two two two two two (a cop-out. in exchange, feel free to cop a grammatical feel.)

I always want what I can’t have. And I want to start this off with a cliché, so you’ll just have to bear with me and wave away the overuse of the statement.
We always want what we can’t have. And sometimes, if we’re lucky and determined and we don’t trip over our second guesses…we get what it is we’ve been wanting. That’s how I like to approach things, anyway: I like to think it’s the long-dormant American in me finally shining through.
*
It was seven-thirty in the morning. The clinic was sparkling, brighter then most hospitals in Quebec ever do, I’m sure. It’s all clean lines and fogged glass and dark wood, which made me feel taken care of. Since I can remember, I’ve trusted clean, bright, beautiful things. Maybe because my parents, my grandparents, my whole family was always so young, and bright, and good-looking.
In any case, I went in alone, which is the best way for life-altering things to happen. Poetic redemption always makes me smile to myself: whenever something “goes the way it would/should/could” in a book or a movie or an otherwise perfectly orchestrated situation, I smile to myself and make a note of it, if only for the sake of acknowledging the universe’s good planning. It is my firm belief that even the all-powerful guiding forces of the world need to know they’re doing a good job.
The woman at the desk hands me a cup and, in polite and perfect French, asks me to duck into the bathroom so that I can procure a sample of my urine, strip down, and shimmy into a surgical gown. After a bit of shuffling, I look in the mirror one last time and grin. This is the last time they’ll ever…this is the last time I’ll feel them…
*
It’s some afternoon at the cusp of summer. It can’t be later then June, because there’s concrete and heat and lingering memories of tightly clutched pencils over momentarily important pieces of paper. We’re at the pool, my friends and I, and we’re getting undressed.
They’re all in cute bikinis. There’s lots of string and a couple polka dots at least. I am in a red Speedo. I look like I’m swimming for the Canadian Olympic team, without the muscle definition. We’re 14, so there’s a little hesitation all around. Are we pretty enough? Will we melt in the water? Do we deserve to be looked at?
We slip into the pool. The water is lukewarm, but it’s better than the hot air. Off-hand, someone asks for my cup-size. Or was it why I’m wearing that one-piece? Or how heavy are they on the front of my body, when I’m so small like that? Whatever. It was something.
I got out of the pool and ran to my sweatshirt. Why a sweatshirt on that hot day, I’ll never be able to explain to you. It wasn’t even a conscious decision, just like the scarves and the blazers and boys’ polos that sag over my body aren’t conscious. But I went to that sweatshirt, and I buried my little body in its warm fleece insides, and I did not emerge from it or the shade until my friends were ready to leave.
*
I’m wasting time. I can’t figure out how this thing is supposed to tie. It doesn’t matter; they’ll see me naked anyways, and I’ll be asleep, so what the hell, right? The body, MY body, is all science and incisions to these people. And as long as they’re good at their science, I’m not about to start complaining.
I sit on the edge of the gurney, swinging my legs, feeling strangely Zen. This is a pretty big deal, but I’m as calm as a lake on Saturday morning. I am a lotus flower in hospital green.
Another woman strolls in, older, toned, tan, eager, and gets subjected to the same pee-robe-nakedness treatment. I saw her in the lobby 20 minutes ago, and I distinctly remember wondering what she would ever want to change about her body. It was perfect, from the looks of it. She was SO in shape.
She settles on the bed next to me, and the nurse tends to her first. Naturally, I eavesdrop.
Her surgery is shorter.
She gets a special codeine pill to ease the effects of the anesthetic.
She is Italian, not French like I suspected.
And she is having something ‘mamaire’ done to both sides of her body.
Hmmm.
Two little boxes get discreetly placed at the foot of her bed. I feel almost ashamed at the blatantness, at the perfect symmetry of the situation. This woman was having a breast augmentation, and there was her new chest, wrapped in plastic and cardboard at her feet.
I wanted to make some witty comment about how we could just trade right now, about how silly life was, about how we always wanted exactly what we can’t have and look at us both! beating the system of what we’d been assigned! in backless gowns, no less! But I couldn’t find a way. I simply smiled to myself, noting Karma’s excellent job, and settled down to have my blood pressure taken and my boobs marked up with black sharpie.
*
I don’t know how to explain it to people without sounding like a jerk, but somehow I feel the need to try anyways.
It wasn’t something that I could control. It’s not something I want to control, that I felt I should. It’s just that, for me, the world seems to have no boundaries. Did I grow up entitled? Did something in my breeding, in my genetics, lead me to believe that I have it all coming to me?
My mom used to say that when we fought. When she’d get frustrated with my teenaged reasoning, she’d whip it out, knowing that it cut right through me every time. “You’re so selfish, Talia. You act like you just have the whole world coming right to you.”
It isn’t anything like that. It isn’t anything that has been cultivated by my upbringing or brought to fruition by any kind of snobbery. It is something that life has backed up for me every step of the way. It’s been solidified by my experience.
When I see something I want, my natural and uninhibited instinct is to have it. And if I can’t have it, it’s only because I’ve found (or convinced myself?) that I don’t really want it any more.
