The Toybox Killer Strikes Again

At least I’ll be remembered as perfect

I may have mentioned before that, among other things, I am a figure model by profession. I earn my money by taking off my clothes and sitting or standing very, very still in front of large groups of people. My job is harder that it looks, by the end of each class I am sore, my back aches, and I usually have cramps in places I didn’t know it was possible to have cramps, but that’s not what I’m interested in talking about. I am interested in talking about the disconnect between what I see in the mirror and what goes on paper.

When I look in the mirror I see a girl with a pretty face, and a decent body that is too fat in some places and too thin in others. I see that the big picture is passable, perhaps even attractive, but that when you look at the details I am ugly. I see every detail. I see the curve of my spine that will only get worse with time, I see the sunken dent in my chest that prevent my breasts from being all they can be, I see that my arms are like sticks, that I have a tiny bit of cellulite on my thighs, that my feet are huge and already gnarled from wearing too-high heels too often and walking too far in shoes made for standing, or better yet sitting. Every time I work, I look at myself in the full-length dressing room mirror and I wonder why it is that I feel so comfortable taking off my clothes in front of strangers who I know full well will be studying every detail and every flaw, and putting it down on paper to the best of their abilities.
I go out, and I climb onto the model stand, and the instructor tells me how long the pose will be, and I drop my robe and decide on something that will be interesting to draw from all angles, that won’t be too painful, and that might even be comfortable for however long I’ll be holding it. I rarely manage to achieve all those criteria.

Between poses I walk around and look at all the drawings of me. The girl in the drawings is not the girl I see in the mirror, and it’s always strange to me how different a drawing can look from what I see. The main difference, though, is the difference between the way the men draw me and the way the women draw me.

Women come closest to what I see in the mirror. They draw a pretty girl with flaws. They draw my stick arms, and usually my sunken chest, they draw the curve of my spine. They draw me as a pretty girl with flaws that, on paper at least, seem to make her prettier.
Men do not draw me the way women draw me. In their pictures I am perfect, the younger the man, the closer I am to what I want to look like. On their sketch pads and canvasses I gain a cup size or two. My rib cage gets corrective surgery, my already long legs get longer, my waist gets smaller, and my spine straightens. When I comment on this, they look at me as if I’m crazy. I’ve come to realize that these people genuinely don’t see all the things that are wrong with me.
I don’t really understand why this is, especially since a figure drawing class or open studio with a live model is probably the most desexualized context for nudity, there is no point in making whoever occupies the model stand sexier. It barely matters what the model looks like, but if it matters at all conventional attractiveness actually counts against figure models. While a perfect body might make a prettier picture, an ugly model with a bloated belly, cottage cheese thighs, sagging arms, and pancake breasts is more interesting to draw because she will present more of a challenge. Is it possible that people draw me so beautifully because my flaws are not noticeable to anyone but myself?
I sometimes wish that just once, for maybe an hour, that I could step outside of myself and see myself and my life the way that another person, totally removed from the situation, would see it. I hope that I would see beauty, but I often doubt it. 

Apocalypse

The world is supposed to end this year. We are all supposed to have our weeping and our gnashing of teeth beginning on December twenty first, so what is this, this private, quiet apocalypse of mine? This came so early, like the biblical thief in the night.
I wept and gnashed my teeth and all the while I knew that it was as it had to be, but necessity does not negate pain. Hearts break and mend again, it is a proven fact, but facts seldom have much effect on feelings, much as we would like them to. The fact that I will heal and that tomorrow will come and that life goes on does not delete the reality of this momentous evening. The fact that I have long been used to solitude does not mean that I do not feel somehow lost.
I could say that I never expected this sudden sorrow, but that would be a lie. I knew that it would come, but was afraid to face it. Although I knew that it was coming, I refused to consider its perfect inevitability.

