Monday, May 25, 2009

Among Statues

Having key moments of one's life reenacted by familiar-looking strangers is not something very many of us are afforded, however we might wish it. As such, the closest approximation I can manage is happening upon your doppelgänger at a bank robbery; the mere realisation that you haven't, in fact, misplaced your sanity is a struggle not easily resolved, and the guilt, unjustified though it may be, never quite leaves. It's hard, too, to avoid lapsing into solipsism at the secular wonder of it all — I won't say it's not flattering.

I admit I was a shade disappointed when I strolled through the facsimile. Everyone was either bored or on the verge of a migraine. An overweight man whom I supposed to be the director nodded faintly as I approached. No point easing into it.
"I object, foremost, to my being portrayed as infinitely more attractive than I ever was." He seemed only curious, so I continued. "At my peak I was an average mannequin with waste-bin hair, as similar to this magnetic fop as I was to a stretch of freeway. I can assure you I never turned a single head. But that crime I would be willing to overlook, if the opposite problem did not present itself with your heroine."
Perhaps it was unwise to engage him in earshot of all concerned, but it's hard to feel anything but indignant when you've been ejected by your own hack biographer. I should have noted immediately that a middle-aged man who thinks a baseball cap conceals baldness knows little about beauty, and not pressed the point.

And now I await the result. If bigger people exist, and they might well not, I'm sure they would be severely uninterested in the whole business (eschewing it in favour of, I don't know, being a c---), but — and I speak as something vaguely human — how could this not fascinate you? How could this horror not intrigue you?

Forgive my language, I was born into it.