Imperfections (20 page)

“I never knew any of this,” I stammered. “You seem to agree with all of this.”

“To me it's not a moral issue or some judgment of vanity. I'm part of that. My breasts were cancer,” Stella said. “I had a double mastectomy. It was something that affected me so profoundly, it crippled me with depression. I felt so incomplete, I wanted to die. A part of me was missing. I had to stop modelling. I had my chest reconstructed and here I am. I don't doubt it saved my life. I don't doubt that there are other women that feel the same way as I do.

“One hundred years of suffering,” she continued, “and the result is not simply two half-grapefruits sitting high on my chest. The result of one hundred years is also making women whole again. The result of those hundred years is both good and bad, both painful and amazing. It can't be categorized as any one of those things.”

I couldn't argue with a word she said. I watched Stella talk confidently. Her beauty was real even if her breasts were fake.

Fantasy became reality. The line between the two disappeared.

CHAPTER 11

Sexy Beef in the Slaughterhouse of Desire

Modelling is the communication of want, desire, sex and fantasy. At a show, when I rounded the corner from the back of the house to the front, I recited my anthem, my mantra. Lights blazed, flashbulbs fired, television-camera eyes stared and I had twenty seconds to make it all happen, to be watched, to be the one thing that was branded onto the soft grey tissue of their minds. I wanted to be the sun they stared into, the deep purple spot burned into their retinas that they would see every time they blinked.

In those twenty seconds, I expressed myself in the most primal way. My walk, my hair, the expression that I pushed through my face like a fist through glass, like a bullet through a brain. I didn't have to speak to tell them a story, no matter what country I was in. I didn't need to speak Spanish, Russian, French or Whateverthefuck because what I did translated into all languages and kicked through all cultural barriers. My mind projected through me and drove my look to something deeper, psychic and subconsciously perceptible that heightened physical attraction from good to great, from great to irresistible. It's attitude more than look. It's intense and personal and animal and it was there as I went around the corner and into the light of the most important thirty-five metres in Whateverthefuck country I was in. My mantra growled in my head.

I am pure animal lust.

I am the most desired slip of skin that ever walked.

I am a firecracker exploding in your face. I'm taking an eye with me. It's mine, now. I own it.

I fucked your wife on the hood of your Porsche.

I am a screaming baboon shaking a tree.

I am a hurricane laying waste to your jungle village.

I fucked your sister on the dance floor and yes, that Primitive Radio Gods song was playing.

I am the sexiest side of beef in the slaughterhouse of desire.

I am a holiday-Monday, sleep-in slow fuck.

I am a memory.
 

I raged off the runway and into the tight crowds of bustling half-naked bodies backstage. I made my way through the dark chaos to where I had left my duffle bag and draped my street clothes over a rack. The crowd parted and Stella Supernova towered over the throng. She smiled, winked and strode by leaving a swirling scent of apricots in her wake. I stared at her, open-mouthed and awestruck, as the chaos enveloped her again.

I spied Donna through the fleeting gap. She sat at a mirror framed with light bulbs. A makeup artist flitted from one side of her to the other. I hadn't seen Donna in weeks. Our schedules had kept us on opposite ends of the world.
 

As I approached, I noticed something different. Her face sagged slightly on one side. Worried thoughts sprung to mind. I had known Donna to occasionally partake in cocaine. I had known cocaine users to have strokes. My heart skipped a beat.
 

Did my Donna have a coke stroke?

“Donna.” I clasped her by the shoulders. “Are you okay?

“I am so happy,” she squealed, though her face did not move. A stitch of a wrinkle puckered the bridge of her nose. Her forehead had all the expression of a steak. The left half of her face drooped. The makeup artist elbowed her way through my embrace, maniacally powdering and applying lipstick, trying her best to even up Donna's face.

“Your face…” I stuttered.

The makeup artist glared at me.

“Isn't it amazing?” Donna screeched. “I got Botoxed.”

“What?”