Ice

Perhaps I am dispassionate and even cold; it’s something people often say about me and I have to wonder if it’s true, it’s said so often, even by the people for whom I care most deeply. I say, ‘I care,’ and that care alone would give the lie to their assertions, but my regard is so unlike that of others that I have to wonder if it qualifies at all.
I am told that I have no passion, no motivation but greed, but greed is not the word for my true motivation, I don’t have words for it, but want. My whole being, my whole self, is a gaping pit without a bottom, I can never be full or fulfilled, I will always be an open, weeping wound.
I know my emptiness intimately. I have gazed into the abyss for more hours than I care to count, but the abyss cannot gaze back at me because I am the abyss myself. I search constantly for anything to fill the void, anyone to prove to me that I am not void, that I even exist. More than all my other wants I want to be wanted, not sexually so much as artistically, intellectually, I want someone, anyone, to prove to me that I exist, that I am really human and more than that that I am worthy of meaningful attention, that I am somehow valuable. I know on some level that I am valuable and I refuse to compromise my self for the validation, but the need remains.
People say I cannot feel, or refuse to allow myself to feel, but God, I feel, too much sometimes. I do nothing but emote and all my passions do nothing but choke the life from me and make me emptier; I choke my passions in return and crush them down so that they do not take me over and turn me into them. The fact that I excel at keeping only my self on the surface, and not my passions, my emotions, my sensitivities and suffering, does not mean that there is nothing but my self within me.
People say, he says, that I am incapable of love, but no. I love too much and in all the wrong ways. I give until there is nothing else, but I never have the right things to give. I have too many second, third, and fourth thoughts, I think too much and analyze too much and so my love is cold and callous, and that may be, but it’s no more cold and callous that the stone pillars that support the Coliseum, the pillars that have seen centuries come and go and hardly crumble. My love is not the right love and so it is not love? What reasoning is that? I can accept that it is not enough, that it is not what’s needed, that it is misplaced and unskillful, but to insist that it is false is not something I can accept because I know my heart too well.

The Praying Mantis

I only ever want things I can’t or shouldn’t have.
I fixate and obsess and then when I have total license to do what I want when I want, and with whoever I want I see the object of my former obsessions and I am left cold. Why is that? Am I so broken that I can’t ever allow myself to need what’s right in front of me? There is temptation there, but not my past infatuation; now I consider the praying mantis who tears the heads from her mates when she is through with them, sometimes before. I would say I wonder if I could be like her except that I suppose ‘wonder’ is the wrong word. I know I could be like her, or I think I know, I only wonder if I want to. Why? I don’t know, am I so ultimately self-destructive that in order to preserve myself I must externalize my masochistic impulses and become instead sadistic?
I want to say that I will not become the praying mantis or the black widow, I will not allow myself to be like the low insects and arachnids who do not bond or love and just destroy, but there is a part of me who wants to, a part of me who wants to take my private chaos and turn it outward on the world, to punish those who try to love or even want me without understanding the dark and chilly recesses of my secret heart.

Our Lady of the Gutter

I have realized recently that I subconsciously strive to make myself as undesirable as possible. Most people don’t even notice, I take such care of my appearance that they assume that I must be obsessed with people liking me, looking at me, wanting me, and they’re right in a sense but rarely in the way one would think.

Yes, I make myself as lovely to look at as possible, but only on my own terms. Although I am incredibly vain I won’t bend my aesthetic sense to the preferences of others. I am often spiteful, I can even be cruel. I am petulant, snobbish, and impatient and I make no attempts to correct these characteristics, I can’t even quite bring myself to see them as flaws that need correcting. Although I am not sure if I chose my line of work or if it chose me, the fact is that I keep returning to a career that simultaneously affirms my desirability and places me in a category that most people consider either tragic or morally bankrupt and either way unfit for polite company or happy relationships. I dress up like a toxic person to see if people will open their arms to me anyway, and then I sneer when their arms and hearts stay closed.

This is all my way of testing people, of course, of seeing if they’re willing to push past the bullshit and see me, if not quite as I am, then as I’d like to be. Most of the time it doesn’t work, people don’t bother to look past their immediate impressions, and so I keep to myself. I’ve come to enjoy it, honestly. It’s easier to have few friends you love than it is to have many friends you don’t know if you can really trust. It’s calmer to be able to show your guts to a select few people, rather than always having to keep up a good show for a crowd. I suppose I wish that people weren’t quite so judgmental, but who am I to talk about superficial judgement?

