands near his ears. His eyes met mine, looked away, and the mask came off.

My facial muscles strain with the effort to remain lax. The air stalls in my lungs.

There are some changes I loved that the use of masks brought on. It forced certain things on us. Better than Listerine, it acted like a super bad breath shield, the ultimate protector against those with dental hygiene allergies. My makeup kit retired for a long time; apart from those at-home videos and random Zoom meetings, it sat mostly abandoned on my vanity – my mask rendering everything but a little eyebrow tint obsolete. The slightly whiny lilt to my voice that I detested with all the strength of my failed voice acting past was muffled under the covering, lending some deceptive maturity to my tone.    

Masks also hid our faces.

So, for the first time ever, I saw Tao’s, in full, close-up detail. And my heart broke.

Thick and white, the scars aren’t faint, aren’t inconspicuous, they have no relation to the world of beauty. They run tracks – some haphazard, others done with an almost meticulous care – from the bridge of his nose to just under his chin, a seething mass of raised, angry skin.

It took me a moment, but it occurs to me that they weren’t caused by any one thing. Knives, cigarettes, acids – they were all the medium for the hellscape painted on his face. And they were all done with intent.

“My grandfather,” he began, eyes never detouring from that point only he could see, “was a very angry man. He’s the old-fashioned type, like the ones you read about in your romantic books or watch in movies, but never really expect to meet in real life. My mother said he was the greatest pain she ever dealt with growing up.” A dry chuckle erupts, then cut off in its infancy.

“He grew up poor but had a boiling ambition. His life was essentially one of those success stories you hear about, you know?” He darted a quick look at my face, but I’m unresponsive, so he looked away and continued to tell his story.

“No one had ever really disappointed him. My mother’s a lawyer, my two uncles are a doctor and the CFO of the family company respectively, all earning great merit in their fields. These were respectable occupations – in his mind, anyway.”

Another silence was born, so different from the last. I didn’t know I could regret asking a question so much, but so much was already said, I could only carry on listening.

“There was always a type of friction there between us. He never really liked me. Hmphed a lot at the sight of me. Can’t really say I liked him much either. This never really mattered in the long run; however, I was his first and only grandson, and therefore the only candidate of my generation in his family to inherit his businesses.” He sighed. “You can imagine how he felt when I showed not one lick of interest in it.

“What really sent him over the edge, though, was what I’d given my attention to. Instead of picking up something like law or medicine, in the footsteps of his esteemed children, I’d given my attention to art. He thought it was effeminate, and like I said – old-fashioned.”

I could tell I was in for the big whammy and held my breath in shocked horror. He let out a deeper, weightier sigh.  

“He’d gotten my mother to convince me to begin working for the head company as soon I turned eighteen. She sold it to me as a trial period, a way of pacifying my grandfather while earning a little experience in the business world so I could explore all my options. Looking back, I probably should have started with something a little less important. But nepotism. He and my uncle, the CFO one, Uncle Jared, put me in charge of a two-point-seven-five-million-dollar contract, which was, at the time, small fry for the company.

“There was a six-week negotiation period, another part of the process I just really wasn’t interested in. In the later part of the negotiations, the utter boredom virtually drove me insane, and I went back home and skipped one of the meetings to work out a little of my frustration with my new fascination, which was etching. Turns out, this was the worst thing I could have done. The CEO of the company had made an impromptu appearance at the meeting, realized the point-man for the meeting – me – had skipped, and was largely unimpressed despite what was apparently a flawless presentation. The deal fell through, and the CEO had far-reaching connections, and one cross word from him had more impact than we realized.

“When my grandfather heard about this, he flew into a rage. That’s how I found about the deal falling through, actually. He barged into my house, midway through his tirade and a cigarette, when the image of me creating an acid etching on stainless steel stopped him in his tracks. From there it’s kind of a blur. I only remember the pain, and his voice snarling, “Since you like art so much, here’s a piece of artwork for you.””

By now we’re both crying, him a silent stream of remembered pain, me a heart-breaking, noisy kind of sympathetic anguish.

On the screen, my hand traced the faint outline of scars. We smiled at each other through our tears. 

"You should see me without my makeup," I joke.