Body of Clay

© 2000 All Rights Reserved........By Margaret Karmazin

I've always felt that my eyebrows are sparse. It didn't matter so much when I went blond, but now that I'm dark auburn, they come off looking like scattered seed. Mary Ann at the salon tells me about Suki's, this discreet little shop where they do electrolysis and eyebrow and eyeliner tattooing. Mind you, this is not some filthy dive where bikers get dragons drawn on their private parts. Models and rich socialites frequent this place in order to stay attractive. I call right up and beg for an appointment.

Terry, the owner, claims to be booked 'til the following February, but then somebody cancels and he calls me. He adds a tiny bit more arch than I naturally have which gives me a slightly devilish look. At first I dig it but later when I turn platinum blonde for a while, I feel it detracts from my more ethereal look and I return to see if Terry can fix it. Evidently, my question insults him. I seem to be stuck with the arch, period. And Terry looks like he doesn't want to see my face or hear my name again. He's a very dramatic person.

A week later I attend my neighbor's Halloween party and this guy from Syracuse is there. He's visiting his sister down here and went to high school with the neighbor. Apparently he's a genius and majors in two things at the same time, physics and marketing, can you imagine? What's he going to do - sell quarks? He has the current cool, intelligent look - wiry skinny with gelled hair, those glasses with teeny lenses and a weird little beard like a smudge under his chin. This look turns me on - in a sinking, sinister kind of way. I'm really not interested in getting naked with him, but a kiss would be interesting. I'm obsessing about this when he suddenly stops lecturing on light waves and says, "You know, you'd be really hot looking if your chin wasn't receding. That's your one flaw."

Suddenly, I am thrown into this black despair, like he's kicked me in the stomach and told me the universe is this big sham and we're all just mites on the head of a pin. After that, I hardly hear him talking; his voice is like a mosquito whine and there's not enough air in the room. I manage to escape from him as soon as possible.

For days afterward, I can hardly drag myself to work and back. Finally, I can't stand it any longer and make an appointment with a plastic surgeon. I get the guy's name from my mother's friend, Ivy, who had reconstructive work done after a breast removal. The guy is a breast man but according to Ivy he's good at everything. He notices my chin as soon as I sit down in front of his desk which only confirms my fears and this makes me wonder how many people have thought about my chin all these years. I mean all those times I was dressed up and imagined I looked sexy or elegant, were they all whispering,"It's such a pity Ramona doesn't do something about that chin; she'd be so attractive if she did?" I have retroactive paranoia.

The operation is not covered by my insurance so I max out one of my credit cards for it but figure it's worth it. I have to use up a week's vacation and the boss is not thrilled. There's some pain involved but not much. Dr. Weinstein says a nose job usually goes with the chin routine, but in my case it's unnecessary. I was born with a relative perfect nose.

After I recover and start paying on the bill, I'm expecting some results in the dating department, but not much happens. When the Halloween party neighbor gets food poisoning and is put in the hospital, I actually run into the sinister Syracuse guy there visiting but he doesn't notice the new chin at all. The nerve of him when it was all his doing in the first place!

Finally I corner him in the hospital coffee shop. "Hey," I say. "Remember me from the party? The one you said needed the chin job?" But then I wished I hadn't said that because he'd think I had the operation to attract him or something when that wasn't the case at all. I just took what he said to heart, that's all.

But now he looks at me like I'm some stranger from the other side of the world and he has the wrong glasses on. "Huh?" he says. "I said that? I can't imagine caring about someone's chin." And then he looks back down at the book he's reading which I see is in some other language - German, I think. I slink away, out of the coffee shop, out of the hospital, and home where I study my face in the mirror while feeling slightly crazed. Is my memory going? Can people in their twenties get Alzheimer's?

While I'm looking in the mirror, the phone rings and it's one of those pain-in-the-ass telemarketers. I don't mind when they're taking a survey - those can be fun actually, but the people selling windows ought to be shot. When I return to the mirror, the first thing I notice is my stomach. It looks kind of odd, like I'm half pregnant. The top half of it is almost flat but from the waist down it really sticks out. I've seen my mother naked and can only assume that my abdomen is going to sink lower until it hangs over my private parts. Her belly is enough to scare a person into over-exercising. Not that sit-ups or leg raises help. I've done them faithfully every other day for 4 years and I still look like this. I realize what I have to do, but how will I pay for it?

The other credit card, that's how. I pick up the phone and dial Dr. Weinstein's office.