Dresses and Body Dysmorphia

Two and a half weeks ago I practically had to pour myself into this dress. It was skintight, it hobbled my steps. It made me look simultaneously very, very curvy and dangerously thin.
Today it was cool enough to wear it again, I was sure it would be even tighter, sure I had somehow gained weight, sure my waist was thicker, my hips more padded.
All day I see myself half-dressed, reflected in mirrors. Most of the time I don’t notice the protruding ribs, the hipbones descending into a V shape, the pointed shoulder blades, the little dips behind my collarbones. I see only the almost negligible pad of fat over the muscles in my stomach, the slight jiggling of my thighs when I dance onstage, the fact that my ass isn’t as smooth or perky or small as I’d like it to be.
I can’t see myself as others see me most of the time. I’m what? A size four? Two, depending on the brand maybe? My few contemporary skirts are a size six, and I’ve had to take them in several times over the past two years, I don’t even know what my true size is anymore. Why can’t I relate that to my shrinking form? A better question, perhaps, is why I am so obsessed with numbers, the numbers on clothing tags, on the scale, on the tape measure? I dislike mathematics, while their objectivity appeals to me (A is always A), I find them ultimately pointless, they only measure, they do not create.
I, also do not create, though. I seek to destroy myself, to dwindle to nothing. Am I so full of self-loathing, so shy, so self-effacing at my core that I literally want to disappear, or is it something else?
I was raised to have a healthy relationship with food, I was taught that food makes us strong, that in moderation, even sweets are a good thing. I was taught, for as long as I can remember, that eating is nothing to feel guilty about. My sister and I were not allowed to have Barbie dolls, lest we sink into a pattern of self-loathing and critique because we did not resemble the little plastic women we had played with as children.
I wonder, always, ‘How did I get here?’ How did I get to this dark, ugly place where I am never good enough, where goodness is measured by beauty, and beauty is measured by frailty?
Intellectually I know that this is unhealthy, that it wreaks havoc on my heart, my skin, my stomach, everything, but when it comes down to it I don’t want to stop or ‘get better’. I am afraid that if I do, if I eat what I want, when I want it, and stop only when I am full that cushions of fat will creep in, covering my ribs, smoothing my hip bones to a point where they cannot be differentiated from my stomach, filling out the hollows of my clavicles, hiding my sharp shoulder blades from view. I am afraid that I would not only be perceived as less, but that I would BE less if I became more.

Loss

I get paid to write things now. I’m still not used to it, and when I see my author page I can feel my internal organs re-arranging themselves. I should be working on a column right now. I’ve been trying to write it all day, but my success has been limited. Until now I only wrote for myself and I only wrote about things that bothered me or were of direct pertinence to my life. Now that I have assigned topics and deadlines I’m realizing that for me at least, writing is almost a comparable to a bodily function: one thing has to pour out of my fingers before there is room for something else to exit them. I have no idea when that happened; when I was a child writing was a chore rather than a necessity and it was surely never a joy. The sensation of having to write something, to not have the luxury of waiting until time has passed and it is more appropriate and will not pour salt onto new wounds is novel and somewhat unwelcome.

Two of the most important relationships in my life have recently undergone drastic transformations. One has simply changed, I think for the better, the other seems to have ended, at least for the time being. Both of these metamorphoses have come from the respective inability or unwillingness of my loved ones to meet certain needs of mine. I’ve written enough about the end of the first relationship, but the end of the second is still so new that I’m not sure if it’s really all over yet.

I am a difficult woman. I am often contrary, demanding, selfish, willful, and sometimes cruel. There are too many times when I ask nothing of people, I simply assuming they will be able to anticipate my needs and immediately provide for them. When they don’t, I become resentful, taking their neglect as a sign of their apathy towards me rather than the inevitable consequences of my lack of action. Sometimes, though, I ask for things I need and usually those requests are simple: don’t leave me, need me, console me, want me, care for me, listen to me, leave me be. These things may not always be easy but they are always, always simple.

I once had a very dear friend. I was certain we would always have each other, that we were heart-sibs, and that soulmates never died. I refuse to give up the hope that we might one day reconcile, but as things stand it seems that our bond is broken. There is an ache that gnaws at me. I think if I could only find the reason for our parting, the ache would go away.

Was this schism caused solely by my necessity for solitary reflection? I think not. Were that the case it would mean that all the years before this were a dead forest of misconceptions and illusions waiting for the spark of misaligned requirements. That prospect is too painful to consider and I reject it out of hand. Was our dissension caused merely by her systematic destruction of every stable element in her life? I doubt it. Perhaps if my disposition was not so caustic and if I had had the strength to keep my mouth shut it would not even have been a factor. I think before I speak, and I refuse to unthink or remain silent. Was it caused by something else? Some incompatibility of ideology or conviction? Who knows. We thought we were so alike.

