In Pursuit of Beauty

I look in the mirror one last time, to say goodbye to the face that I have known all my life. The source of so much pain, so much agony. Goodbye bulbous nose, I never needed you in a size XL to pick up scents from faraway lands. Goodbye protruding ears, you were unnecessary since I’m not an elephant in the Savannah. Goodbye tiny eyes, you served me well, but it would have been nice if you’d opened up a little more. Goodbye thin lips - need I say more? Goodbye missing eyebrows, why did you never show up for me? Even as I know I won’t miss a single feature, I feel a strange nostalgia creep over me.

Behind me, Sanya stirs in the bed. It is still early, half past six in the morning, and the first rays of the sun are streaming into our bedroom.

“Rick, have you woken up early today?” she asks, sensing I am no longer in bed with her.

“I’m right here,” I say, walking back to the bed, and kneeling by her side. “But I need to leave early today.”

With her hands she holds my face, her fingers touching my cheekbones lightly. 

“Why do I feel this is a long goodbye?” she asks. 

She may not be able to see, but she has the unerring instinct of the blind. A sixth sense which tells her more of everything. 

***

To tell this story properly we have to go back to the beginning. Like the time I was born. As you may have already guessed, I was born an ugly child. There’s no two ways about it. Nature can be cruel or nature can be kind, and I suppose, there are times nature can be neutral, but to me, life had dealt a terrible blow. Neither my mother nor my father were great beauties, but parental pulchritude is not a precondition for the comeliness of offspring. In my case, it was just bad luck. The worst features of my father and my mother came together in one sorry package. 

I’m told that as a baby, I once caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror and cried for three days straight. After that my mother hid all the mirrors in the house. Or covered them with brown paper. 

School was a nightmare. The nicknames they called me. Bunion-nose. Squinty-eye. Frog-face. In the beginning I cried all the time. Then I learnt to beat up the other kids. That was the only thing that kept them quiet.

As a child I made friends, but when the teen years hit, there was no chance of romance. Girls could barely stomach my hideous countenance long enough to hold a conversation, let alone accompany me on a date. So I studied, wrote in my journal (yes, I was that kind of boy), and went on long solitary hikes in the hills of Santa Monica.

Then one day, when I was walking downtown, along the Santa Monica pier, everything changed. I was spotted by a scout from the David Hoff Agency. No, it was not for the role of leading man. They were searching for a hideous looking teenager to play the role of a monster as a young man in a remake of The Beauty and The Beast, and the scout thought I’d be perfect. And I was. God knows I cut down the makeup time in half.

So I didn’t have looks, I didn’t have a date, but at last I had a career. Playing monsters in Hollywood.

I hate to complain, but somehow it didn’t feel all that great.

***

Till Sanya.

We met on the set of Love is Blind, the fifth movie I worked on. It was the most cliched of plots: a rich, blind girl is kidnapped by thugs, then rescued by a poor, monstrous looking guy, whom she falls in love with. Her father offers the guy money to walk away, but of course he won’t accept it. And then they run away together in the end. 

In the pre-woke days, they would have probably cast a sighted actress to act blind, then bag an Oscar for her “brilliant portrayal of a blind woman,” but we were in woke times now. They rustled up a relatively unknown and stunning blind beauty -- Sanya -- to play the lead. Jeremy Irons played the dad -- I could scarcely believe I was in the same room as this legend. But anyway. In a classic instance of life imitating art, Sanya and I fell in love.

And of course, why not?

Because there was nothing wrong with me. I mean, besides the severe facial imperfections, I was a nice enough guy. Intelligent, wise-cracking, perhaps even charming, but none of these merits could be evaluated by someone distracted by my looks. A blind woman was the perfect solution. And if Sanya was aware that I was externally ugly, if someone had made her wise, she didn’t let on. 

One day, before I proposed, I even took her aside. I said, “Sanya, I must tell you something, before we go any further.” I wanted to tell her: I am ugly. You must know this.

But all she did was place her gentle fingers over my lips and say, “Shh, I know everything I need to know about you.”

***

But here’s the thing. I couldn’t let it go. Now I had money, I had the girl, you’d think I had everything, but I still had The Face. I did not want to live the rest of my life with that face. 

If you pay enough money you can buy anything. And so I raised the price past the doctors who told me they only did the face replacement surgery on people with severe burns, with life threatening medical conditions, raised it to the levels acceptable to -- no, sought by -- the best transplant teams. And today was the day of my surgery.

“It’s not a long goodbye,” I lie. Somehow I know Sanya would not want me to do this.

I hear her getting out of bed, placing her feet into the slippers she keeps at the side of the bed. Slipping her hands into the dressing gown lying on the chair in the corner. She walks towards me, and I marvel at both her beauty and the sureness with which she walks, the mental map she has of our bedroom, this house, the world. She embraces me from behind.

“Tell me,” she says. 

And I confess. I tell her I am going to get a new face, one that’s better, finer than this old model that’s brought me to where I am.

“And whom is this for,” she asks, “this new face?”

The million dollar question. The question I can’t answer. 

Because of course, the face is not for her, my beautiful, blind fiancee. 

The face is for me, and for the rest of the world. The rest of the world that should matter far less than her. This is what she picks up on. This truth that I have been avoiding, the reason I have withheld the news of my operation from her this long.

“Rick,” she says, “there is the man I got to know, and he is kind, considerate and unswerving in his loyalty. He has one face. And now there’s going to be Rick with a new face. And he’s already showing me this face. The face that didn’t tell me about this operation till today. I’m not sure the new Rick is right for me.”

My mouth is dry, and I am without words.

“You must choose, Rick. Either the new face or me.”

There is a long silence where I know the answer but I cannot say the words. There is a void within the soul of every man which makes him wonder if there’s something better waiting for him around the corner. Even within the soul of the most abject of creatures. 

As I turn towards the door to leave, once again, I catch my reflection in the mirror, and wince at how truly ugly I am.