No 3: DIVINE FEMININITY AND DIVINER UGLINESS
PHOTO BY REBECCA KOPELMAN
REBECCA KOPELMAN
The first time I tried acid, I was a senior in highschool, and dating a beautiful philosophy major at NYU. He had proclaimed himself a guru after discovering empathy when he first got into drugs, and was convinced that I had been either a “demon’s beautiful plaything,” a “warrior king,” or a “great cosmic nothingness” in a past life. I believed him because I was mostly stupid and mostly boring, and because when he blew smoke into my face I felt more beloved than I ever had.
He fed me the tab at nine in the morning, and then we walked the length of Riverside Park, staring emptily at the grass and geese and children. He led me back to his house, I let him fuck me while I disappeared somewhere between hysteria and catatonia.
Tapping into his superior empathy, he got me a glass half-filled with sink water and gently used my hand to masturbate himself. Once he finished, he lit a cigarette and placed it between my lips, talking at me about Plato.
“I hate you,” I said suddenly, “you make me feel clumsy.” It was true, and also mostly the reason I continued to hang around him. I loved that this beautiful boy, who weighed less than I did, was willing to love me despite my cringing humanity. I loved that he found me disgusting and pathetic; that he loved me despite all he knew.
“You don’t hate me,” he said, wetly kissing my brow. “You need me.”
“You talk like you’re reading lines. Fuck you.”
“Okay.” He turned over, and I watched his slim shoulders shine.
“I love you. Can you tell me I’m beautiful?”
He turned again to face me. “Sure. Biologically, you’re beautiful.”
I began to cry.
“How can I become beautiful? Not just biologically, but like, for you?”
He just shook his head and told me to get dressed.
That night, after looking into my cats’ eyes for half an hour, I created a list in the notes app of my iPhone, and titled it “divine feminine,” the standard to which my philosopher-boyfriend frequently compared me.
To Do, it read:
Waste away
Cut hair
Grow pubes
Listen to Dylan
Read Plato
I lost around ten pounds over the next few weeks, but was afraid to try the rest–I knew, somewhere inside my cosmic, warrior, plaything’s mind, that he would never love me without a complete overhaul of my Self. I also knew that the discomfort of this particular brand of waifish beauty wouldn’t be sustainable.
Once I left, I never stopped trying to make him miss me; I showed up at his doorstep, called him late at night, showed him my poetry, even though he asked me, rather absurdly, to sign a Nondisclosure Agreement if I wanted to read his.
Months later, after I told him the relationship had “outlived its usefulness,” I tried acid again with my new boyfriend, who studied philosophy at Columbia.
Be stupid and ugly, I scrawled on a post-it, tracing the patterns I saw in the sky, who even cares?