This operation makes the chin one like having a tooth filled. Why is there so much pain? Think of having gas only with glass shards embedded in your intestines. "We put this mesh in there to hold everything in place," explains Dr. Weinstein, but I'm not interested in hearing the details. Just give me something more for the pain and leave me in peace so I can sleep. The days pass in a blur. I have an unforeseen infection and am now on antibiotics put in by IV. My mother and sister come and go, but I just want to sleep.

Eventually, the infection clears up and in three months I'm glad I went through with the tummy tuck. Summer's here and for the first time I can wear a two-piece. This one rides low on the hips and I'm thinking about a full-fledged bikini when I happen to turn to the side and see how disgustingly flat my rear is. My God. Have I actually been walking around like this? I grab my hand mirror and check it out in the full-length mirror. It doesn't look the slightest like the butts on those girls in rock videos - you know, perky and round and tight as unripe grapefruits? What have the men who touched it thought? "What have we here, a bowl of cottage cheese?" Ick. There I am nice and flat on the front and a sagging mess in the back. Is this why Bryan dumped me last summer? I remember his brother teasing him once about being such a butt man. This must be the reason. God, I cried my lungs out over that. Here I'd been under the impression we were eventually getting married. I mean I was in with his family and everything and then poof! Just like that I never see any of them again. It's like I stopped existing. Thinking back now, I am sure it was the ass thing. I suppose it's high on his priority list - a good firm one for grabbing onto for the next 50 years. Not that it would still be firm then. But by then he probably wouldn't be firm either.

Both my credit cards are maxed out. I call up my sister who's married to this New Jersey big spender. I can't stand the guy - he's a stereotype. Beefy with buzz cut hair, dresses in black and gray shiny stuff, wears a big gold watch with some important brand name on it and scary black shades. He's a gangsta wannabe and he's thirty years old. Spare me. But he's got money. I don't even want to know how. She answers on the first ring.

"Gerry," I say, "I have this derriere problem."

She starts lecturing me like I have some kind of mental condition but I think she's just looking for a way to feel superior. She has always enjoyed feeling superior to me and in fact, the entire family encourages it. According to what I vaguely remember and what my cousin told me, I was my dad's favorite but he up and got killed on his motorcycle. That left me to the wolves. But now is not the time to make waves; I have business to attend to.

"Gerry, can you guys lend me some money? I think I need about six thousand but I'm good for it what with my job and all. We get an automatic year end raise plus individual ratings and my boss has been quite happy with my work lately (not really true). It's possible my salary will go up six thousand by January, just five months away. I'll definitely pay it back."

"That's not the issue," she says and I'm getting riled but control myself because I want the damned money. "The thing is, Ramona, you keep doing this to yourself and-"

I interrupt her. "But you had a boob job, Gerry. What do you call that?"

She hesitates, then uses this patronizing tone. "I had a perfectly flat chest, Ramona. No clothes fit right. I mean there was nothing for me to wear. It wasn't because I thought I was ugly or anything and Scott liked me fine the way I was, but I just wanted to look right in clothes."

Yeah, right. It's incredible how stupid people think other people are. But I am kissing up here so I don't respond.

"And I stopped with that," she says. "That's all I'm interested in having done. But you, you have this problem."

"I don't have any problem!" I say sharply, then tone back down. "I mean I want to look good in clothes too and with this flat flabby rear, that's impossible. Pants just don't fit. And skirts! They look like I'm on backwards!"

Clothes are a language my sister relates to. I have plugged into her World Reality. "Well," she slowly says and I know ole Scott will soon be scratching his name out on a check.

They use almost the same deal on my rear as they do on boobs - inserts. I'm very pleased with the results except that my butt feels numb. A couple of guys who work at the newsstand I pass on the way to work comment favorably (albeit obscenely) on my new perkiness. However no one else seems to notice. When my friend Karlyn and I go clubbing on Friday, there's no difference in anything. I mean I don't meet any future husband material. No one even asks for my number. Some pervert breathes hot air into my ear and suggests something unthinkable, but that's it.

My friend, Angela, is getting married and I'm in the wedding. She's got weird ideas about bridesmaid dresses and the ones we're wearing are rather revealing. Black and cut out on the sides to contrast with her white and cut out. Naturally, she wants skinny bridesmaids. I only weigh one fourteen, but when I slip my dress on I am mortified. I have love handles! They look like Portobello mushrooms peeking out of spaceship portholes. I just can't be seen in such a humiliating condition.

Liposuction is available at the hospital one block over from where I work. My job is being an executive secretary for one of the vice presidents of HeartPower, a company that designs exercise equipment. Where I work is the office and design headquarters, not where they make the actual equipment. My boss is in his early forties and is one of those intellectual health nuts who pretend to be "earth conscious" while living an expensive life style. I can't honestly say I like him, but working for him is not hideous. He's been reasonably all right about my taking vacation time for my operations, but his patience is wearing thin. Therefore I plan to make the appointment for the liposuction through Dr. Weinstein or whomever I need to and feign severe flu the day before. If I almost pass out, Mr. Burns can hardly refuse to let me off.

