Reading: Feenie Ziner, Within This Wilderness

Moving: 30' elliptical, heartrate averaged at 152, with two 2-lb handweights, 25 ab weight-thingies at 50 lbs and 25 back extensions at 75, plus 100 crunches and some stretching.

Viewing: "Practical Magic" last night, "Mission: Impossible" tonight

Learning: that a CU professor asserts that male rapists act out of biological imperative

10 February 2000: Confessions

I have some kind of cough that racks me. I nearly fell over this morning coughing, so I dragged my coworker to Starbucks where I got a two-bag grande of Darjeeling with about eight packets of honey in it. Packets? Like little ketchup thingies from Micky D's. Also in that building's convenience store I bought tissue paper. On the way back I remembered I should enclose a card to the stranger at least, and popped into my own building's convenience store where I found a thank-you card printed with musical notes. Perfect.

Last night I hopped off the bus a stop early and rented two movies from BB and bought two cards from Denver Cards and Gifts and two gift bags from Safeway. I mailed my sister's birthday card right then, not that she'll get it on time.* While making a double batch of oatmeal cookie batter, I watched "Practical Magic," which I enjoyed for its cast. I split the batter into two bowls and added raisins to one and chocolate chips to the other, baked the cookies and called them done, and read for the rest of the night. I've been spending too much time online and not enough reading.

*I bought her present ages ago. In the Signals or Wireless catalog I saw a set of "Fractured Motherisms" refrigerator magnets, bundled with a book and costing $25. I looked up "fractured motherisms" and "magnet" in google and found the item, without the book, at fridgedoor.com. I love the web.

In the morning I brought the cookies in a Tupperware and the bags to work and wondered how fast the cookies would go stale without wrapping. Hence the tissue paper.

CoolBoss has some anti-chocolate thing going on, so she got the raisin cookies, and her friend whom I've never met got the chocolate chip ones. They recently did an amazing personal favor for me, she who likes me setting it up and her friend who actually did the work not knowing me from Adam's off hind ox. No, I'm not telling what the favor was. Baking them cookies was the only thing I could think of to do. CoolBoss was astounded. "That was far above the call of duty!"

I maybe shouldn't've gone into her office just then. Her door'd been closed for a while. I hate that. It means I'm going to be fired, of course. Except when it means that either of my other two coworkers with the same neurosis is going to be fired instead. Or when one of the two of them resigns, as happened today. I am not disappointed. She called me "Lis" and questioned my maternal instinct and look at me shut up complaining about work.

So.

Well, that was one confession. The other is much more amusing. I figure. Back in December on a day out with my mother-in-law I did not divulge what we did one sunny Floridian afternoon.

Now I have the evidence.

What happened was we went to Glamour Shots. DMB's wanted to bring me for years, before she ever met me. After RDC and I started going out but before that first Christmas, she and JJC went. The first photographs I ever saw of them were Glamour Shots. DMB probably doesn't look as much like Susan Sarandon as I think, but when your first impression of someone is that she's as lovely as a movie star, that tends to be the impression that lasts. (Of course, Jane Austen's first impression of what her novel Pride and Prejudice should be called turned out not to be First Impressions. Somebody stop me!)

My sister exclaimed, "They must have dragged you kicking and screaming!" Well, yes. Inwardly. I was outwardly behaving like an agreeable daughter-in-law who appreciated the generosity behind the effort and the bonding thing and whatnot. And not quite screaming or kicking: I did wonder if I would turn out as well as DMB did. Her photographs are wonderful, full stop, but that's because a) she's beautiful and b) being anointed and pampered like that is something she takes to naturally.

I don't.

New Year's Eve was different. It was me. Done, but me. I had my hair done, but just braided. I wore make-up, but no more than I ever do for dress-up--well, no, I wore eyeshadow and nail polish too. I wore a gown, but it was a beautiful dress of my own choosing.

