avgst508: переводы

→I half expected the speaker to say something. People always did. I’d heard all the comments, too, ranging from the chummy (“My next-door neighbor thirty years ago had a birthmark on her face”) to the urbane (“You know, I saw Gorbachev once and his birthmark really looked like it did in pictures”). Good-intentioned or not, every remark made me bristle. If you don’t rush up to the grossly overweight with a “Hey, I know someone who weighs three hundred pounds, too,” then why was it acceptable to remark about my face?

→So what was with the crocodilian gaze, hungry and appraising, I was getting from the guest speaker in my Advanced Biology class? With-out thinking, I cupped my cheek in my hand. No matter how cleverly I masked myself, sometimes I still felt as conspicuous as one of my town’s oddities, say, Mac’s two-legged dog who walked on his hind paws. Or the doe with the cantaloupe-sized tumor on her belly who defied death, hunting season after hunting season.

→Please don’t get me wrong; I’ve got all the requisite parts — and in all the right numbers, too: one nose, two eyes, and twenty-four teeth that add up to not a bad smile. But who notices pearly whites when a red-stained birthmark stretches across the broad plain of my right cheek? That’s exactly why I never went anywhere without my usual geologic strata of moisturizer, sunblock, medical concealer, foundation, and powder.

→NOT TO BRAG OR ANYTHING, but if you saw me from behind, you’d probably think I was perfect. I’m tall, but not too tall, with a ballerina’s long legs and longish neck. My hair is naturally platinum blond, the kind that curls when I want it to and cascades behind my back in one sleek line when I don’t. While my face couldn’t launch a thousand ships, it has the power to make any stranger whip around for a second look. Trust me, this mixture of curiosity and revulsion is nothing Helen of Troy would ever have encountered.