It Looked Different on the Model (2 page)

“Of course I’ll show you to a dressing room,” Amelie said as she walked out from the behind the counter and gave me a
warm, real smile. Not only did all of Julia Roberts’s teeth fit into her mouth, but they were
whiter
.

It was a cute dressing room—full-length mirror, a nice antique chair to put my purse on, and beautiful lighting. I like that, I thought as I looked into the mirror, noting that during my most recent visit to Anthropologie, the lights were so audacious I wanted to ask the dressing-room girl if she could turn the setting down from its current “Cruel” to the next level, “Barbaric.” Now, I know I spent over half of my life puffing on a cigarette filter, but the Kitten Ass around my lips in my reflection at Anthropologie was so pronounced it looked like I had been injected with plasticine as I was sucking on a crack pipe. If you’ve never smoked, used a straw, or are still able to wear red lipstick without it spreading out like tributaries from your lips, you might not know that Kitten Ass is the nice term for the vertical fault lines that surround your mouth, and if you’ve never had a kitten, I suppose Puppy Ass would do. I refuse to take this conversation any further if you’ve never been a dog person, either, since I do not know what a ferret’s ass looks like.

In the Anthropologie mirror, I saw wrinkles, dents, flaps, bumps, and something that caused me to say to myself, “I hope that’s a tumor and not a horn.” I was nothing short of horrified. As I sunk to the depths of despair and looked up the address of the closest cosmetic surgeon before I even left the dressing room, I tried in a panic to calm down.

“Every wrinkle you see is a wisdom line,” I told myself in a nice, steady voice. “Wear them proudly; each one is a challenge and an obstacle you have triumphed over.”

“You have an asshole
on your face
,” one of my meaner voices replied. “Doesn’t everyone want a juicy Wisdom Kiss from that mouth?”

“You’re just growing into your face,” the nice voice said. “There is grace in aging.”

“Especially if you ever wanted to use your face as a baseball glove,” the mean voice countered. “It gets softer and more doughlike.”

“You know, these lights are ridiculously bright and are shining on you from directly up above,” the nice voice tried again. “When does that ever happen in a real-life setting?”

“I dunno,” the mean voice said in a mocking tone. “Ever hear of
the sun
?”

As a result of that experience, I do think all Anthropologies should provide a courtesy volcano just outside their dressing rooms so every woman who is revealed as completely inadequate by the lighting can throw herself in rather than contaminate the store staging for any longer than absolutely necessary.

But the lighting in this boutique was soft, welcoming, almost loving. Looking in the mirror, I swore there was a sheet of delicate gauze separating me and my reflection; I almost looked as blurry as a main character on
Dynasty
.

“I am perfect,” my nice voice whispered.

“I bet you have glaucoma,” my mean voice whispered back.

In any case, the conditions were prime for me to take the little ruffled shirt and try it on, and that’s just what I did. I hung it up on an old antique hook on the wall and admired it briefly. And that’s when I saw it: the “M” on the tag in the back of the shirt where the “L” rightfully should have been.

My heart made the sound of a deflating balloon. “Why, why?” it cried, like it had gotten whacked in the knee with a police baton at a practice for the U.S. Figure Skating Championship. I looked at the price tag, which did say “L,” and realized it had just been mis-tagged. I was about to give the whole thing up when I saw the sale price again and thought that I
might as well give it a shot. After all, what is the difference between an “M” and an “L,” anyway? A boob size? Several good meals in a row? A couple weeks of unemployment?

So I did it. I jumped in, took the ruffled blouse off the hanger, and slipped it on. All was going well until I slipped my second arm in and we reached what I like to call “the friction point” of my arms, which is the upper portion right around the biceps area. After all, I’m pretty strong, so the circumference naturally reflects that, plus that’s where I store most of my winter reserves, which should save me if I’m ever floating out in the ocean on a raft and my foot begins to look like a delicious burrito. But it was no big deal. I met some resistance, but with a little tug here and a little tug there, the sleeves moved right into place and the shirt was over my shoulders and on its way to being buttoned.

