Forgive me, I'm still prettying up.
When the time comes, when I’ve lived enough. When I reach that point where I’m old and the laugh lines have made themselves at home and turned into wrinkles. When I’m still rocking some blonde bombshell look at eighty eight with a lover who is forty and better than anything I could bother to make real with the flick of a pen. Or, when that fifteen pounds turns into thirty and I’m taken out back like a horse with a broken leg. Broke and guest judging on America’s Next Top Robot Model. That’s when I’m going to write my memoirs. So far I’ve only got a working title: My Friend the Sandwich. I figure by the time the book comes out I’ll have the title turned into a metaphor, a sound bite, to spoon feed the Barnes and Noble masses sipping their robot lattes. But the truth is that you just plain miss out on a lot of great sandwiches in this business. It is the cruelest test of a woman’s will power, the elaborate feast laid out “for the models”. Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner all rolled into one, with some Easter ham thrown in. New Years Champagne, Halloween candy. Fat slices of fresh baked whole wheat bread, ham, the havarti dill that you know is calling your name. Smoked brie with apples and a big, huge bowl of yellow fin tuna salad with that soft white bread from when you were a kid. You waltz over to examine it, this dreamy glazed over look in your eyes, but you know everybody’s watching. “What a cow. Mooo.” You pluck a single grape from a fruit plate. You didn’t touch anything, honest. Back to your black coffee and cigarettes, at once!
We are always hungry. That can be a problem when you’re a sucker for a good grilled cheese like I am. Gourmet, even. Some people like designer handbags. I like a good smoked provolone and muenster with avocado and bacon. Some fucking sixteen dollar Heaven. There’s this little place in south New Jersey where these are made. You take one bite and then the napkin goes down, the international symbol for “I’m done. I’m so full!” Then it’s a pill in your mouth and some stuff up your nose and you aren’t hungry anymore. You just dream about pancakes with maple sausage between them. The sexiest threesome. Cuban sandwiches dripping with Swiss cheese and moving to Philadelphia to subsist on a diet of cheese steaks. I told a boyfriend once that I wanted to quit working because I missed eating. He used to make me salami and brown mustard sandwiches I would sneak them between shows. Eating them quick out of a zip lock bag. Like an addict with a problem. A wild, desperate animal. I got the mustard on a Balenciaga gown once. Everyone freaked out. “Jessica! Have you been eating!” I wanted to cry. “Yes! Yes! I’m so sorry that I ate! Forgive me! Oh God, forgive me!” It’s so funny. Blood under your nostrils is business as usual. Mustard on the corner of your mouth? Persecution.
In October, I went home for Thanksgiving for the first time in years. Sandwiched, no pun intended, between all of my brothers. Switching between mouthfuls of garlic mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes with melted marshmallow. Their girlfriends used to ask me questions. “So, like, how do you stay so thin?” My programmed responses were: a diet of steamed veggies, lean protein, loads of cardio. It was after a particularly rough season and painful breakup that I explained to one, as she was pulverising a turkey leg with some kind of red sauce all over her face so that she resembled a lioness dining on an antelope, confusing me and causing me to think I was watching Animal Planet, how it actually works. We snort cocaine, we snack on laxatives, we throw up. We do not eat anything that does not come in pill form or is not a Brazil nut. How I wish they made burger pills. She left so much meat on that turkey leg. The questions stopped, after that.
At the moment I am learning. I’m eating turkey sandwiches, not holding the mayo, and ruining expensive clothing. This is my rebellion. Boy, will my exes be jealous when they discover my greatest love was actually a ham and cheese on rye bread. With pickles. The sweet ones.
[New writer here. As in: not the original creator of this journal. But it's all good, I promise. ;*]
We are always hungry. That can be a problem when you’re a sucker for a good grilled cheese like I am. Gourmet, even. Some people like designer handbags. I like a good smoked provolone and muenster with avocado and bacon. Some fucking sixteen dollar Heaven. There’s this little place in south New Jersey where these are made. You take one bite and then the napkin goes down, the international symbol for “I’m done. I’m so full!” Then it’s a pill in your mouth and some stuff up your nose and you aren’t hungry anymore. You just dream about pancakes with maple sausage between them. The sexiest threesome. Cuban sandwiches dripping with Swiss cheese and moving to Philadelphia to subsist on a diet of cheese steaks. I told a boyfriend once that I wanted to quit working because I missed eating. He used to make me salami and brown mustard sandwiches I would sneak them between shows. Eating them quick out of a zip lock bag. Like an addict with a problem. A wild, desperate animal. I got the mustard on a Balenciaga gown once. Everyone freaked out. “Jessica! Have you been eating!” I wanted to cry. “Yes! Yes! I’m so sorry that I ate! Forgive me! Oh God, forgive me!” It’s so funny. Blood under your nostrils is business as usual. Mustard on the corner of your mouth? Persecution.
In October, I went home for Thanksgiving for the first time in years. Sandwiched, no pun intended, between all of my brothers. Switching between mouthfuls of garlic mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes with melted marshmallow. Their girlfriends used to ask me questions. “So, like, how do you stay so thin?” My programmed responses were: a diet of steamed veggies, lean protein, loads of cardio. It was after a particularly rough season and painful breakup that I explained to one, as she was pulverising a turkey leg with some kind of red sauce all over her face so that she resembled a lioness dining on an antelope, confusing me and causing me to think I was watching Animal Planet, how it actually works. We snort cocaine, we snack on laxatives, we throw up. We do not eat anything that does not come in pill form or is not a Brazil nut. How I wish they made burger pills. She left so much meat on that turkey leg. The questions stopped, after that.
At the moment I am learning. I’m eating turkey sandwiches, not holding the mayo, and ruining expensive clothing. This is my rebellion. Boy, will my exes be jealous when they discover my greatest love was actually a ham and cheese on rye bread. With pickles. The sweet ones.
[New writer here. As in: not the original creator of this journal. But it's all good, I promise. ;*]