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Last week I was supposed to be in Key West for a weekend seminar that would require about an hour of my time. I was looking forward to reading eight or nine inches of fiction and doing little more than opening the door for room service. But this was not to be because I caught the flu from somebody social and infected. So instead, I found myself in my own bed, for the most part unable to lift my head off the pillow, due to the little man with a lead mallet who now lived inside and would bang, bang, bang me behind the eyes if I moved. Eventually, I was able to operate the remote control. And it was while skipping through stations that I came across an image of Marilyn Monroe. She was wearing a form-fitting dress that stopped at the calf. She was behaving in a playfully sexy manner. And I realized, if Marilyn were today to materialize in a bathing suit on a beach in Malibu, the next day her thighs would be on the cover of a tabloid. The photograph would be enlarged, showing where the tight line of the bathing suit cut into the flesh of her thigh. A headline would scream, "Mammoth Marilyn! Eating her way to the grave to be with her beloved J.F.K.?" I realized with alarming clarity that Marilyn Monroe in the flesh would not be considered sexy by today's bulimic standards. Marilyn would be seen as a woman in crisis. Somebody who belonged not on a movie poster but in an eating disorder hospital. And this made me remember my friend from the early 90's, Keith. Keith was a friend by association. That is, we weren't technically friends, but we hung around with the same guys and would go out together on occasion, so in this way we were friends. But I would never spend time with Keith one-on-one. Not that he was such a bad guy. In fact, he was a very cool guy who worked for an investment banking firm had a share on Fire Island. "But not the Pines, dude, don't get the wrong idea." Which is the New York shorthand way of saying Keith rented a house in the summer on Fire Island, but on the straight part, not the gay part. IN the early 90's it was cool to be a lesbian, especially a lipstick lesbian. But it was still pretty gross to be mistaken for a gay guy. Thus, hairy asses and unibrows were still the norm back then. If you had a "partner" then you were a cop. Anyway, in the six or so years that I knew Keith he had four serious girlfriends. I probably have a journal somewhere that mentions the names of these girls. But they have blended now into one. That's how similar they were. So I'll just call her, KellyLauraBethHeather. KellyLauraBethHeather was tall. I don't know how tall. But she wore heels and in them she was almost my height. I'm 6'2". KellyLauraBethHeather had blonde hair, except in one incarnation when she had copper hair. All versions were thin models with day jobs. Sometimes when we'd all get together, Thad would show up with one of his models. We'd see her for a month, maybe two or three. And then she'd be gone and in her place, a new one would appear, Absolut and tonic in one hand, Marlboro Light in the other. All of us, the friends, assumed that Thad was the sort of guy who would remain single until he was well into his thirties, possibly even forties. When he would finally settle down with a nineteen-year-old Julliard student and live in a renovated brownstone on Park Avenue. Little did we know that Thad had a five-foot, five-inch secret named Meghan. And we would never have learned of Meghan if New York City had been a larger place. Small town that it is, everybody knows somebody who knows the person you are dating. One of Thad's models recognized our friend, Alan. "Oh, wait. Are you Alan the Ad guy? The friend of Meghan?" And Alan said, curiously, "Yes?" but stretching it out into, "Yeeeeees?" And then Alan said, "You're not The Natalie? Crotchless panty Natalie? No shit!" And so it was revealed that Meghan was the common denominator of our friend, Alan and Thad's model. Unraveling the connection a little further revealed that both Alan and The Model had known Meghan for years. And for years, Megan had been seriously dating this guy who would not commit. Alan and The Model had heard the tawdry stories. How the guy would say he loved Megan and seemed to, really. But would never be seen in public with her. And never introduce her to any of his friends. And would break up with her, only to then make up with her a few months later. The guy turned out to be our Thad. Which meant The Model was dating her friend, Meghan's, long-term boyfriend. So that was the end of that. But it was the beginning of seeing Thad, for real, for the first time. The thing is, Meghan was pudgy. She was smart, she was funny as shit, she was a graphic designer with her own steady freelance business. But she was no Kate Moss. The only place you'd find a collar bone on Meghan was on her plate. Thad had met her in a bar. Been very, very drunk and taken her home. And for six years, he'd not been able to completely leave. Because Thad cared, deeply, about what other people -his friends, strangers on the street, his image of "society" thought of him. There was no way he could have a girlfriend with some meat on her bones. He could only have the bones in a skimpy dress. So all the time Thad dated his models, he was secretly, deeply attracted to Meghan. Even though he tried to talk himself out of it. And tried to believe that he only liked to screw Meghan when he was drunk and didn't care. And when I remembered this whole thing, I realized nothing had changed. In fact, things are even worse now. We moan and complain about finding our "soul mates" but what then we insist that the soul occupy the slenderest body. With room, barely for blood, let alone a soul. And it's sad. And it's wrong. Not morally wrong, really. But spiritually wrong. Because just think for two seconds: what would you rather do on a date? Flop on the boxy ultrasuede sofa with Mary Kate Olsen and listen to the Bang & Olufsen and split an almond (2 carbs each). Or would you rather sit on the floor and watch football and eat pizza from the box with Kirsty Alley? And then throw the crusts at each other. And then make out on the pizza box? The clincher is that I don't believe guys are never attracted to women of flesh. I don't believe guys are only attracted to the willowy few women who haunt the pages of Elle, Glamour and Vogue. I think men who really love women, really love what's womanly about a woman. Some flesh on the thighs. Hips you can really grab. I've watched women jiggle on the sidewalk and I've seen men turn to look at them. But bones don't jiggle. Fat jiggles. Fashion and advertising tells women to be skinny. Women tell each other that men want them to be skinny. Men think they are supposed to have a skinny woman. But is anybody really happy about this arrangement? I really don't think so. In fact, I am always highly suspicious of the man with the ghoulishly thin, flat-chested woman. I think, "How can you have sex with somebody who looks like a prepubescent boy?" So, when did boobs and luscious thighs and some flesh on the hips become something you have to have chopped off of your body by a reedy white man with a medical degree and a sharp instrument? Poor carbface Marilyn Monroe. If she were alive today, she'd have to hang herself. |
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