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EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

Thick Waist

"You'll never be an actress. You have a thick waist." This was my father's prediction in 1985. The year I moved to New York to become an actress. The year I was 23. Already professionally trained. Already an experienced waitress. I was ready. Or was I? I had a thick waist.

So, New York, 1985—high up in an office on 42nd Street and 8th avenue, I sat across from a scholarly looking old man with wire rimmed glasses. He was squirrely. Flat out bald with liver spots on his head. Bad breath - an ironed white shirt. A skinny man with bony hands. He seemed so pathetic and harmless. I thought I was networking—that it was all legit since it was connected to THE ACTORS PROJECT, which was this cult I had recently joined that offered seminars with casting directors and resume services. head shot advice and job opportunities were available, so I partook. I had responded to an ad I'd seen on the bulletin board.

- PHOTOGRAPHER SEEKS CATALOGUE MODELS.

I called the number and got an interview. Wow. The old man who greeted me didn't seem like a photographer.

I had imagined a young, hip, long-haired sort of beefy guy with a firm handshake. "Remove your clothes except for your bra and underwear," he said, "and then I'll measure you." Fine. Well he was older than my father and he was bald so I just felt like it was all fine. I was working as a typesetter in Queens or as a receptionist for a technical magazine or as a waitress at The Lone Star Cafe. I wanted out of it—whatever it was. I saw this as a way. So taking my clothes off did not seem unreasonable—he didn't say take your clothes off and dance—take your clothes off and I'll fuck you—take your clothes off and I'll whip you. He said take your clothes off EXCEPT for your bra and underwear and I'll MEASURE you. I needed to be measured—to be sure that there were still dimensions to me—still some weight. He seemed to concentrate on all the degrees of me. I liked that. I liked the reverence in his breath—his soft fluttery tone—as if I made him slightly nervous—made his palms sweat. I could have picked him up and thrown him around the room. It would have been that easy. I felt strong—in control. He wrote down everything.

So I'm sitting there, buttoning my blouse in his office on 42nd street and he's adding up or subtracting. I don't know but he's definitely doing math and after a long silence he looks up and says—"You are perfectly proportioned. You'll be modeling lingerie and toys."

Wait. Lingerie and toys? I pictured myself in a lacy bra holding up a doll I destroyed when I was five. The doll had two faces, one on each side with two kinds of hair. One side was a smiling red head with freckles and when you flipped it, the other was a frowning blonde with a tear stitched under her eye. It was one of those clever presents some friend of my mother's had given to my sister and me to share. My sister had red hair. We had a room divided by blonde headed dolls and red headed dolls. This doll, however, disturbed us—caused fights—encouraged fits of rage.

One night after my Mom turned off the light—I waited until my sister was asleep—waited until the house was quiet and then—with scissors in hand—I cut off the tear by the light of the moon. It left a huge hole with cotton bulging out like little clouds. But I liked her finally. I hugged her and felt that I could offer her comfort. I flipped her hair over to my sister's side—all those freckles. The red head was so well adjusted—carefree, even. The blonde was complex—troubled at such a young age. She did not need a tear stitched to her cheek. I looked over at my sleeping sister and then at the scissors in my hand. I cut off the red hair snip by snip.

"Here's my card. Just check in from time to time and I'll let you know when there's work." The bald man winked at me. Lingerie and Toys? I thought about it the whole way home. "You are perfectly proportioned." But that couldn't be right. I had a thick waist.




