NO!!! Please, say it isn�t so. I could only ever aspire to be a quarter as awesome, amazing, wonderful, talented, funny and genuine as Kevin Aucoin. Did I know him? No. Did I worship him? Yes. He was the reason I got so into makeup, and after some parties and weddings (and getting paid for painting faces on a few occasions), I actually considered trying it as a full-time gig. Wow. This is so much more traumatizing than the day Gary Larson announced his retirement. No comparison. This man made so many people happy AND beautiful.

I quote him when I try to convince my male friends to wear makeup. It�s in, you know, nothing says you can�t enhance your masculine features as we enhance our feminine features. And with true beauty, you find that there�s the finest line between the two. Makeup can blur that line and force us to question the faith we have in our eyes. I love that. I fantasized of the day I would be either famous or rich enough, or just fucking cool enough, to have Kevin do MY makeup. You get my point. It�s a sad affair.

Interesting thing this morning. I walked out at the same time as my father, both on our way to our respective places of work, trying to avoid eye contact with him because the dry, red tint of my eyes from a night of drinking would offend any other pair of eyes caught in their gaze. Well, at least that�s how it was with the mirror, maybe it seemed more drastic and tragic than it was, in the most Medusa-like way. I�ll turn you to stone. But I digress. I checked the mail, as I had failed to do this yesterday (give me a break, I went straight from work to meet and give consult to one friend, over to another friend�s house to hang for a bit, and finally to meet up with other friends at a hole-in-the-wall before heading home, i.e. mail was not on my mind).

Just wanting to take a quick glance, taking only anything interesting and leaving the rest in there for me or Dad to get on our way in from work, I picked out a personal envelope addressed to me. From my cousin�s widow. You remember Jeff? Firefighter, FDNY, ladder 10 ? Of course you do. It�s just odd timing, is all. Not like I expected some card closely after the funeral, or even after that, when his body was found, I would imagine that there are a million things going through someone�s life and mind when her husband, my cousin, was lost in such a catastrophic event. But I was back there in October. That�s 7 months, people.

It was just a total surprise, is all. There�s a touching quote on the cover and inside the card, a picture of her with Jeff in his fireman gear and underneath that, a generic �thank you for the support� type note, typed as part of the card. No handwritten signature, just her name typed and �family�. Ahem. I�M family. I don�t know why it bothered me as much as it did. I have a picture of Jeff in my wallet. He was my cousin, someone I knew and loved. And this card was so impersonal� I may have imagined it cool to the touch, but regardless of its real physicality versus my perception, one thing is for certain: for whatever reason, it did not feel good, getting this card right now.

-Barbarella

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