I started brushing up against her more closely, started watching the way we’d look at each other and the way I’d feel when she was in the room, and all I knew was that I wanted to know her and to call her something close to my heart. It didn’t even cross my mind that it made no sense given my previous romantic or sexual track record, or that something as big as society or as small as my little brothers wouldn’t get it. I wanted, and so I would get.
I told her this, in blatant terms, with no agony or second doubts. It wasn’t that I knew she felt the same, though I certainly wasn’t afraid. I just needed to know if what I wanted was feasible. And she answered me, and eventually she loved me, and to this day, I am holding in my palms something that I can scarcely believe I deserve.
*
What is this, E.R.?
They wheeled me in, pumped me up, and shimmied me on to the operating table. My surgeon is talking about her summer vacation with one of the nurses, and they all turn and nod at me from behind their masks, ask if I’m feeling okay. I guess that’s fine. What did I expect them to ask, my opinion on the new N.E.R.D. album?
They pierce my skin and feed in the I.V., which gets less and less painful every time. I don’t know if I’m getting less squeamish or the needles are getting skinnier. I say I’m a little nervous, but I feel comfy in my backless gown, and the next thing I know, I don’t know anything at all.
*
I’ve spiraled out of control only once.
I wrote down my meals for a full three days in my journal, and it was awful. Counting calories, in my sacred little space. How dare I? What made me?
I felt like a psychopath. I might as well have self-diagnosed myself with anorexia. Until this year, there was not a thing you could tell me about my body that I didn’t already know and accept, even my chest. Stoically, with the knowledge that one day I would change it, but still, I acquiesced to its existence. I had self-love completely in the bag. But for whatever reason, the rest of the world became too much for me, and the whip had to come down on something. My body was right in front of me.
I consumed less then 1700 calories a day. I ate nothing but salad and granola, refused myself seconds, did the elliptical. Healthy enough, I guess. Nothing drastic. But it felt awful. I was so ashamed of my sudden obsession. I felt like a fool. I felt so far away from myself. Could I be a size 4 again? Was my cup size smaller yet?
To this day, every pinch I give my stomach, every second of self-doubt I feel when I look in the mirror, throws me back to those three pages of notes in my journal. And every day since then, I feel like I’m clawing my way back from the edge of the Grand Canyon, wondering how I could ever have contemplated such a ridiculous jump away from solid ground.
*
I wake up to a clear and focused picture, the lens perfectly in place. No grogginess, no sore arms.
“Can I see my parents yet?”
“Not yet, sweetie, you’ve gotta stay here for an hour.”
A whole hour!? Is that a joke? I’ve got things to do. I’ve got people to see. Like my new girls.
I keep my eyes open and look around inquisitively, determined to show the nurses in the recovery room that I’m not only completely fine, but raring to go. Finally, they take me to the bathroom, which I zoom towards at what is apparently record speed for post-operation patients.
“Wow, you’re doing great. You must have a really high tolerance to pain,” the nurse says, wide-eyed. I can’t help but laugh out loud.
“Tell my mother that, please. She’ll die.”
“Well…then, you must be really athletic.”
I chuckle again, this time to myself. The woman clearly doesn’t know what she’s dealing with, but I take the compliment. I feel great. I could run a marathon. I could wear a halter top. I could take on the world, for crying out loud. I’m a B fucking 34.
*
We can always look back on the evolution of the marriage between our minds and our bodies; the continuous, complicated Argentine tango between what we see in our heads and what we see in the mirror. And undoubtedly, upon looking, we all find our honeymoons, and our fights, our great meals, and our triumphs, and our long, longggg days.
We can always change our outlook, our frame of mind, our muscle definition. But we cannot change the decisions we’ve made when we’ve made them, or what we’ve wanted when we’ve wanted it, or what we’re doing with the time that God or The Universe or the Big, Blank Hole has given us.
We can, however, change the chest size the powers that be have handed down to our humble frames. So I did. Because I could. And I will continue to do, because I can.
This is the renewal of the vows between my inside and my outside. And as for my back and shoulders?
They’ve never felt better.

one two step

i'm torn
between boston winters and montreal summers
or is it the other way around?
the ground looks so different depending on where you put your skin.
if you lay belly-down against the pavement of a city, any city, even the city you know and love every nook and cranny of...i'm sure you see it way differently.
i want to zip open my cities and climb inside them
know what makes them tick
charm them
maybe alarm them on occasion
but nothing serious.
just enough dizzyness
and sidewalk-level perspective
to let them know
i mean it.

one one one one one

it's log
it's log
it's big, it's heavy, it's wood.
it's log,
it's log,
it's better than bad, it's good!
*
responsibilities echo in the corridor of my mind
walking somewhere with purpose awakens muscles sleeping in the sun
and still i feel that there's some resting left, waiting
that this stretch of a summer ain't over or done.
but i take down the log
with my usual brand of precision
snaky notes and shaky thoughts of things other then business
and i wonder how i'll turn out in the end
if i'll disappoint or astound
if i'll get it all down
or if i will stumble
over the strangely accurate balance of fairness that exists in the world.