This is the crown of an angel, surely; a fierce red-toned ghost who's wooed me away from my platinum dreams. What was it Philip K. Dick said of Sophia in Valis? That she was "touched by the finger of God". Naturally, I wondered what a celestial caress might really look like. Would it crack at your scalp and run down over your forehead like a butter blond egg yolk? Or shoot out from your skull in three wide stripes like bolts of electric pink lightning? Never mind, I tried both. I never looked touched. On Saturday I am going in for "statement hair" (see: "notice-me", "I'm still here" and "if it's really bright people won't look at anything else"). We'll just see if there's anything left to say about divine fingers after that.
As I type this I am nursing a plump pink gouge on the skin where my thumb meets my Mount of Venus. Right? The padded part of your palm. That's the Mount of Venus. I have no idea why they call it that. Moving on. Yesterday I was victimized by a manila folder. This isn't the first time I've gone to battle with those beige folios. They're sharp as blades. I had only wanted to file an invoice. A simple invoice. And forget about replacing the water cooler bottle. We're talking serious potential injury there. A dislocated shoulder, bare minimum. Sodden rayon slacks, guaranteed. Then there's paperclip puncture (tetanus, stat!), accidental packing tape hair removal, email ennui and (heads bow) the most devastating office injury of all: death from complications related to minutiae poisoning. We've lost so many, so very, very many.
According to the July 2010 issue of Glamour, securing the #2 spot in their list of the Hardest Words for a Guy to Say is: "Can you save your yoga pants for, you know, yoga?" So that means "I think I prefer men" and "I haven't loved you since you went back to school" might come in after "I'm totally not down with cotton pants". Lo, the many mistakes I've made. Here, then a brief list of my other regrets:
- I regret having gratefully accepted a bag of hand-me-downs from a friend who'd lost forty pounds
- I regret pretending to understand the difference between "stupid fat" and "intelligent fat" as explained to me by a woman who was neither
- I regret allowing myself the cool, comforting embrace of a muumuu
- I regret ever having tasted Pinkberry
I am not a NO REGRETS gladiator. I don't see how you can leap toe-first into a pool of change if your diving board is free of barnacles. In the name of evolution, I declare:
I regret.
Onward?
Resolution: I will not Google myself. I will not Google myself. I will not Google myself. It can only cause internal bleeding, you know. There I am, nine pages in. That's a six-page downgrade from this time last year. I am quite behind myself. Realization: I appear second only to the American Horse Breeder's Association member, English quilt and chain mail designers who share my given name. Reconciliation: I have done nothing electronically indelible this year. I have no imprint.
Alas, there is good news. Shameful use of the word corpulent in reference to me has been downgraded to page twelve.
Progress, indeed.
Freedom is sliding the elastic waistband of these green palazzo beach pants over my pitted pockets of upper thigh skin, only to discover that no one is looking at me (and they never were). What, then, is the difference between emotional maturity and total apathy? Have I accepted my spider veins or do I just no longer care?
Maxi dresses are completely over. I decide this as I stand sheathed in one. I decide this as two strips of double-stick fashion tape are securing its breast panels to my breastplate. Waiting on the corner of 55th and Park behind a woman whose lower torso is encased in her pencil skirt like tight snake muscle shimmering beneath its scales, I decide: maxi dresses are completely over. I decide maxi dresses are completely over because it is one decision I can make. I cannot make a disappointment into the body of a snake. I can only wear it taped to my skin and too long, sweeping the streets like a paintbrush.
I remember my second summer in New York (the summer of '97) as though it were a hot moment in an endless fever dream. I remember it better than my first because I actually stayed here, all summer, and slowly lost my mind. During my first summer in New York (the summer of '96) I had gone home to the desert of Denver to get my navel pierced and smoke cigarettes in the back of my friend's art gallery. So it didn't really count.
During that summer of '97 I attended my first New York cattle call for Grease. That was back when I thought that just because I kinda sounded like Rizzo and sometimes wore my hair in those same rebellious adult waves, I could totally play her. I remember that day well not just because I wore a leotard and tights in front of a panel full of strangers for the first and only time in my life but also because it was hot. My first hot New York summer day. I was two months out of school and had one audition outfit: a long-sleeved, vintage blue velvet swing dress. I wore it with opaque black tights and three inch t-strap character shoes. It was 100 degrees at noon.
I remember the day like it's in my DNA. I remember sitting in my underwear on my roommate's lemon gingham sheets, curling my hair into a retro swoop as MTV ran the Spice Girls' cooing ballad on an every-half-hour rotation in the background. I remember getting a callback at the dance call and I remember meeting the director, who said he liked the darkness in my voice. Darkness. After the audition I returned to my fourth-floor walk-up to eat frozen Milano cookies in front of an open window and wait for his call.
I remember that day on every hot New York summer day. Like today. Like yesterday. New York heat tattoos itself onto your thin skin -- inner wrist, eyelid, earlobe. It sits in your spinal fluid and rises slowly to your brain, melting tissue into sense memory. It never changes. It is always that same day, in June of '97, when I was young and sweaty with ambition.
