Stand before the mirror in the nude (the story says).
“In the soft glow of the light you can see the contours of your reflection.
Your body swells with expectation.
Your flesh is rosy with light and warmth”
So writes Dr. Irene Kassorta in her best-selling book Nice Girls Do as reported by our Keith Dunstan in Los Angeles.
Nearer home, and upon reflection, our mirrors are revealing but chastening, those of them that haven’t been turned to the wall or have pantyhose or gardening trousers hanging over them.
Apart from recording some of the State’s biggest goose pimples, our mirrors are more for the horror movie fan and weight-watching anonymous In fact, if you want to watch weight, come and peer.
In fact, people peer into our mirrors for all kinds of reasons with distorting faces staring at gaping mouths to see where the bit of bone is lodged in an old yellow fang or a dripping denture. Or there are those whose lips assume fearful and contorted shapes for the application of lipstick, like marking lines on roadways.
Or there is the time-honoured art of pimple squeezing, which one learns in puberty and which accompanies one through life.
We also have the eye pullers trying to adjust their lashes, those frivolous lacquered verandahs of the bloodshot orb.
I’ve looked over other people’s shoulders and screamed with terror as poor Jekyll must have done when traces of Hyde appeared
Then there are the persons making themselves up with the aid of the reading lamp, the standard lamp and a couple of torches, creating a veritable cosmetic flare path.
Do you need all the light at the mirror? If you’re not careful you’ll have an Orion landing on the dressing table.”
“At least my face is not afraid of light. You might try shaving your face, I don’t want to go out with a werewolf.”
My flesh immediately goes rosy with light and warmth.
My wife also has a narrow full-length mirror but I find it inconvenient. I have to reflect myself in instalments—first the paunch, then the central area and, finally, the rump.
Yet people aren’t always going to believe what they see in a mirror.
None of us wants to know the brutal truth. None of us in the soft glow of light wants to be acquainted with the fact we look like an old hot-air balloon with a faulty burner.
Some people prefer to operate in semi-gloom rather than rosy light. Gloom lends mystery it you get the right angle. And I know some people who have been looking for an angle all their lives
And does the mirror fill you with passion, your heart throbbing, your eyes full of guilt?
Well, Doc, down our way it could involve a fairly long wait.
“How does my hair look at the back?”
“Look, is my skirt creased or not?”
Thus we need a mirror attendant. someone eyewitnessing in the background, a cantor to chant the state of pleat and backstrap, a sycophant to gush over jewellery and make-up, and someone to zip up or even, in a moment of wild abandon, to zip down.
The time my bathroom mirror really gives it to me is in the morning. The eye bags sag, the chins are heavily rutted, the forehead lines slash deeply and woundingly into the old flesh, the lips droop with a faint film of denture cream while every mole and pimple stand out in terrible detail.
A mundane sex life can be compared to a frozen TV dinner, says Dr. Kassorta.
After looking at myself in the mirror. Doc, I slink off to a broken egg, a gritty piece of bacon and charcoal toast.
Mirror, mirror on the wall.
I know when I’m licked.
Max Fatchen