But it turns out that there sort of is a significant difference between an “M” and an “L,” kind of like the difference between 1994, a decade’s worth of unemployment, and the cultivation of a Kitten Ass. I couldn’t even get the button and the hole to look at each other, let alone kiss. There was no bridging the mountain range—it was a statistically impossible feat, and one that was difficult to absorb. I really loved that shirt. I wanted to wear it. But it was a hard fact of life, a tragedy of reality you have to accept, like the fact that you can seriously injure your mouth by attempting to fit an entire Triscuit inside it, and your chances of bleeding don’t diminish the more times you do it.

I looked at myself in it, saw Laurie Circa 1994 donning it with a cute little flippy skirt and espadrilles, and then bid it adieu. I slipped it off one shoulder, then the other, and that was precisely when our goodbye came to an abrupt end.

I was stuck. The sleeves, which had perfectly popped into
place with two teeny suggestive tugs, were now a little stubborn about leaving their nice, soft, cozy arm-fat nest. In fact, both refused to budge. I rolled my eyes and huffed at the inconvenience. I decided to pop them right back out of place with a tug downward and crossed the left hand behind me to grab the right placket of the shirt, and vice versa. One good solid tug.

Tug.
Tug. Tug
.

No movement. None at all. Not even a slide.

Now, when I say that the hems of the sleeves were firmly in place around my arms, I mean they came together like a pipe fitting. With a touch of plumber’s putty, I could have run crude oil through that connection and there wouldn’t have been the slightest chance of a leak.

And it was definite. Those puff sleeves weren’t going anywhere.

I stood there for a moment and pondered what my next maneuver should be. Clearly we were having a little problem with the fabric of the shirt, which simply didn’t have as much elasticity as it should have. Clearly. I mean, I have had to wiggle in and wiggle out of some items of clothing, sure, who hasn’t, but I’ve never been
grafted
to one before.

I decided that since both of my arms were stuck and pulling from behind me wasn’t working, I should try a different position, so I bent over and tried to grab the back of the shirt to pull it from that angle. I tried to grab it several times, but it was too tight across my shoulders to fall into my grasp, and I had been bent over so long that when I stood up I didn’t see just stars but a meteor shower. “You’d better not do that again,” I warned myself. “One more tip of the teapot and you’ll come up with one side of your mouth lower than the other.” I tugged again from the front, but the sleeves were decidedly not budging.

“How can you be trapped in a goddamned shirt?” I asked myself. “It’s not a coal mine. It’s not an elevator. It’s
cotton
. The fabric of our lives!” I had no idea that a steel trap would have ruffles on it when I brought it into the dressing room and it sprang on both my arms.

“Oh my God,” I whispered, then took a minute to refocus and pulled again.

Not. An. Inch.

“This is ridiculous,” I said to myself. “I am just not pulling hard enough. Try pulling one arm at a time, focus all of your strength into one arm. Focusing. Focusing. Now pull!”

Something moved. But as my stomach flipped like a fish, I realized it was simply that the nail on my middle finger had bent backward.

If I get this shirt off, I thought, I swear I will never try on a non-“L” shirt again. Never. Never will I try to tempt sizes. Never will I think that sizes don’t know what they’re talking about. The sizes are gods. They know all.
They know all
. I know nothing. I’ll stay in my size herd from now on and will never stray. There is safety in the herd.

I thought I could not only get an “M” on but that I could
button
it. I have learned my lesson. I have. I have. I promise I have. I’ll only try things on with Lycra in them from now on. Never take on cotton straight. Never!
You always need a mixer
!

Now go in there and get that damned shirt off
!

I grabbed each side of the shirt with opposite hands, rolled my shoulders like I was Beyoncé, and pulled as very hard as I could. And I did it again, and again and again. I jumped up and down, trying to jar the shirt loose, I leaned down to the left and then down to the right, I wiggled, I shook, I shimmied, I even bent my knees and squatted for some unknown reason, all trying to pull that thing off. After several minutes, with a beet-red
face and a mustache of sweat bubbles, I stopped and had to take a break and plopped down in the antique chair.

“I can’t believe this,” I whispered, my eyes closed. I was exhausted. Komodo dragons don’t lock on to prey this hard.

“Honestly, why are you so fat?” even the nice voice inside my head asked me. To which I shook my head.

I don’t know. I didn’t know.
I just am
.

“Those arms are like tractor tires,” the nice voice informed me. “They are so large they almost have their own gravitational pull! And you lied about being strong. That’s not the reason they’re so big. You just eat too many pretzels.”

