Out for a new passport photo, the nice clerk at CVS stands me in front of a pull-down screen with cardboard flaps leaning to either side as largely futile barriers against sidelight from the windows—“Sorry,” he says, “we don’t have an actual booth, and I hate where they put this thing, it’s the worst light in the store. Everyone hates these. Okay—one, two, three. Have a look. That’s okay? Good enough? Thanks for being easy. People come in here thinking it’s going to be some kind of glamour shot. I’m going to have it for ten years, they say, and yeah, but who’s ever going to see it?”
I had to take my glasses off for the pic and in the drugstore light I look like a pretty severe old bird, Patricia Highsmith in decline. J. loves the air of judgment and hopes it grows on me. It might! It doesn’t matter, I need something legally valid for the next year and after FFS I’ll do it over again.
The more settled I get in my body, the more my face feels like some strange guy’s mug crudely Photoshopped over my own. N. says she can’t see it and that is very sweet of her. The face doc owns a couple of beautiful cats, I saw their pictures, and J. wondered, how much time does he spend thinking about their skulls?
