Vox Populi
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Meg Pokrass: The Agonizingly Beautiful Noses of Norwegians
Tonight, Albert Albertson took me to a foreign film at the Cinemaclub – a Norwegian film in which ten gorgeous people died. The women had agonizingly beautiful noses. Their deaths were as agonizing as their noses, and it seemed fitting, or at least it fit, and I didn’t feel as sad as I would have felt watching normally attractive people die.
The father of one stunning dead Swedish girl had a perfect nose, white-blond hair — a movie hunk and I mean this guy was like walking sex. The women in the theater needed to suck popcorn when he walked on screen, his snow-light hair, ultra-kind glasses, and square everything and brewed coffee- colored eyes, probably smelled like male-musk. A chin that matched his car. “Hurry,” I thought. “Die if you are going to!”
My own father was round and wobbly, and had a very ugly car, and died in a quick and explosive heart attack and really that is the way I think it is only fair to go. The date I was seeing the movie with, Albert, had a round nose, three-quarter moon shaped ears but maybe they just looked so because of his unusual lack of facial structure i.e. cheekbones.
The attractive thing about him was his wit, the funniest and only straight guy in my acting class, even his cleavage-shaped belt buckle made me laugh, and the fish on a ladder tattoo on his back, a back I had massaged before the movie, in the middle of which he turned around and started kissing my neck and I said, “I have a neck injury, be careful, and also we’re going to miss the movie.”
We hailed a cab in the wind and I felt a for a moment that I had betrayed Albert Albertson and was determined to charm him back, I would not reject him again post-movie, I didn’t want to reject, it was my New Year’s resolution.
In the movie when Albert grabbed my hand, his warm sticky and buttery fingers circled mine, and he landed my hand on his thigh. I felt anything but wild, a tiny bit betrayed, and for a second I felt I might fall—which made no sense as I was sitting.
Albert had bad breath and my birthday was coming. I could be a grandmother in some cultures, primitive cultures, and my tits would fall and wobble like egg noodles.
Copyright 2016. First published in The Dog Looks Happy Upside Down by Meg Pokrass published by Etruscan Press.
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