Brandon is a Wig Maker

Sunny in Los Angeles. Boulevard said to different effect than street. The mood languorous as a poolside brunette, lime trees reaching over the fence to drop their fragrant leaves at her feet. The afternoon is full of pictures, the intersections full of noise. Delivery men on motorized bicycles and someone’s daughter dressing the mannequin in the shop beneath the studio, accessorizing, the smog too adding glamor, a pink enhancement at dusk. I’ve learned to think of beauty as something claimed, confidence as borrowed, half-worn, half-spoken — energy, I guess. A plastic bird of paradise, a new mid-century sofa. Not pretending but not-not pretending. A posture toward that question: What words to use? His hand on my leg, my body spelling out its preferences. Chandelier, I tell him, pomelo, aqueduct, anything that turns you on.