The lipstick I wore when I wanted attention
There was a shade of red I reached for whenever I wanted the room to notice me. The lipstick I wore when I wanted attention was a deep, slightly blue red, the kind that looked louder in the mirror than it did in daylight. I applied it carefully, as if the colour were a sentence I had rehearsed but had not yet decided to speak.
Years later, I found the old tube in a handbag, dried to a narrow ring. It still carried a faint sweet, waxy scent. I remembered the bathroom mirror in Melbourne, the borrowed apartment and the tram rattling past below. The memory felt less like vanity than choreography: I had believed a visible sign could make my presence easier to claim.
At the time, wanting attention felt like wanting warmth. I wanted strangers to turn, friends to wait, a quiet room to sharpen around me. I did not understand that attention can be a currency, and that we often spend it before we learn what we actually need.
Writing eventually gave me a better question. Instead of asking what might make people look, I could ask what I was trying to say. The lipstick remained, but its meaning loosened. It became one of the small props through which private experience could become a story.
A small announcement
Before I spoke, the lipstick announced me. I liked that arrangement: colour arrived first, and words followed with something to prove. It was theatrical, certainly, but it was also honest. I wanted to be seen, and I had chosen a bright prop for the job.
The same movement from private impulse to public clue appears in sleeping with the enemy, where another dangerous desire becomes part of the story. In both situations, the signal tells only part of the truth. The rest lies in what we hope it will provoke.
The colour at the chemist
I bought those lipsticks at Priceline, then Chemist, later from the cosmetics aisle at Woolworths or Coles. Australian beauty retail has always offered me this small abundance: a satin bullet beside supermarket groceries, a bargain shade near the skincare, a premium brand displayed like jewellery.
Labels mattered to me differently once I began reading them. Under the Australian Consumer Law, cosmetic packaging must not mislead consumers, and the TGA oversees ingredient and safety requirements for cosmetics. I learned the names printed beside the shade, but the romance survived. The tube still promised transformation, even while the list of ingredients insisted it was chemistry.
Rituals before Melbourne nights
On a mild evening in Melbourne, I would sit at the kitchen table with the tube, a hand mirror and a cup of coffee gone cold. Wind changed direction; summer arrived early one week and rain by Friday. I redrew the edges until they looked deliberate, then took the tram into the city.
Somewhere between suburb and inner Melbourne, I became the version of myself I had designed. That person had sharper replies, stranger confidence and a mouth coloured like a warning. On the tram, the habit settled into my body. Before long, applying lip colour was a reliable way to step from observer into participant.
Wanting and being witnessed
Attention can feel like recognition and even visibility, yet the two are not twins. Recognition settles around a thought or an act; attention often lands on a surface. The lipstick made me easier to notice, but not necessarily easier to know.
A friend once said, “You looked like you were waiting for something.” It was not unkind, and I did not correct her. She had read the evidence accurately. I was wearing my wish in public, hoping the night would confirm that I deserved to be desired.
The trace left behind
In Sydney, after rain near Circular Quay, I watched the colour blur on the window of a late bus. The lipstick was no longer exact; it had entered the city as a plan and left as evidence. Someone beside me offered me a tissue, and for once I accepted it without embarrassment.
At home, I found a red mark on a glass and one on the collar of a pale shirt. These traces embarrassed me because they revealed how much work I had done for a glance. Still, they felt intimate. Attention had touched the objects around me and left its receipt.
The next morning, I washed the glass and put the shirt in the laundry. I kept the empty tube. It seemed wrong to discard the prop after it had played its part so faithfully.
When attention became a habit
The habit grew around uncertainty. Before a date, a work meeting or a family dinner, I would put on the colour and feel briefly protected by it. Soon, the makeup was less an invitation than a precaution, a way of ensuring I would be noticed before anyone could dismiss me.
Reading switching off gently later gave me a better image for resistance: attention can be redirected instead of scattered. Reclaiming it meant pausing before the automatic gesture and asking what kind of contact I actually wanted.
Keeping the colour, changing the motive
I still wear red lipstick. The difference lives in the mirror. Sometimes I choose it because the colour lifts my complexion; sometimes because a wedding, a stage or an ordinary Tuesday deserves a flourish. I no longer need the shade to prove that I have entered the room.
If I wear it to be seen now, I try to be specific about the seeing. I want the person to hear what I say, not merely register the colour around it. That distinction is small, but it changes the room. The lipstick becomes adornment rather than summons.
The old tube remains in a drawer, its label rubbed nearly blank. I keep it as a reminder that wanting is not a failure. The failure would be pretending the wish never existed.
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Bring the version you have been carrying; that is where the writing begins.