Chronicle of a Plague, Revisited: AIDS and Its Aftermath by Holleran Andrew

Author:Holleran, Andrew [Holleran, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2009-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

Beauty NOW

BEAUTY NOW. HAIR, Eyes, Lips, Makeup, Fashion NOW. NEW ICONS. What Everyone’s Talking About: Books, Plays, Music, Food, Travel, Eskimos, Chess, Virgins.

“SOMETIMES IN LIFE,” someone marvelously French said (oh, all right! Proust), “all we need is a change of weather.” Well darling, it’s PUMPKIN-Time in the Big MANGO. Mejor dicho: Autumn in New York. Why does it set the heart dancing? Because we’re back in town after a long, slow, DEFENSIVE vacation at the beach and WE FEEL GOOD ABOUT OURSELVES. (Not to mention how good we LOOK.) Time to take stock. To choose what in the new fall season is right FOR US. To strengthen Beauty Points: Attitude, Hair, Eyes, Lips, Skin, Makeup, Knees, Body. Time for buckling down with all that is best in WHAT’S NEW: A NEW diet, a NEW kind of Romance, a NEW You. What’s NEW in what WE SEE for YOU this FALL ’85—the BEST fall of your lives—begins with:

Beauty NOW. A NEW APPROACH. Those long, pensive walks you took on Fire Island, Laguna Beach, or Cape Cod in late August have PAID OFF. Those lonely nights midweek when your house was empty, and instead of doing something risky like visiting the RACK you lay on the deck listening to a Vivaldi guitar concerto, wondering “What’s a flower for?,” are yielding BIG DIVIDENDS: People see you’re at your PEAK OF BEAUTY. Of course, you used to stop and chat with these adoring FANS, but this fall you have a reserved and distant and MYSTERIOUS air. People wonder WHY you’re not cruising them. Why you don’t LOCK EYES ON THE STREET. You know the reason. It’s simple. YOU’RE SCARED. At your job—which will be, this fall, MUCH more absorbing, fulfilling, and interesting than it has EVER been before (and you know why), you keep that GUARDED yet OPEN feeling as you mix with all the DIVINE FLESH that congregates in our city.

IMAGE. A cold and silver SEA seen from the stone cell of an IRISH MONK in the fourteenth century, transcribing a text of Aristotle in the most BEAUTIFUL CALLIGRAPHY the world has ever known. YOU: a secret, wild rose growing on a misty, cool, high promontory outside his window—even though you’re in the middle of perhaps the most HYSTERICAL city in the world, or even (who knows) some little speed trap down SOUTH (which has its OWN hysteria). Beauty NOW is CALM. Beauty NOW is HEALTH. The NEW ICONS are: Virgins, Stone Age Tribes, ESKIMOS, Sophomores in Town on a Class Trip, Anybody from North Dakota, Chinese chess champions with BRACES. The OLD ICONS—hot men, used men, Italian baggage handlers, Puerto Rican messengers. Syrian taxi drivers, dark, mustached men in their prime—are OUT OUT OUT. Don’t touch! Glance at them MAYBE on the windows of airline offices as you walk by on this CRISP, FALL AFTERNOON, not directly. (They won’t look back anyway, since everyone is practicing the NEW RESERVE.) BONUS: Glancing at the plate glass window of the AVIANCA office lets you see your—

Hair NOW.

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