PERFECTION

I don’t know how many times I’ve sat on your burgundy carpet and watched the old woman who owns the land the gas station is built on through the open french window. No matter how many oil stains bleed across the pavement, no matter how many customers squabble with the employees about why they have to wear masks when all they want is to grab a pack of Gauloises and a can of Pringles, no matter how much car filth (an assortment of used tissues, Covid masks with torn elastic bands, expired parking receipts, empty bottles, a molten gummy bear with hair sticking to it, and crumbled fast food wrappers) falls out of a car door storage compartment and never makes it into a bin – there she is: a quiet, persevering backbone of order.

Bent over at a 90 degree angle, she slowly picks grass, moss and whatever else dares to grow out of the concrete cracks of the driveway with her bare hands. As I watch her, one fisted hand resting on her back, while the other plucks and plucks, all I can do is think about how much time we spend on trying to keep things perfect. Even when our lives and our bodies are as unruly as the grass that keeps pushing through the asphalt, we pluck, and pluck, and pluck to keep the illusion of perfection going.

It’s what makes you think, “There’s no point in wearing lipstick now”, as you look at yourself in the moving windows of the halting train and pull your lips together around the fullness of your new braces.

It’s what makes you sad when you see a run in someone’s tights as they walk by, or when you notice how their carefully applied makeup starts smudging around their eyes.

It’s what makes your classmates talk about accidentally queefing while riding a guy and how they worry that he’ll think they farted.

It’s what makes you squish your soft pre-teen stomach with both hands while sitting on the toilet and trying to decide if it’s a problem yet.

It’s why you’re taught to shave your legs, even though you’re too young to know why or for whom.

It’s why you smuggle tampons from your bag to the bathroom and hide the reality of your bleeding body.

It’s why, when he looks at you, the stress of trying to hide all of your messy bits and not knowing if you pulled it off makes you cry. And why, when he gently strokes your face and kisses the mascara from your wet cheeks and tells you how beautiful you are, all you can think in response is “You’re lying.”

Perfection will do that to you.

It will make you suspicious of those who see you in your humanity and stay to love you because of it. I know you can’t believe that anyone would be aware of the same societal agreements of how to look, how to behave, and how to control yourself and think your divergence is beautiful.

But when you find those people? Believe them.