Have You Ever Seen…

Have you ever seen an ugly person with a beautiful person? I mean really really really ugly and really really really beautiful. We can let go, for the moment, of the political hot button qualifications of beauty – such as thinness, blondeness, whiteness, youth, as we can ignore the usual ‘seemingly synonymous’ with ugly, like fatness, darkness, oldness, baldness, etc. When we get to that bitter first impression, the reaction reality where internally we register that person as ugly or beautiful (this assuming we can even get there at all, since society has had such tremendous impact on how we define these two qualities that we no longer know what our opinion is compared to what is said by the advertising firms) so much that the person bulldozes us with their looks, in the either/or – they are beautiful to the point of painful gaze, or they are incurably ugly in the hope to die fashion. Both extremes are actually fairly rare, as most of us to one degree or another have aspects of either depending on the hour and the situation, and so we happen upon such individuals once in a blue moon. But when encountered together, it is kind of a revelation, a myth unfolding in real time. Talk about beauty and the beast – you see those two and it’s almost like “Where the dancing candle at?”

It is somewhat more likely in Los Angeles, where the extraordinarily beautiful flock to make their fortune from their face co-mingling with the population of folks who make one understand why they might choose to work behind the camera. I see these couples and I am glad for them, if it is likely that there is love there, and not a manifestation of a torrid mid-life crisis, or a gold-digger in the process of panning. Therein lies communion, and usually a lifelong one, because they are freaks, and whatever kind of freak you are, freak is freak. We don’t like beautiful/beautiful couples. They are routinely shunned and admired, but with more of an emphasis on the former.

Look at the near orgiastic delight with which the media reported on the delayed nuptials of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck. It was as if they were saying – “See – even beauty and money and fame will never save you from heartbreak!” almost laughingly, as if there was to be some vengeance to savor for the people who ‘have not’ over those who seem to ‘have it all.’ Truthfully, no one can ‘have it all.’ Just as no one is a ‘have not.’ I cannot imagine the ‘Bennifer,’ so cleverly coined by the press, the beloved hydra, with two heads, numerous handlers, other stars and family and one bad movie between them, “Gigli” which no one saw or bothered to learn how to pronounce, have a fulfilled and happy life. They are stalked 24 hours a day, every blink and breath recorded and reported on everything everywhere. Then combine that with the overwhelming jealousy and anger they endure, not from any action of their own specifically, but from all the once/currently/consistently brokenhearted, who look at the Bennifer as a symbol of what is given to a chosen few and while others are left to starve. I am sorry for the Bennifer, and wish that I could hide them in my hands, but they are too big, and their publicists would never allow it.

The ugly ones don’t have it great, as is known. There is a famous story by Dorothy Parker, called “Horsie.” It is a fable that has always haunted me, much like Parker does, a drunken ghost tripping over headstones in the cemetery of my mind. It is about a spinster who is so unsightly her name is Horsie, known to all but her, who works as a maid for another “Bennifer” back in the day. The hydra spawn and produce an equally lovely child, and gifts are bestowed upon them, so many in fact that it has become a burden. The male portion of the Bennifer gives a few flowers to Horsie out of pity, and the Bennifer laugh uproariously at the inside joke masquerading as the act of kindness. The irony of the story is the Rashomon-like conclusion, in which Horsie looks at the flowers, the unexpected gift, retelling the giving as an incredibly glorious and ecstatic event, as she basks in the enjoyment of the sweet prettiness of the blooms, she experiences what seems like an unprecedented happiness. I guess the tale resonates hard because I am Horsie, at least more than I am Bennifer, and it makes me question the authenticity of joyful surprises in my own life. It also makes me weep because the innocence and gratitude of Horsie cuts like a knife, as its purity is a virtue that goes beyond the physical and is more beautiful than beauty itself. So I guess we are all Horsie/ugly, just as we are all Bennifer/beautiful. I guess that is what I mean to say.

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