A----- went under the spatula first, and I saw her 13-year-old's freckles disappear and curls emerge from her ponytail. I was prepared for that; on DMB and JJT's wall hangs a frame of at least four 8.5x11 Glamour Shot portaits over at least three occasions; she's been being brought since she was eight.

When I went under the spatula, I was willing to have done to me whatever DMB thought was right. She's the pretty one, after all, who wears make-up. I wanted my hair curly and DMB wanted it down. Those two adjectives work well together, at least. I knew the cosmetician was going to put foundation on me ("but you won't see it in the photographs," everyone said), and a slew of eye make-up (I do think I look better with mascara, but it's not worth the effort, the smudges, or the irritation to my contacts), and when the time came for lipstick, DMB wanted me to wear a darker one than my standard rose. Okay. So first the person rolled up my hair, and then she put on the make-up, and then she curled my hair. When I looked up at myself, I was unrecognizable in the mirror. I could see I had the same face, but it wasn't mine. I felt like a streetwalker. Does anyone wear this much all the time? When I saw the photographs, which would take until 7 February because Glamour Shots thought Colorado and Texas (where A----- lives) were mythical places that they couldn't mail to, I didn't just remember feeling like a streetwalker. The photographs make me look like one too.

The whole point is to look better than you've ever seen yourself look. To do that, you have to be relaxed, or at least I would have to be relaxed. As much as I wanted to see myself gorgeous, I would have much rathered to see me gorgeous in my own way. The whole process was faintly humiliating. As much as I wanted to have fun doing this with DMB, whom I do like and love, I felt so uncomfortable I'm sure I ruined her pleasure. I feel guilty about that. Also, she wanted to have nice pictures of me, which is sweet of her, and I couldn't relax and enjoy it enough for that to happen. So I feel guilty about that as well.

I know I have wrinkles. I don't like 'em, but as CoolBoss (who has been anxious to see the photographs) said, they're better than the alternative (being dead). I have not noticed them in pictures very much yet, except around my eyes when I smile or laugh, where the happiness supersedes the wrinkledyness. I notice them here. I notice them partly because the cheap foundation settled into all my fine lines and into all my big ones too, especially since so much time elapsed between when I was Done and when I was photographed, and partly because, since the emphasis here is on beauty and glamour rather than reality, there's no emotion or memory associated with the pictures, just guilt, humiliation, and clammy foundation.

My mother-in-law made this generous bonding gesture (she paid for it, but then it was her idea entirely) and I am obviously dissatisfied. I am a terrible person, shallow and impossible to please and filled with ingratitude. Appearances are important to me. I like to look like me. Swimming me, lovely me, bored me, but me. I am difficult to satisfy--neither I nor anyone else can often, easily, entirely, unreservedly please me. I am grateful to DMB and grateful for DMB, but the fact is that this is not something we have in common.

I'm wasting enough bandwidth on the proofs; I'm not going to post the full-sized shots of the poses DMB chose. You get four poses in each of four outfits. The camera is a large, mounted affair on a stand; it never moves. The photographer or your mother-in-law tells you how to pose and smile, at least somewhat. I wanted more direction than that. Eventually, I got it.

The first outfit was one of the two whose selection I was happy with, a (fake) fur stole. Fresh out of the curlers and heavily sprayed, my hair was curly; by the time I was photographed, over an hour later, it was just wavy.

1. The first one was chosen to blow up. We both like my hair. DMB says I was smiling too hard so my eyes are wrinkled; I say they look more wrinkled than they are because of foundation, and that since they are wrinkled they should look wrinkled. Pearls worked with the fur. I didn't insist on earrings because I could tolerate very few of the ones they had. My goddess ones, which I was wearing, wouldn't have worked--for Glamour Shot's reasons and mine.
2. The cascade of hair in the second is nice, but I tilted my head too much (couldn't the photographer see that?)
3. This smile must have been while DMB told me I was smiling too hard and the photographer was telling me to smile more.
4. DMB liked this smile in the proof but I refused flat out because of the cleavage. DMB bought her own and doesn't understand why I don't flaunt mine.

