I became a sucker because I love suckers

The girl was dropped off in front of my door, by her father, it would turn out later. She was carrying a suitcase that would easily fit a person.

“What a big suitcase,” I said. Obvious comments are good icebreakers.

“Yeah, you never know what you might need,” she replied as she pulled the gigantic thing into my narrow hallway. It would later turn out that to make up my head, she would only need four or five things that would easily fit in a pencil case, and a hair dryer.

I gave her a can of Coke.

“So it’s going to be a natural make-up,” she said, half questioning.

That was apparently the instruction she had been given. Now 99 percent of the time I walk around completely natural, with bags, blemishes and nail-colored nails, so I couldn’t be against that. She started on my hair.

“What time are the rest coming?” she asked over the sound of her hair dryer.

I furrowed my eyebrows, which hadn’t been brushed with pomade at the time.

‘Rest? A photographer is coming.’

“Oh,” she said. “I was also at a shoot this morning, and there was a stylist and an assistant in addition to me and the photographer.”

“This is going to be a kind of report,” I said. “We’re going to eat herring and go to a pub.”

Because I’m curious, and also because you have to talk about something when someone is fidgeting with your hair and face, I asked about the person who was photographed earlier in the day. It was a man.

“Then you must have finished very quickly,” I said. That was a really boomer comment that I immediately regretted. Men nowadays also want to look beautiful, and not just by looking angry with lube oil on their face and glistening beads of sweat in their chest hair.

“No,” she said. “I hand twisted all his curls one by one.”

“Was he a beautiful man?” I asked, for his name meant nothing to me.

“Yeah, okay. He was elegant, and made beautiful dance moves in front of the camera.’

I asked what the stylist had come up with for him, it turned out to be a robe.

Some people are portrayed in stylish robes, with hand-twisted curls, others are photographed eating a herring in the street. Now I have to add that eating herring was my own suggestion, so I couldn’t blame anyone else for that. But it still bothered me that I’m not the type to be photographed in couture with, for example, a lot of unnatural eyeliner, a cigarette butt and a boa constrictor.

We create our own personality. Not completely natural; there are innate talents and limitations, but otherwise we are all free to present ourselves however we want. You can be a diva or a clown. You can be inconspicuous or constantly draw attention to yourself, you can be an asshole, let everyone waltz all over you, or—and that’s healthier, of course—anything in between. For a moment I wondered why I didn’t develop a more impressive personality so that I wouldn’t have to envy random men. But I’ve become a sucker because I love suckers. I like failing, messy and clumsy people the most. The more self-confidence someone exudes, the more I hope he stumbles over a banana peel. I look for cracks in shiny things, and it gives me pleasure to find one. That’s an ugly trait that happens a lot, otherwise there wouldn’t be any tabloids or – more recently – juice channels.

The doorbell interrupted my musing, it was the photographer.

“Oh, make-up,” he said, seeing the girl and her brushes. His disappointment was palpable. He probably preferred to photograph people as they really look. I was happy for him that no stylist would come by with a robe, or a boa constrictor.