I totally deserved this, I realized. I deserved to get captured in this shirt. I was roped in like a calf. Stupid. So stupid. Just because it was on sale, I had to try on a baby shirt. This was so completely my fault. Maybe I should go to Baby Gap tomorrow and try to get into some Onesies or a romper. What was I thinking? Really? You know what’s going to happen now? Firemen are going to have to come and cut me out of it, that’s what. I hate this shirt, I don’t like this shirt, and I don’t want it anymore. It’s not even a shirt, it’s a straitjacket. A straitjacket with preposterous puff sleeves
that just make my arms look fatter surrounded by fat clouds
.

I looked so stupid. Sitting there. Sweating. Out of breath. Shirt hanging open like a domestic abuser’s after a NASCAR race. I just wanted to go home and eat pretzels and Google “Why do intestines gurgle?” I prayed there were no security cameras in here, because I knew if there were, the video—twenty minutes straight of a topless fat lady looking like she was fighting Freddy Krueger in a dressing room—was going to outdo Susan Boyle, David After Dentist, and any guy getting rammed in the nuts with a baseball bat or golf club in YouTube history.

I sighed. All right, fine, I agreed, nodding to the universe. I’m in a shirt I can’t get out of, or one I’ll never get out of alive, anyway. Someday they’ll find me in here, the jaw of my skeleton hanging open, my bra exposed and dripping off my rib cage, the sleeves of the shirt floating ethereally around my humerus bones now that there was no permafat to keep them in place like handcuffs.

I need a nap. I’m so tired. Done fighting. I give in. Shirt wins.

“You win, shirt,” I whispered, just to make it official. “You win.”

And as I looked in the mirror at myself—a half-naked woman, completely defeated—I understood now. The “friction point” was evidently the event horizon after all, and once I passed that mark there was just no going back. In a second, I’d be redshifted, stuck here forever, looking a little too much like the captain in
WALL-E
for my liking. But then I noticed something in the mirror under the gracious lighting, and for a moment, I saw Laurie Circa 1994 looking great in the shirt, her little Uma Thurman arms so nice in the loose sleeves, the placket buttoned without any bulging gaps from top to bottom.

She smiled her Julia Roberts smile at me, I smiled back, and softly she gave me a look of sympathy. But then the smile quickly vanished and she stared me straight in the eye.

“Get out of that goddamned shirt right now,” she fired quickly. “You look like an asshole just sitting there.
You
got it on;
you
get it off. Don’t you dare give up! You rip that shirt off if you have to!”

And she was right, or maybe I was just rested, I don’t know, but my sweat mustache had finally dried up and I thought that maybe, yes, I could give it another shot. I stood up, and without
any hesitation I went back in and pulled and fought and yanked, and suddenly the sleeves both popped free and the shirt slid down to my wrists.

I got that thing off me as fast as I could and put it back on the hanger on the wall before it could reattach itself to my body. It was so wrinkled it looked like a dishrag, and no wonder with all of the tugging and pulling that had been going on. Then I saw a speck of something on the hem of the shirt, perhaps some lint or a thread, but it did not move when I brushed it off. I immediately saw another, next to a button, and another on the bodice, and yet another on the inside of the shirt. All were red, and none were coming off. And the more I looked, the more I found, all over the shirt: inside, out, up and down, some dots, some smudges, and then a streak across the front hem. How had I not noticed this when I pulled it off the sales rack? It was very obvious that there was something all over this shirt, even if you weren’t looking at it carefully.

I pulled it closer to my eyes to see if I could figure out what it was, and it was then that I made a match. The red streaks and smudges all over this shirt matched the middle finger on my left hand, which—despite the fact that the circulation to my arms had been severed for the last twenty minutes—was bleeding like a Halloween prop from the hangnail I had picked at. I don’t know if I have arteries behind my nails or if I had moved around so much that I actually raised my heart rate to a healthy pace, but I had decimated this poor shirt so badly it looked like a Manson family member had worn it. A lot. To both houses. My struggle with the piece of clothing was now documented forever, my epic battle smeared all over the once-adorable shirt. No wonder I got all dizzy when I bent over, I realized. I lost a pint of blood in that fight! There was still no way I could present a bloody shirt to Amelie and then hand over my credit card
with a smile and not have her push a panic button under the counter to alert authorities. So I got myself together, put my shirt that I could actually close back on, and walked out of the dressing room.