Beauty

I am beautiful.

People never see this, and I must admit that I have not encouraged them to notice. I am too busy noticing the various lovelinesses of my friends. I avoid catching my eye n the mirror. When I see my own reflection I wonder how they will see me, and anticipate the worst. But I am beautiful. I am a clock with a complexity of wheels and cogs making slow ticking circles inside. I am a surprise, a lucky dip of opposing ideas all moving in tandom, multi-directional. I have added to myself with time. I was once raw edged and uncomplicated. Now I am something more than this. I have grown into the kind of beauty that is never simple or obvious.

People do not see this. People do not look.

I lurk in my invisibility, in my drag-queen veneer, all faux-woman. I am a mask of overt sexuality, a caricature. I am my behaviour.

Writing a memoir is like pearl-diving. I come up to take breath and my hands are mud and my life is all cut open and spilled out but for a moment here, now, I have found the pearl that I suspected might have been there all the time. Sooner or later it will slip through my fingers. The oyster will snap shut, all ugly grey shell and questionable reputation. But for now, for once, for a brief moment I have found it, and I know that despite what they may think, I am beautiful.