in case you had any doubts, there’s nothing neat or contained about me. you need but look at my hair to concede the truth of that statement.
my curls sproing off in different directions like the coils of a mattress in a rent-by-the-hour cheap motel. i boing when i walk, everything bouncing exuberantly, often in direct contrast to what i might be feeling.
you might describe my style as funky, eclectic, even eccentric sometimes, but i doubt you’d ever call it classic. no crisply starched shirts and pencil skirts for me.
like my life, sometimes i can be messy. clothes pile up in heaps for days before i’m compelled to restore order. 3 months later i’ll suddenly wonder why there’s a spool of thread in the middle of the kitchen table. i’ve spent large parts of my life coloring outside the lines.
sometimes though, i wish i was a waif with one of those compact bodies, the kind you can carelessly toss into a pair of jeans and a tshirt, or silicon-slip into a little sheath dress and heels, the epitome of classic perfection. you know, pert sized 34b breasts, just enough for a womanly curve, not enough to necessitate double bra-ing before you head to the gym at certain times of the month or like these mounds of mine which strain against and constantly threaten to spill from their constraints like a janet jackson wardrobe malfunction. sometimes i want a derriere that sounds exactly like the word, muscular, yet curvy and pertly french, not this minor mountain that rises behind me and proclaims to the world that i am, yes indeed, one of the progeny of saartjie baartman. i want calves and thighs and waist all proportionate and contained. not these rambunctious humps and curves and clumps that boisterously clamor off in different directions, dead set on their own agendas.
sometimes, just sometimes i’d like to be the mistress of my own domain, this sassy, cantankerous, disobedient, wild willed sheath of flesh which in this life
i supposedly command.
i guess the spongy mass between my ears is what i can best command, but it’s difficult sometimes to not be various shades of envy-green. damn, look at holly hunter who at 51 has the body of a teenager. pert. compact. even cute. but then i have to remind myself; life or at least, what we look like, is the result of a lotto in which we involuntarily participate and the landscape of our bodies was sculpted by a distant sculptor to whom there’s no recourse. bottom-line (pun intended), i guess it’s not what we’re given. it’s what we make of it.
and make no mistake, i’m grateful for what i’ve got. sometimes, though, i wish i’d been given just a little bit less!
p.s. the crude little animation was something i came up with for my first website around 1995 or so
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