You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine

by Alexandra Kleeman

It’s no surprise, then, that we care most for our surfaces: they alone distinguish us from one another and are so fragile, the thickness of paper.

As I looked at B, her face pulled itself together, like in a time-lapse sequence in a nature documentary, a sun rushing from left to right across the TV screen or a deer carcass turning its insides out as it slumped into bone and soil. It was her, her features heavy with familiarity. This had been my friend.

“You get used to the masks,” he said, “I mean really used to them. Without them, I mean, there’s a rawness,” he added. He grabbed at the base of his throat and dug under the flesh-colored rim. He pulled it up and over, turning it inside out in the process, talking the whole time. He added: “It gets so the normal air chaps your face.”