It all works out according to plan, however I can see impatience in Mr. Health-Nuts' demeanor. He's probably flying to Aspen for the coming weekend to ski or something and I could be cramping his getting-everything-done plans. Whatever, I show up the next morning at the designated area in the hospital and they prep me for the procedure. Drugged and numbed up, I don't feel any pain. The next day I do, however and then they're all over me pumping me full of antibiotics and mumbling about blood clots but I survive. No one knows I had this done, so no one comes in to see me. My insurance pays for the problems afterwards but not the liposuction itself, for which I will be billed. I'm too sick to care what the cost is.

Amazingly, I recover but not in time for Frankie's wedding. She's not speaking to me. I suppose she has a right to be mad. She couldn't find anyone to fit in my dress so she had to drop one of the ushers and just go with four bridesmaids. Everyone was annoyed and didn't give two shits about the fact that I could have died or something. I'm back at work and actually wearing a skirt size smaller since I now have a decent waistline. Only one person seems to notice - Lisa, the Human Resources Director who asks me if I've taken off a few pounds. She then goes on to complain about all the deadheads applying for work lately and that's the end of it.

Lately, I've been having these headaches and trouble sleeping. I wake up at three in the morning and lie there for three hours staring at the ceiling. One time I have this dream in which I turn into mud and the mud melts and runs off until there is nothing left. I have to get up and find the old stale pack of cigarettes I keep in the freezer. I put it there a year ago when I stopped smoking - I think it was before my breakup with Bryan. I got through that without going back to smoking but now for some reason I light one up. When I inhale it tastes like something dead. There is nothing to comfort me, nothing to take my mind off the melting mud.

I realize then that it's been months since I had an actual date. My neighbor came over one night to complain about his girlfriend and we ended up in bed, but he was back with Frieda the next day. Now he avoids eye contact with me if we pass in the hallway.

After work the next day, I'm in the gym they have for employees (filled with HeartPower machines, of course) and I notice in the mirror that my underarms are flubbing. They do it if I snap them out real hard. My God, I think, if they're like this now, what will they look like when I'm forty? I remember hearing that Oprah was considering having hers done and figure the best way to do it would be plastic surgery, definitely not liposuction. I'd have to be nuts to risk that again. But my credit cards are maxed. Then I remember my grandpa left me these Savings Bonds and I think they amount to about four thousand dollars. I call Dr. Weinstein the next day from work and make an appointment.

That night I have another weird dream. In it, there is this sea creature that looks like a silver snake except he has little wings, and he looks for souls to eat. I get this terrible feeling as he moves through the water because I know what he's after. But he comes right up to me and moves on by, like he doesn't even see me and then oddly, I feel even worse than before - forlorn and utterly alone.

It's two weeks before the appointment and Dr. Weinstein doesn't seem real happy to see me. He has that body language going on that guys have when they're thinking about dumping you.

"Um, Ramona," he says while he fidgets, "you've had quite a bit done already and maybe you need to lay off a while. You're an attractive young woman with a nice figure as it is. I mean you're not in show business or anything so there's no need for perfection. The way you are now, anyone would be proud to have you on his arm and I don't quite-"

I interrupt him. "I can't stand flabby arms, Mark. (We're on first name terms by now.) Just can't stand 'em. When I was a kid and they dragged me to church, all I did was watch the old ladies in the choir with their big flabby arms and wanted to throw up. I just can't stand the thought of growing old with my arms flapping around. That is one thing I refuse to do."

Mark leans back and crosses his arms across this chest. I know what this means; he is shutting me out. I can see on his face this entire battle going on, like the good angel and the bad angel duking it out. Money versus ethics, although I fail to see what is unethical about having my arms done. "If you don't do it, I'll just find someone else who will," I tell him.

Eventually he relents, but seems pissed with me and the attitude does not change when I report for surgery.

Mr. Burns is insinuating that he won't take much more of my absences and Lisa told me he's been down to see her about interviewing for a replacement. I don't even tell my family what I'm doing anymore; it's better the less they know. Claiming to be busy at work gets me off.

The sleeplessness and dreams are a common occurrence now. I find myself wandering through empty houses that have no floors or inside walls. I walk all around inside but there is never anyone or anything in them. In one dream, someone hands me this little gray box and when I open it, it's empty. This sounds benign, but I cannot begin to describe the horror I feel.

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