Under My Mask
Under my mask I am me. Under my mask I am the me you don’t see. The me who is really me. I don’t hide under my mask. I reveal. Uncover. Expose. Under my mask I see the back of the mirror as well at the reflection. Through the eye-slits of a mask I focus with complete clarity. I am aware of the rush of my blood, the beat of my pulse, the prickle of my skin, the crackle of electricity in the air.
I found my mask in Soho, home to London’s gay and lesbian scene, the theatres and film studios, that heady cocktail of youth, talent, heartbreak and debauchery. It was a weekend in the spring. The sun low on a pale blue sky. I stopped to look in a shop window and felt drawn as if by gravity to enter and descend the spiral staircase to the glittery basement with its array of costumes, whips, ball-gags, velvet handcuffs, objects I had never seen before and had no idea to what services they might be put.
A mask on the wall peered at me as if we were two halves of something seeking the missing part. I reached for the black silk and satin covered facia and it fit exactly to my features, the line under the eye-slits matching the contours of my cheekbones, the angle above following my eyebrows. I turned to the mirror. The air rushed up through my chest and I sighed as a traveller sighs on reaching the end of a journey.
I was nineteen and in my first year at university. I was reading A Spy in the House of Love by Anaïs Nin, a gift from my tutor, while he was reading my first essay. He had proposed having dinner alone together to discuss our literary assignments, an invitation that had so panicked me, I hadn’t slept for a week. The moment I saw myself under the mask, I felt a surge of confidence, my fears flew back up the spiral staircase and I left with a white box tied in black ribbon and a new spring in my step.
When I arrived home and tried the mask on, a switch clicked in my brain and the light of the unknown glowed behind my eyes. I took off my clothes and studied myself naked. Under my mask, I felt dressed and understood with a flash of intuition that I had no reason to fear my tutor. On the contrary, I could see that his suggestion that we spend the evening at the cosy French bistro on the outskirts of Cambridge in the precise terms the invitation implied. And something else: there was in those mischievous years of the Noughties a dare among students to walk naked down the high street or across the floor of a night club. With a mixture of elation and shame, I realised, too, that under my mask, I would be able to take on the dare and couldn’t wait to do so.
Greeks, Egyptians, Mesopotamians, animists, witch doctors, surgeons, bank robbers, literary heroes Zorro and The Count of Monte Cristo, the countesses and fine ladies of Venice who open their legs for soldiers and stable boys at the masquerade, all are entranced by the mask and the furtive benefits it bestows. Masked, you take on the spirit and nature of the mask. In a cat mask you squirm and shiver like a cat. You scratch the air and slide over your lover’s knees. In a monkey mask you climb the walls and wiggle your red bottom. The she-wolf sinks her fangs into the nearest neck. The bunny girl twitches her nose and hops like a bunny. The man in the latex headdress flexes a whip to demonstrate that in pain we find the ultimate pleasure.
The face can lie. We find no difficulty disguising our feelings. We veil our thoughts. We learn to express the illusion of being contented among people we don’t want to be with, sad when a friend loses her boyfriend, pleased when someone wins a prize we were secretly hoping to win. The moment I stood naked before the mirror staring at my reflected image, I realised the immobile features of the mask contain honesty as well as mystery.
I had always been protected, cosseted, a conformist. Under my mask, I morphed into another person, someone more open, liberal, eccentric, sensitive, forgiving. Under my mask I find the best part of me. It’s like being in a trance, or drugged, and I came to see that night in the French bistro with my tutor that under my mask there is another mask, the mask that is really me, the me I was destined to be. Who are you under your mask? You can leave your secrets safely in the comments box below…
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