Interchange
By Erin Matson
There are thigh gaps. There is cleavage and there are foreheads. There is no skin that bubbles, flaps, or wrinkles. We transcend biology. We are perfect in every way.
You might think there is Botox and Cool Sculpting. There is no Botox. There is no Cool Sculpting. There are no plastic surgeons. We know plastic surgeons to be ringleaders of the B-league. The B-league lives on the cutting edge of the past. Their own pasts. The B-league is frantic to maintain their waning injections. They are junkies. They envy our purity.
We are women.
Obviously.
There is connective tissue attaching the breast to the rib cage. The ideal connective tissue is taut and pliable. It transcends geometric properties. It creates the effect of a brassiere. It is like makeup applied to look like not wearing makeup. Lolita is a transitive verb. We are nubile in perpetuity. We lick genius at the rim, and it tastes like strips of prestige perfume splayed open in vintage magazines. The genius crackles. It dusts.
What is old is new again. The style of body perfection is manifold and manifest. There are infinite ways to win with a truly new body. There are sidewalks everywhere and they are all runways. To display is to honor. This is our birthright.
I am an upgrade, an endless upgrade. I cannot escape the sense of having inhaled horseradish through my big toe. It is the opposite of anhedonia. It is cleansing. I scrunch my feet into silkworm ribbons. The insoles of my shoes snug like little massaging stones. If I am wearing socks, cotton brushes and catches. It is all so much. I am the lucky. I am the chosen.
We are the lucky. We are the chosen.
We convene, once a week, for prayers. We do not need to pray to fulfill God’s plan.
Our world is bracingly concrete. There is so much walking. Our feet never become subconscious. Our feet never find themselves in the situation of our gallbladders. Our feet are never doling out crap. The walk is tangible and light. We walk miles and our skin won’t scuff.
I try to imagine the sensations of dry skin, split ends, muffin tops. The graphite in my pencil snaps off. Each asymmetry I have encountered has been strategic, a guided perpendicular.
We do not ration interchange. We would not constrain ourselves that way. The body is an instrument that may fall out of tune for extrinsic or intrinsic reasons. We are not afraid of the sun. We do not need to be afraid of the sun. Cycles undulate. We allow them.
My time for interchange has come. It is neither flowing nor abrupt. It is both. It is undeniable. The air is yellow and it is time. They will take my body. They will exchange my body. It has happened before. It will happen again. We all do this because we have been chosen. We are lucky. There is no reason to be sentimental of the past.
It is a cavalcade of women before and behind me on the sidewalk, making Velcro of the eyebrows on the other side of the windows. We march. We are sexy, perfect. Our capacity for interchange is our gift of eternal watching. To be watched eternally is eternal life. We do eternal life without God. Our prayers are for show. To strike a chord with other people is more specific than God. It is more universal than God.
I prepare for interchange. Will I choose my next body, or have it chosen for me? Because each option is quite exactly perfect, each body a gem giving its impression of the non-parallel, my preference is not required. Preference euphemizes superfluity. I am so pretty, it is so crisp, my life is perfect linen never-ending, never-soiled, never-to-be-rejected.
Women walk with bouncing blonde hair draping into the coils of velvet capes. Midriffs exposed, all inner belly buttons. No lint. Lips the color of strawberries, opulent, Rubenesque.
There is no reason for doom to rise from my fingertips, up to my elbows, in the form of neuropathic doubt. I have interchanged 37 times. This puts my real age somewhere between 629 and 888 years old. I have survived famines and wars, struggles of man, nature, and self, all by dint of irresistible beauty. Someone will want the body seen as me. They always have.
Erin Matson is an MFA student at Mississippi University for Women. She has been published in Misery Tourism, Rolling Stone, Teen Vogue, and Women’s Review of Books.