It wasn’t easy: the constant recognition from strangers in bookstores and dance clubs, their gasps and aaahs never loud enough to hide their envy. I put up with it because I had to. There was no other way.

 

"It’s the life of the idolized," I would say to console myself. But it all faded as quickly as it came — the fame.

 

Overused in educational media, political and public access ads, anything and everything that needed diversity without being too diverse — I imagine the ambiguousness of my face had become too obscure (or maybe too common). 

 

What once fed my ego had apparently become nothing but a series of images that I would never see the same way again.

 

Left with only the acidic taste of the limelight, I had become a stock photo has-been.