An excerpt from Lara Konrad’s INSUFFERABLE

Instead of taking the subway back to the apartment after dropping off Johanna at the station, I decide to walk. Alone again with all of my thoughts, utter dread permeates the Sunday streets. Amongst the sweltering combination of sun and cement: The strolling of families; couples holding hands and cones of ice cream. The girl in the aquamarine dress who can’t stop smiling because she knows she looks beautiful.

At the park, fears of the future are gradually replaced by reviewing the previous few hours. From random flashbacks of Johanna, my mind goes back to the exhibition, considers the artist’s mutual interest in sex—our mutual interest in the human body, its experience. My writing wouldn’t have started to receive the same amount of attention on Instagram, had I not posted pictures of myself—an obvious truth, such a given, I’ve rarely let the idea arise. People appreciate my sentences, yes. But it’s due to my body they’ve ended up on my profile. Because of my body, they halt while scrolling, they halt abruptly, automatically, take in—at first—the legs in stockings, this perfectly round butt. Then read the caption. Then click like.

With the help of my slender, young body, I make them available for my thoughts.

On my phone, I type without thinking: I wanted to be a writer, so I decided to become desirable. First moved and then right away consoled by my mind having produced something useful, there’s the impulse to share it with the internet. In private, the sentence matters. May even carry enough force to sustain purpose for the next half an hour. Only once shared with the outside world though, does a deeper sense of relief build, once a surge of likes comes in.

Only then do I find myself suddenly available for the present, the unalloyed present. Breathing profoundly. Do I then feel as though I deserve—deserve? yes, deserve—a moment of idleness: The rustling of trees; the faint smell of jasmine—entities that don’t concern the edifice of my subsequent history.

Searching for an image that reflects or heightens my caption, I scroll through the phone’s photo gallery. Flowing past snippets of random objects, family encounters, scenes of nature, there’s the series of nudes I spontaneously produced one morning upon waking; now nearly two months ago, still at the apartment in Mexico City.

Feeling pleased that morning after having fondled my empty, flat stomach for a short while, half asleep I grabbed the phone from the floor. From various angles, I shot my bellybutton, and my left hand reaching underneath the duvet so as to insert my wrist into the frame. My delicate wrist. Its delicate beauty of delicate bones and delicate veins under golden skin. Was it right afterwards I sent one of the images to Luis? Who was away, in Jamaica. Told him I was thinking of him? Which wasn’t a lie. Every time I feel beautiful, my body and I remember men. Think of the man I love. Or the men I’ve desired, think about how they’d desire me at this very moment, so as to absorb as much as humanly possible the pleasure of feeling perfectly beautiful, perfectly lovable.

Only once did I send him another photo—a photo of my face. A photo he solicited for days on end. At the very beginning of our relationship, over Christmas. Very reluctantly I finally decided to get it over with. Laid down in my childhood bed and forced myself to look, look straight into the camera, trying to conceal the pouting and the slight narrowing of eyes, make it seem like this is my actual face—still wearing my down jacket. Emphasizing spontaneity would grant my unphotogenic face an alibi. I’d look plain, at best, due to current circumstances. The inadequate lighting, for instance. Or perhaps it was just an unflattering position—attributable to the seemingly rushed situation. In any case, I wouldn’t look plain as a result of nature: my dear ugly face.

Weeks later, the two of us reunited, the profound shame when noticing he had changed over the holidays his phone’s wallpaper from a sculpture to a close-up of my mouth—a screenshot from my Instagram.

Worthy: Just a fraction of my face.

I can’t tell what felt worst, what painfully exasperated my vulnerability right there and then, for days and weeks thereafter. The possibility of him having forgotten the picture, of him having forgotten my face. Or, my face, my strange, unknowable face having caused such a stir at the moment of its reception, the bewilderment caused him to involuntarily question himself if I was not, in fact, ugly—making it impossible to bear looking at the picture ever again. Never have I dared to ask. No, not yet have I dared to find out the truth about my face.

In response, he sent an emoji, a heart, red. Only that: a red heart. The same way he reacted to the other picture, the picture of my stomach with my reaching, vanishing hand. Because of the lack of words, again a persistent feeling of embarrassment. Realizing the image’s suggestive nature. Fretting the picture was actually aggressive: vulgar. The vulgar, vile woman who touches herself.