This Mascara Got Me Through My Dad's Funeral
The first time I got detention, Dad was thrilled.
It was 7th grade in suburbia, and fractions were boring me senseless. Silently, I shoved my math book aside, replacing it with Making Faces. Kevyn Aucoin's book of makeup masterpieces was a personal treasure - Dad got two copies, so I could have my own - and it never failed to rescue me in times of torture, i.e. all of 7th grade.
Here's how this specific slice of hell went down: a field hockey captain spotted Gwyneth Paltrow in Aucoin's book, gasped to make sure the whole class was watching, then shrieked, "Faran's looking at photos of a naked girl on her desk!" Enraged, I snapped back, "Gwyneth is not naked! She's in a Calvin Klein slip dress, you ignorant shit!" Hello, Principal's Office.
"The kids don't get it," Dad would say, always, when I mumbled tales of junior high horror. "You have a vision. You're an artist. One day, you'll be part of changing the world." Then he would laugh and add, "Maybe by high school, you'll even be cool!" Until then, detention beckoned, because though he was proud of my spunk, Dad never condoned degrading someone because they were different. In fact, like me, he was often the odd one out: First a Russian kid in a Puerto Rican neighborhood, then a star athlete who ditched school for the folk scene of Greenwich Village. In Vietnam, the things he carried included a Nikon camera; he was shooting photos when he wasn't shooting guns. After being discharged, he took more pictures - of concerts, of protests, of my mom, even though she had a master's degree to finish and didn't want to be a muse.