I cannot determine exactly where things went wrong. I am certain we each could find a way to pin the blame for our parting on the other if we tried, but I have no interest in accusations and so the pins pass through the creeping beetles of my condemnations. They crawl away and I still ache.

Death, Tyranny, and the Illusion of Happiness

I do not like people very much. Individuals can be wonderful, yes, but as a species my fellow humans confuse, anger, or sadden me, sometimes all three at once. I think sometimes that I could live a very happy life all alone. My favorite time of day is the wee hours of the weekdays, between three and four in the morning, when the world is nearly deserted and I am alone with my thoughts and away from all the ugliness that is practiced during most people’s waking hours. I would be a hypocrite to claim that I believe self-interest is wrong, but there is a marked difference between serving only one’s self and trampling over one’s fellow beings for no clear reason.
Tonight my dearest, most beloved friend walked past a party in honor of Our Beloved Leader and His Noble Healthcare Bill. Only a few yards away, within view of the warehouse collective where the party was held, someone had been murdered outside a gas station. Isn’t that our culture in a nutshell? Drunken revelers celebrate another handout without considering the consequences and ignore a murder in favor of cheap beer and inexpertly-played music while they talk of the virtues of compassion and altruism.
It’s unfashionable to suggest that it’s immoral for anyone to coerce another into acts of charity or a show of compassion. It is even less fashionable to admit selfishness is a necessary and even natural part of the human experience, but this fact is never more apparent than when one observes the actions of those supposedly selfless people who ignore the life seeping out onto the cracked and dirty pavement while they make merry in honor of another forced extraction of alms for their beggars’ bowls.

Tight

When I was nineteen I tried to get an IUD.

I hate going to the gynecologist. I hate going to the doctor, but I hate going to the gynecologist especially.

I lay back on the table, covered by the flimsy paper gown that was too short and too large, pried open by the cold, cold metal speculum. The doctor tried to push a sound into my uterus to clear the way for the IUD.

My mother has an unusually small cervix. She was in labor with me, her first child, for thirty-four hours. I have my mother’s eyes. I have my mother’s legs. I did not know it at the time, but I have my mother’s cervix. If I weren’t an atheist I would call this affliction divine recompense for my accidental almost-matricide.

The doctor warned me that I would feel some slight discomfort. This, that I was feeling, was not discomfort. This was agony. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt. I screamed and was told it couldn’t be that bad, I was overreacting. And then the doctor saw that I was bleeding. She apologized. She gave me a prescription for some pills to dilate my cervix. She gave me a new appointment. I filled my script, took my pills, and went obediently back to the doctor’s office.

Instant replay.

Instant is the wrong word.

Replay.

The same metal stirrups, the same paper gown, the same cold, cold speculum, the same pain, the same blood.

My doctor told me she had never seen a cervix as small as mine. She gave me the number of a different doctor who would be able to insert the IUD surgically. I debated with myself whether such drastic measures would be worthwhile.

 I was still sore that night, but when he pulled at my underwear I couldn’t push him away. He never took rejection well.

Two strokes in, he stopped.

“Did you cheat on me?” He asked.

“What?”

“Did you cheat on me?”

“I heard what you said, what are you talking about?”

“You seem kind of stretched down there. Did you cheat on me?”

“Of course not. I went to the gynecologist today. You knew that. They pry you open there.”

He rolled off and away from me.

“Okay,” he said, as if he didn’t believe me.

I curled up into a fetal position and moved closer to the wall, humiliated and afraid. In the past things had not gone well when he doubted my fidelity.

He got out of bed and went to sleep on the couch. I felt terrible. He was good at doing that, he excelled at nothing so much as making me feel terrible. I wondered briefly how someone who loved me could be so good at making me feel guilty and dirty despite the fact that I had done nothing wrong.

I decided I could do without an IUD.

I decided I could do without another gynecologist visit as long as I lived.

I didn’t like going anyway. I didn’t care if I had cervical cancer or not. Dying, however painfully, would be better than inviting another rage.

All I cared for was peace, peace at any cost. I could fall ill, I could be maimed, I could die, none of that mattered so long as I had peace.