She towered above me, feet planted firmly at the base of the pedestal. She was incomplete; mostly intact but lacking a few key details. A hand here, an ear there. A single shadowy crack cascaded down from the center of her brow to the tip of her sturdy, crooked nose. She was beautiful. Transfixing. It was tragic. As far as the modern world was concerned, this woman was nothing but her looks. The passage of time had torn everything else away. Her life, her ambitions, her name. Not even the experts could figure out her name. Maybe I was just projecting. It wouldn’t be out of character, I suppose. This always happened at art museums. It’s entirely possible that the woman I was staring up at didn’t even exist. It’s actually fairly likely she was just a figment of the artist’s imagination. But I was hooked on the possibility that the statue was based on a model—a real person the artist knew. A human being with friends and hobbies and favorite colors.
When I first laid eyes on her, I fell silent and kept my gaze fixed until my [friend? “Close” friend? Something else entirely?] grew concerned and approached me. I tried to explain it all to him. That she exists now solely to be ogled at by strangers thousands of years removed from her own time in a country that didn’t even exist during her life. She has been put on display and stripped of all her personhood with no chance of getting it back. God knows how long she’s been stuck like this. And when those faceless deciders find a newer, more interesting statue to put in her place, she will be packed up and left to suffocate in her own dust, buried in the fluorescent basement of a city she never wanted to be in. She has been whittled down to her beauty and will never be anything more; her marble will crumble, and she will dissipate into nothingness.
“Fuck, Vin, are you okay? It’s just a statue.” He let out a deep sigh. “Christ, you are such a nerd. It’s kind of cute though.” He wrapped his right arm around my shoulder. I’m right-handed, he is not. “Anyway, I wouldn’t worry about the whole ‘stripped down to nothing but her beauty’ thing. She’s a little weird looking if I’m being honest. Chubby.” He laughed and started pulling me towards the exit. “C’mon, let’s speed run the rest of this exhibit. I’m starving!”
He didn’t get it. Of course he didn’t fucking get it. Chubby? Get over yourself.