Friday, July 11, 2003
Faces
I had a strange experience in Downtown today. I was walking to the library to drop off a couple of DVDs and pick up a new one. The sun was warm, I was sweating but glad to be out of the house, if only for a short walk. The noise, however, was getting to me. Since I moved into this little cell on the third floor, I’ve been surrounded by noise from the street, my life is simply loud, my senses sometimes overwhelmed. I was noticing it more then usual on the way to the library, underneath the Washington State Convention Center’s massive glass vault, where the cars and chattering people reverberate and multiply. So I was feeling a bit over stimulated.
At the stoplight just before the library, there was a woman, young, maybe early twenties. She was perfect, meaning, she was perfect for the cover of a magazine. Her hair blonde and multi-hued, her clothes spot on, showing her smooth shoulders and toned skin, she wore good pants and the shoes to match, and her feet were planted widely on the sidewalk as she chatted on her cell phone. She was plucked from the cover of Cosmo and plopped down in front of the library. I stared at her for a moment, some cog in my brain slipped and I said to myself, “So what?” My eyes slipped from her featureless skin, she didn’t matter, she wasn’t real.
I looked for other faces, and this being the city, there were thousands to choose from. Suddenly, I felt hungry for faces. I looked at a scruffy Indian sitting on the library steps. He had wiry bristles sprouting from his upper lip, a large, slack mouth, yellowing eyes and fleshy, swollen cheeks… he was exquisite. Then there was a portly man in a t-shirt, with squinty, black little eyes, and a mouth lost in the folds of his cheeks… amazing. I started staring at old women with thinning hair, men with large noses and receding chins, women with acne scars, dirty people, clean people, statuesque black men with chiseled onyx faces, round, apple cheeked Latina women, wide browed professional Asian men, people with folds down the crease of their mouths, heavy bags beneath their eyes, mousy features and unremarkable hair and so on and so on. I was staring at them, I wanted to stare longer at each one, trace the imperfections of their faces with my fingers, memorize the freckle constellations on their skin. It was a compulsion, a thirst that I’d never felt before, but which now seemed as important to my sanity as water was to my body.
This was just after stepping through the library doors. I slipped into the bathroom and sat down in a stall. I took a few minutes to cool down and think about what I was feeling. I realized that in the practical sense, I was walking around Seattle, my head turning as I followed the next face, trying to drink in as many of the unique features as I could before I passed them. This could be construed badly by some, I realized. Partly, I though this strange compulsion would be gone again by the time I left the bathroom, and partly, I hoped that it wouldn’t be, because whatever it was, it was entirely new to me.
I left the bathroom and walked toward the counter to get my DVDs. It wasn’t gone. There was a line of people, and as I passed each one of them, I rapturously watched each of them, each strange and beautiful, each wearing a different emotion. I came to the woman who held my DVDs for me, and as I spoke to her, I smiled and watched her face. She smiled back… she wasn’t my type, but I found her attractive anyway.
My DVDs in hand I hurried out. I let myself watch faces, but a disquiet was growing in my mind. If anything, faces were becoming more sweet and alluring to me. If there was an attractive person walking next to an unattractive person, I found myself attracted to the unattractive one precisely because their face was more interesting. The unattractive masses, usually invisible because they were so common, suddenly became stunningly visible to me. I was seeing humanity, and I was enjoying myself. Of course, they noticed too. People nodded, some smiled, some looked back with a ‘what are you looking at?’ glare. Every person turned my head and I couldn’t stop myself. While I wasn’t worried about the wrinkled old tourists, I was worried about what the creepy men might think. I couldn’t help but come on to them… they were usually the most distinctive looking.
Now I’m home. There’s no one here but me and I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I’ve begun seeing people… I see them everywhere. I don’t know if this is unusual, of if everybody sees people and I’ve just been missing out until now. This could be why I have trouble getting dates, or it could be why I’ve not been in any fistfights. Something changed for me today, and I hope it continues. I feel strange, I feel like a freak with a new superpower. I don’t think I’ve explained it very well, but I do think that this may just be the beginning of something.
I don’t feel crazy…
