The Best American Essays 2016 by Jonathan Franzen Read Free Book Online Page A

their feet.
    I have nine moles on my face, all obscured by base and powder. I choose one on my upper lip, to the right, where everyone inserts a beauty mark. I have one already, it feels like a prophecy. I dot it with the pencil.
    I pick up the lipstick and open my mouth in an O. I have always loved unscrewing lipsticks, and as the shining nub appears I feel a charge. I apply the color, Mauve Frost, then reapply, and with that my face shimmers—a white sky, the mole a black planet, the eyes its ringed big sisters. I press my lips down against each other and feel the color spread anywhere it hasn’t gone yet.
    The wig is shoulder-length blond hair, artificial—Dynel doll hair, like Barbie’s, which is why I choose it. The cap shows how cheap the wig is, so I cut a headband out of a T-shirt sleeve and make it into a fall.
    The wig I put on last. Without it, you can see my man’s hairline, receding faintly into a widow’s peak. You can see my dark hair, you can tell I’m not a blond woman or a white one, or even a woman. It is a Valkyrie’s headpiece, and I gel it to hold it into place. The static it generates pulls the hairs out into the air one by one. In an hour I will have a faint halo of frizz. Blue sparks will fly from me when I touch people.
    John knocks on the door. “Girl!” he says through the door. “Aren’t you ready yet?” He is already finished, dressed in a sweater and black miniskirt, his black banged wig tied up with a pink bow. He has highlighted his cheekbones with rouge, which I forgo. He is wearing high heels; I have on combat boots. I decided to wear sensible shoes, but John wears “fuck me” pumps, the heels three inches high. This is my first time. It is Halloween tonight in the Castro and we are both trying to pass, to be “real,” only we are imitating very different women.
    What kind of girl am I? With the wig in place, I understand that it is possible I am in drag not just as a girl but as a white girl. Or as someone trying to pass as a white girl.
    “Come in!” I yell back. John appears over my shoulder in the mirror, a cheerleader gone wrong, the girl who sits on the back of the rebel’s motorcycle. His brows rise all the way up.
    “Jesus Mother of God,” he says. “Girl, you’re beautiful. I don’t believe it.”
    “Believe it,” I say, looking into his eyes.
    I tilt my head back and carefully toss my hair over my right shoulder in the way I have seen my younger sister do. I realize I know one more thing about her than I did before—what it feels like to do this and why you would. It’s like your own little thunderclap.
    “Scared of you,” John says. “You’re flawless.”
    “So are you,” I say. “Where’s Fred?” Fred is my newest boyfriend, and I have been unsure if I should do this with him, but here we are.
    “Are you okay?” Fred asks, as if something has gone wrong in the bathroom. “Oh my God, you are beautiful.” He steps into the doorway, dazed. He still looks like himself, a skinny white boy with big ears and long eyelashes, his dark hair all of an inch long. He hasn’t gotten dressed yet.
    He is really spellbound, though, in a way he hasn’t been before this. I have never had this effect on a man, never transfixed him so thoroughly, and I wonder what I might be able to make him do now that I could not before. “Honey,” he says, his voice full of wonder. He walks closer, slowly, his head hung, looking up at me. I feel my smile rise from somewhere old in me, maybe older than me; I know this scene, I have seen this scene a thousand times and never thought I would be in it; this is the scene where the beautiful girl receives her man’s adoration and I am that girl.
    In this moment the confusion of my whole life has receded. No one will ask me if I am white or Asian. No one will ask me if I am a man or a woman. No one will ask me why I love men. For a moment I want Fred to stay a man all night. There is nothing brave in this: any man and woman