Clitoris

"You're a woman now, you'll have to wear this belt," my mother said, handing things to me out of this bottom cabinet in the bathroom, "and this." She showed me an enormous white diaper looking thing. That? It was New Year's Eve. I was making them late for their party. My Dad was downstairs playing darts with a friend in his tuxedo. My mother's arms jangled with all her bracelets. I was eleven and already a woman. She showed me how everything worked—then it was never spoken of again. So began my experiments. Soon after that miraculous New Year's Eve, I discovered my clitoris one afternoon while reading The Whole Earth Catalog. There was a description of a marriage manual—something about how to make a marriage work. I read the word "clitoris" and I'd never heard that before. I had to look it up in the dictionary. The definition helped with the location. The Whole Earth Catalog said that making a circular motion on or around the clitoris was what a woman loved best. I tried it. Nothing happened. I kept making the circular motion, listening to my new clock radio, watching the minutes change shape like the big clicking board at Penn Station. Suddenly, I felt this wave of circular motions all over my body. I stopped making the circular motions. I thought my clock had exploded. I thought I had hurt myself. I thought I had been electrocuted. My heart was pounding. I couldn't sleep.



Hairless Fuck

It's just that
he crushes it
with the heel of his left hand
presses down hard
until the veins in his arms write out
like music and maps to places
I've been and the paper like skin reveals flesh
soft like shoulders and broken
under a weight without words
only wanting.

I actually wrote this poem about him, gave it to him, signed it - this chef that I lusted after briefly. I was a waitress and would go in early to watch him crush garlic. He had that sideways glance of the bad boy, that grin and stare I always took as a sign—a challenge that I willfully wrapped my thighs around. He smelled like garlic. His pores moaned with it. After work one night, dancing—he and I, garlic clouds around us. His hands on my ass, that pulse, those lights, I lean back and he lets me swoon, catches me in the small of my back. It is there that I most a woman, that curve, no shame, a muscular well fully formed. His fingers bracing me for what's to come, pressing me into him—hip to hip. My heart opening under heat—a back bend of pleasure. I feel weightless, abandon to his strength holding me up as I take in the world upside down. He doesn't drop me. The excitement is unbearable. We drive to his house. His roommates are asleep. He carries me upstairs like a secret prize. Like I was something he'd found that he'd always wanted, like I was something he had just ironed that he wanted to wear, like he had prepared a feast and I was it. Blurry fractures of time. It's night, I'm here, great. We wrestle, we roll, we spin, we breathe hard.

He has twin beds. He undresses me on one. I undress him. We undress. Our passion slows to a silence, to a stillness. "What are you thinking?," I finally ask. Maybe it's a childhood trauma, maybe we'd been making too much noise, maybe I remind him suddenly of his mother. What? "I'm thinking." he says it slowly, deliberately, branding each word into my skin, my heart. "I'm thinking that I want to shave all the hair off your body." I stop breathing. An image of him doing this comes to mind. He is kneeling over me with a pink razor, raking it across the landscape of my body, nicking me to death until I am smooth enough to fuck. I want to scream, demand that he drive me home even at this hour, grab a fistful of his chest hair and pull him around the room, wake up his roommates and yell FIRE FIRE. But I don't. I remember the other twin bed - grope for it in the dark and in the silence, curl up and find sleep.




Petite Brunettes

"Look, you're just not my type. I like petite brunettes." Checkmate. What could I say? Sam and I were in a bar. He had to speak loudly, slowly—just in case I missed a word. It was Valentine's Day—night. I thought the relationship was going along nicely. We had started seeing each other the night he discovered me taking a bath at a cast party. I went through this bathing compulsion. At parties. I just slipped away from the crowd, returning flushed—smelling of lilac, tangerine, lily of the valley—whatever was lying around. It depended on the tub. I didn't bathe at all parties—just some. Diane Macy had a deep tub under a skylight. I always bathed at her parties. No one ever knew. But the night I started dating Sam was the night I wanted to get caught. I left the door unlocked. He just walked on in. There I was, in the bath—all the candles lit—the ones from our play for the cathedral scene—Sam came in—then another person and another—until the whole party was eventually in the bathroom. Sam handed me a towel when it got too crowded and I emerged from the bath. It was a great beginning. Didn't he realize straight away that I was a grandé blonde or was it the candles? He repeated himself as if I hadn't heard him. The music was loud. This time he leaned in close. "I said, you're not my type. I like petite brunettes." I nodded and smiled—wondered if he'd say it again.