Profiles

The only photographic evidence of her existence, prior to me, was a blurry shot of a blond headed girl of about four, opening a Christmas present. Though I thought this odd, I didn't question it. I was in love and though I felt cheated not being able to look into her past, I did not take it to heart.

Laura and I were at a party at Judy's house one night. She was three years younger than I and had gone to a different Highschool. Someone brought out a yearbook. I wanted to see my baby's school picture. She began to cry.

"If you look at that", she screamed, "I will never speak to you AGAIN!"

Wow. Girl's and their pictures! Who knew?

School pics can be as bad as drivers license photo's. Okay. I got that. There have been shots of me that I felt didn't flatter and i won't volunteer them to others. This 5'7", 117 pound, platinum haired beauty of mine had a right to be vain. I wouldn't judge her based on a bad photo. I had the real thing, in living beauty before me. I did not look at the yearbook.

Yes, it was odd that there were no family pictures of her. Her half-brother, Jim, had a photo studio at the time. There were plenty of current photo's of her, their other brother and sister and the parents. Just nothing prior to her 16th birthday. I come from a large family. There is photographic evidence of me and my six siblings from birth to today. My current FB profile pic shows me at age five. I'm still a cutie. That pic just portended my handsomeness...

Since I hadn't peeked at the pic that night at Judy's, Laura did not leave me. We dated for three years, married and divorced after about two years. That's a story for another day.

It was a few years after the divorce that I met Leslie, a girl who I worked with and who, it turned out, had grown up next door to Laura. Small world I thought. I knew the address, knew the house but hadn't recalled meeting Leslie back then. So, you knew Laura M, I asked.

"Yeah", she snarled, "I knew that fat, ugly pig!"

No. Perhaps she was mistaken. Maybe she meant Barb, Laura's not so attractive sister? My ex was thin, blond and very good looking. Barb, not so much. Perhaps Leslie was jealous. Maybe Laura had stolen a boy from her in school?

"That fat pig couldn't get any guy!" she declared.

Well, she had gotten ME! What was this 'fat, ugly, pig' business all about? I wasn't fond of Laura at this point in my life but, fair is fair. This had been a beautiful, desirable young woman. How could Leslie be so bitter and so wrong?

"Did you know she had a nose job?" Leslie offered.

This was incredible. Thin, blond and good looking as she was, the one thing you could physically disparage about Laura was her nose. It was a bit big. Just a bit. If she had had a nose job, I argued, it would have resulted in a cute, perky slightly turned up nose a la say, Meg Ryan. I told Leslie she was crazy. She told me she would bring in the yearbook the following evening.

Well, I'll be damned. Her picture didn't speak a thousand words, it spoke ten thousand. And then some. And most of those words would be followed by question marks.

Why, how, did this woman look so dramatically different from the age of 15 to 16? I looked at her and I saw Barb and their father. She had a nose that only a potato farmer could love. She seemed hulkish in the photo. Fat. I could understand the hair not being platinum. How many true blonds are there? I never cared about that. This had been one of the best kept secrets of the 20th century. In five years with this woman, no one had slipped up. They would talk about her beauty but never in "as compared to..." terms. Nobody had seen fit to mock her former self until Leslie even though hundreds of people, like Leslie, had known the before Laura as well as the after.

To Leslie, Laura would always be the 'before'- the "fat, ugly, pig!" No amount of plastic surgery could change that.

I was in shock. How could I have not known? Mind you- this was the one who had ripped out my heart, shown it to me and hoped I died. I could have laughed. I could have snickered. I could have gotten the last relationship word with this revelation. Fuck you pig!

What I got was closure. This had tied up the rise and fall of our love into a bundle that I could now stow away. NOW, I understood.

That July 3rd evening when I first laid eyes on the leggy, tanned blond might as well have been her birthday. The old Laura ceased to exist that night. In her mind. I met the new improved Laura- the only Laura there had EVER been- that night. All the taunts, childish abuse from her peers, never happened that night she met the handsome, GTO driving Ferrerman. She had the wonderfull, attentive boyfriend she had cried herself to sleep dreaming of, countless nights before. Life was new and good just as it had always been...

The horrible, emotional things she did to me- I now knew why. I quit taking them personally after that. It wasn't personal. She was purging herself. You can change your nose, your hair, boobs and face. Whatever. You cannot change your soul.  You can let your 'looks' change you....

I haven't seen her in close to thirty years. Perhaps she aged well, perhaps not. But, I have to believe, her soul is as ugly as the day she was 'born'.

I like to think not. I'm still a romantic at heart.