The Perfect Girl Next Door

New York Times

22-02-2025

When I first moved to Los Angeles at age 27, I lived across the hall from a makeup artist. We had matching apartments on the second floor of a sunny four-plex, but that's where our similarities ended. I worked from home, wore sweatpants everywhere (it wasn't cool then), had zero friends, and sat on the couch all day complaining to my boyfriend, who also had zero friends. In contrast, the makeup artist across the hall wore hip clothes, had the best skin I had ever seen up close, and did cool stuff around the clock, coming and going with her lighthearted buddies and walking around town with one hot stylish dude after another. Everything about her life was so deliciously L.A. that it pained me to witness it. The gentle melody of drunk giggling up the stairs late at night filled me with self-hatred and despair.
Nevertheless, we slowly became amiably acquainted. One afternoon, when I encountered her chatting on the front steps with a friend, I asked why I hadn't seen her hot boyfriend around lately. 'What happened, did he dump you?' This made her burst out laughing. Imagine Ariana Grande being asked this question — the dewy incredulity, lit from within like a carefree human lava lamp. 'That guy was a loser,' she said. I nodded solemnly. Didn't she realize I was a loser, too?
Apparently not, because a few days later, she asked me to hang out with some of her friends at a cafe nearby. When I showed up, everyone seemed cheerful and well-adjusted, and everyone looked like Chloë Sevigny. No one seemed anxious or depressed. No one insulted themselves out of the blue for no reason.
This made me nervous. Keep in mind, I had just moved from foggy San Francisco and I definitely belonged in chilly Brooklyn, but I was taking what I thought would be a brief detour in Los Angeles because my boyfriend was a Second Assistant Director and he thought that 'film' mattered. (Film! I mean, my God!) That summer, we had seen 'Saving Private Ryan' and afterward, we stood outside the Vista Theater smoking Du Maurier cigarettes like serious tools and he said, 'I have some problems with that film.' And I said: 'Stop right there. It's not a film, it's a movie. There are three blonde children touring a graveyard at the end. Tom Hanks cries in one scene. It's a sentimental spectacle, not some hallowed work of art.'
Man, it was so great to be horrible, back when I was young and pretty! In fact, I want to urge every young and youngish woman out there to take advantage of their hotness for as long as possible, because it's fun and it's good for you and everyone should literally be punished by how amazing you look. You need to grind their faces into the shag carpet of what an unbearable smoke show you are. Because so many complete dolts are going to make you pay for so many stupid reasons moving forward — for being interesting, for having a brain in your skull, for being bored by them because they are objectively boring, for growing into a mature adult with firm boundaries and clear expectations. So smear your raw hotness all over their dumb-dog faces for as long as you possibly can.
Anyway, there I was, unexpectedly hanging out with these normal people, people so attractive and well-adjusted that they never felt the need to call attention to their hotness or smash it into the eyeballs of everyone within reach. They were just effortlessly successful in a very L.A. way, going out for drinks with big-deal directors, attending celebrity weddings every other weekend — possibly because they looked so right for the part or possibly because they swanned about in celebrity-loving places and were just witty enough to make friends but not nearly clever enough to lose them.
To be clear, these were not the shellacked refrigerator donkeys who hung out at places like Sur and then were cast on reality TV shows. These people were light and breezy ceramists and D.J.s and set designers with perfect hair and great shoes. I doubt they grew up with money; that would give them something heavy to drag around — big expectations, helicopter parents, legacies to live up to. These people had the kind of easygoing, Goop-esque good taste that's never burdened by self-consciousness. They would consider smoking a clove cigarette or lodging a porous rock in their vaginas with equal aplomb.
Naturally, I didn't like them one bit. But I wanted them to like me. You know the feeling. And whenever I spoke, they looked at me like I was a lizard baby that had just sprouted out of someone's stomach and then ate someone's handbag dog for lunch. I would get two words in and their revulsion would fade to boredom, tick tock, get to the point. I couldn't get my ideas out fast enough to suit them. I couldn't drain my thoughts of meaning and emotion quickly enough to match the buoyancy of their words. I couldn't hide my true self.
