I am not an ugly person, I mean physically ugly. I'm not beautiful either. Like the vast majority of people I fall within the basically okay range. Some people are unattractive, there are things going wrong with their faces and it's just a fact. Most of them know it and it's not something that needs to be discussed at length. I know this is America and we prefer to think that everyone is slightly above average except for the people we make fun of, but the truth is that some people simply don't pass muster in the beauty department and they have no idea how to make up for these deficiencies using the tools of personality, perfect frames, and artful misdirection such as drawing the eye away from the forehead creases and toward a really cute sweater or dog. I have some nice features and some unfortunate ones, it's basically a wash. And really who cares. I'm relieved not to have to add extreme homeliness to my ridiculously long list of complaints against life but in the end it's not a subject I think too much about. On the other hand if I did happen to be ugly or if tomorrow I got a skillet in the face and was disfigured I'd probably obsess over it night and day, blaming my unattractiveness for my inability to realize my dream of becoming a TV meteorologist, fated never to man the Storm Center and say "back to you Sue."

I'm also not ugly on the inside. I don't display breathtaking inner beauty either, I'm what you'd call plain on the inside, everything taken into consideration. On the standard 0-10 scale I'm a 5 on the outside and a 5 on the inside. My 5 on the outside is arrived at by virtue of a fortunate lack of truly appalling aspects, of which cruel nature provides so many. My middling score on the inside, by contrast, comes about from a delicately maintained equilibrium, a queasy balance of exceptionally negative qualities and soaring high marks. A story of extremes on the inside, as opposed to the outside which is a story of shades of adequacy and sighs of relief. In other words, I can pass as merely plain on the inside because my numerous character flaws, while striking in isolation, are balanced out by some really admirable traits, to my relief, so that I am thought of as a terrible person by only a few people, and as a basically good and decent person by even more people, and never thought about at all by the other several billion. This means that the outside is basically self-maintaining, I'm pretty much set on the outside with only the long gradual descent into old age to worry about, when my relative attractiveness or unattractiveness will utterly cease to matter, it's not like they'd be lining up to do me when I'm 75 if not for my turkey wattle neck and gross elbows. On the inside, however, this house of cards is so precarious that it demands constant attention. At any moment my egregious character defects could gain the upper hand, and since I'm not beautiful on the outside this would create serious problems. Diligence is exhausting and opens one up to charges of self-absorption, yet another flaw, you can see how things could snowball. One day you're basically okay, a few issues, the next you're a monster, chased through the streets by a skillet-wielding mob. One ugly remark or withering glance could tip the balance and suddenly your whole personality is tumbling down an embankment. Some days I have a sixth sense that this might happen, a chilling hunch, and on these days I like to shut myself off from human contact so as not to tempt fate.