This is just a tacky vinyl jacket, for starters. Furthermore it looks like a bathrobe.

1. The jacket is particularly bathrobesque here.
2. The finalist. Squints and wrinkles.
3. Couldn't the photographer see that the tacky tube top they make you wear was visible? Does anyone hold her collar like that? Nonetheless, this was another finalist.
4. I had in mind Kim Rollins's lip thing but I couldn't do it.

By this time Dravion had taken over posing me. He was hysterical. When he arrived at work, a man wearing man's clothes with his long hair tied back and a good manicure, he was part of the scenery. Then to the woman he was working on he showed his own photographs, which I thought at first were hers, because they were of a woman. Dravion is a drag queen. Not a transvestite, thank you very much, but a queen, he himself insisted. I thought the photographs were tacky--which is why I thought they were the other client's--mostly in leather and leopard print, and I didn't pay much attention. The one that made me realize this was him, not her, was lovely: lying on the floor in a corner with legs up the wall, strategically covered in rose petals, taken from a few feet away, head in the foreground and legs receding. That one caught my attention enough that I looked at the person's features.

He was flamingly, draggingly queer in all the most stereotypical ways, dramatic and melodramatic and caustic and funny, so that by the time he decided he should pose me, I was giggly. With him I felt comfortable--also stereotypical of me.

1. The pale bit in the middle at the bottom is in fact breast. No more tube top. I am, obviously, entirely failing to achieve a sultry look and instead am cracking up.
2. Am I a ZZ Top song? The pearl strands were Dravion's idea, and DMB liked this shot more than the other three.
3. DMB and I thought a Silver Screen look would be good--Katharine Hepburn and I are neighbors, you know--which is why the cosmetician put my hair up. I think this one might have worked in black and white better than #2, which was chosen.
4. Again, I am just about to crack up. Who the hell holds fake feathers against her face? Not me.

Both DMB and I wanted me to be photographed in my new and lovely gown. By this time Dravion had taken over photographing me as well, which might account for these being even more out of focus than the others. All of the poses are Dravion's--the greater direction I wanted--and the last three photographs.

I found big faux pearl and painted gold earrings. I feel naked without at least studs, especially when my hair's up. These aren't my sort of earrings--big buttons, not danglers--but they go with the dress.

1. DMB wanted this column (which fails to look like marble on film as well as in the flesh) with the city backdrop. Not my protestation but the photographer's as well was necessary to dissuade her. I'm glad she didn't choose this pose. This is the stupidest of all of them.
2. CoolBoss wanted to know if that was my unadulterated bosom. Um, yes. I'm wearing the strapless backless waist-squeezing brassière I bought to go with the gown, which helps my posture, but also Dravion wanted me to thrust out my chest. I'm all sway-backed. This is DMB's favorite, but it's terribly out of focus. And KBH hadn't taken in the straps yet, so they're loose.
3. This one I like.
4. Okay, maybe this pose is stupider than the first. Maybe Dravion's wasn't the sort of direction I needed. And that lipstick is way too dark for me.

RDC exclaimed that most of these sixteen photographs are out of focus even in the flesh (it's not just my slapdash scanning). And that they aren't composed well. And that I am much prettier than these would have you believe, and that I have a much nicer smile, and he prefers his Colorado girl, wrinkles and braid and no make-up and all.

So do I.

---

Note: several times I've revised this entry attempting to be honest about my experience without saying anything hurtful about DMB. My conclusion is that my feelings were so mixed going in--vanity, guilt, apprehension--that the experience could be only just as equally mixed. At the least, I wanted DMB to have the portraits of me she wanted, a reasonable return for her outlay of money and time. I could not provide that for her, mostly because Glamour Shots and I have opposing ideas of what constitutes beauty and partly because I couldn't let go of myself enough to let its idea of beauty subsume me. That I cannot regret: that is who I am.