The evening air smelled of rain and the building tops were invisible from the fog, that unusually warm night in December when I was beautiful.
The party crowd blended into one sea of unfamiliar faces. Each face an opportunity, an invitation, to be seen, admired, envied. Conversations with men were easy, effortless, almost unfair. Insecure women avoided eye contact and spent as little time talking to me as they strictly wanted to. The whole thing felt like an improvised anthropological study on human nature. Beautiful women vs everyone else.
The music played, and I gave myself permission to enjoy it. Men who had been beside me all night, gravitating towards me like moths to a flame, joined in the singing and dancing. Women too jealous to face me directly murmured and made up names behind my back (a certain moth made it a point to share with me the amusing observation). It was working. Beauty had charged its penalty, but it was of no consequence. Their response validated what I had known since the moment I walked into the room.
Neither the jealousy, nor the moths to the flame were the most surprising results of our study. It was the refreshing identification of strong women who are secure in their own identity. Women I would want to be friends with engqged me in interesting, worldly conversation. I wanted more time with them, I craved their attention. Intelligent women are a luxury, a breath of fresh air, an endless horizon. The concept of conventional beauty dissipated during those conversations, and they became beautiful to me.
At night, in the dim light of our bedroom, when the make up is gone and the dress is back on the hanger, all that is left is an old T-shirt, yoga pants, and a scrunchy. I am still the same person who lit up the room, but only a faint trace of her remains in the smile on my face, for tonight was proof that I was beautiful once.