And every time I spoke, my makeup-artist friend would semi-interrupt and say, 'Ha ha, you're so funny!' in a truly genuine way like, 'Guys, I want you to give this lizard freak a chance!'
I liked this woman. I was so envious of her dewy complexion and her dull friends and her glamorous life, but she was just so nice. She always said, 'Wow, you're so smart!' after I spoke, even though I never said anything interesting. She wasn't remotely competitive and she had so few ego needs. That was something I hadn't encountered before in a woman my own age, myself included.
Sadly, her friends weren't into neurotic lizard babies, so that was that. When I moved out of my apartment I never saw her again. Fade to black.
Now cut to Sephora, interior, daytime, a few months ago. I am wandering from aisle to aisle with my two daughters, picking up $38 eyebrow pencils and putting them down again, and behold: the girl from across the hall HAS HER OWN COSMETICS COMPANY.
I knew that she'd become the creative director of a makeup conglomerate at some point. But I never imagined that high-end bottles with her name on them would be staring me in my desiccated face decades later.
Her cosmetics were expensive and mysterious, with abstract names and unclear purposes. Serums lurked in liquid blushers. Seed oils loitered in contour sticks. The words 'clean' and 'petal' and 'baby' were scattered about, but sparingly, seductively. I needed to know if they were good or not. It pains me to admit this, but I was secretly hoping they sucked.
So I bought one tiny, mysterious black bottle, like something out of 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.' It cost $58. It had an inscrutable name like SKIN FROST or HEAD POLISH or SKULL DRESSING. The fancy pink packaging had so few words on it, and the words were microscopic. When I put on my reading glasses now, I can make out the tiny print at the bottom of the bottle: 'Peau de peche.' This obviously means piece of peach or speck of fish or smear of hotness — but in French, therefore classy.
I washed my face and dabbed the skull dressing onto my hand, forming a shimmery rose gold puddle. But what was I supposed to do with it?
I pulled up Instagram and there was my perfect neighbor, looking like she'd aged three days instead of 9,855. Apparently, this elixir could be smeared all over your head or just dabbed here and there, it was your choice. But if you smeared it all over? Sweet lord, you were going to look so good you'd knock down every mortal within a 50-foot radius.
I quickly coated my entire face while my perfect neighbor softly explained that peau de santé (translation: splotch of sanity, stain of sainthood, smudge of Santa) 'reminds me of my friend Gwyneth Paltrow.' Later she referred to Paltrow as G.P. That made me like her less, but let's be fair: She's been chumming around with celebrities since the rest of us were removing lint from our low-rise cords with packing tape. How would you sound if you were buddies with people like Spike Jones and Vincent Gallo and the Beastie Boys and also their posse of handlers and hairdressers and publicists and also their D.J. bros and their assorted gurus and their prehistoric-yoga-influencer-style besties? You'd sound like a Martian high on peyote and ceremonial-grade matcha lattes.
It's not my perfect neighbor's fault that she doesn't speak normal human language anymore. But it is her fault that her product felt like motor oil as I spread it all over my leathery visage. It was very thick and tacky. And once I had that mess plastered all over my face, guess what?
I looked incredible. It made no sense, yet there I was in the mirror, as shiny and hopeful and confused as the day I was born. I was painted in dewy incredulity and it was working for me. I didn't look like myself, if I'm being honest. I looked like someone whose thoughts and feelings were light enough to float.
So now, whenever I go out at night, I coat my face with rose-gold motor oil that costs $58 an ounce, and I'm powerless to stop it. In other words, the perfect girl next door is still smearing her raw hotness all over my dumb-dog face, 27 years later.
But honestly, more power to her. Because I'll bet an army of dolts have made her pay for so many stupid reasons over the years — for being nice no matter what, for telling people they were smart, for suggesting which serums and seed oils to mix into each HEAD GLAZE and CHEEK SAUCE and FACE GRAVY. My perfect neighbor and I have absolutely nothing in common. She hangs out with G.P. and I'm still here on the couch, complaining. But I'm pretty sure we've both been tormented by dolts and dorks and refrigerator donkeys for more than two decades now.
Have we let that stop us from showing our true selves? Nope, not for a second. Perfect girl next door, I salute you.