“Botoxed. They use it on spastics and stuff.”

The makeup artist sighed and took a step back.

Donna looked at me as if I was a dog that pooped on the rug. “You know, multiply sclerotics and people with muscle spasms and stuff. It paralyzes the muscles, you know, to stop their flailing around.” She waved her arms for effect. “And it gets rid of wrinkles,” she squealed again.

I had trouble aligning the excitement in her voice to the lack of expression on her face. The disconnect was disconcerting.

“Dr. Bella sent me to Canada to get it.”

The makeup artist shrugged and wandered off.

That evening became a blur, the show ending, the cab ride to the airport, Donna at my side on the plane. The cabin lights dimmed and both of us got ready for our first sleep in what seemed like months. I declined the sleeping pills she offered and wound up shifting back and forth in my seat for eight hours.
 

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the captain's voice oozed through the speakers and into the dimly lit cabin. “Good morning from the flight deck. Myself and co-pilot Jeff hope you are having a pleasant flight. We're about halfway through our journey and are a bit ahead of schedule due to a friendly tailwind. Our lovely flight attendants are going to be coming through the cabin in a few moments to offer our inflight breakfast service. We do expect to encounter a bit of turbulence once we're over land again but the disturbance should be weak, so please, sit back and continue to enjoy your flight. On behalf of co-pilot Jeff, myself and your cabin crew, thank you again for choosing American Airlines.”

 
Donna snorted in her drug-induced sleep, her head lolling to one side. A strand of drool hung glamorously from the corner of her wrinkle-free mouth.

I didn't do drugs though I tried them once. I can't really be more specific about what I took. They were the generic kind of drugs that one takes and then can't remember a thing about the previous night.
 

I took drugs on the evening I proposed to Donna. Donna was getting ready for her flight to Miami for her labiaplasty appointment. She had booked with a pre-eminent labiaplastist and had been on a waiting list for more than a year. I remember her telling me in detail how she wanted smaller labia majora and plumper labia minora. She told me labia medius was all the rage these days.

I remember Donna, smiling, looking down at me on one knee and nodding at the ring.
 

Me, welling up with pride, interpreting that as acceptance.

Donna, checking her plane ticket and saying, “I gotta run.”

Me, saying something romantic like, “Baby, can I call you a cab?”

Donna, leaving in a taxi, her silhouette talking on the cellphone.

Me, waking up on the floor of a cavernous hotel room with an overwhelming pressure in my bowels and the sorest nipples I have ever experienced. I lay on my side, the arm draped across my chest wasn't mine. It was woven under my arm and belonged to whoever was spooning me. It was hard to focus at first but, after some rapid blinking, a sea of naked arms and legs spread out before me.

I glanced over my shoulder.
 

The arm belonged to Paige Green.

As I wiggled away from her, the pressure in my bowels eased. It was then I realized I had been impaled by the strap-on Paige was wearing. As it slid from between my greasy cheeks, she smiled and sighed but did not wake up. I was startled and slightly intimidated by the size of it, a deep blue latex phallus draped to the floor as casually as her arm had draped over me. I was also a little confused by how natural it looked on her, as if she had found the perfect Chloe clutch for a stunning Mouret gown.
 

There was a small, white tag with black print on it stitched to the leather between the studs, beside the snaps that bound the strap-on to Paige.

Johnson DeLong. Made in China.

What would the little peasants working in the Johnson DeLong Strap-On factory think of making giant penises en masse for export? Shelves upon shelves of droopy, multi-coloured phalli in storage, waiting to be boxed and shipped to North America. I was embarrassed for our continent. Surely the little peasant workers' sensibilities would have tended toward the more practical, such as food and clothing and the like.

I stood, wearing only socks, the sole vertical body in the room. I glanced out the wall of windows. Midday traffic bustled by in silence twenty storeys below. Those people down on the street, out there in the sunshine, were wholly unaware of the sleeping Twister game happening here; they were oblivious of my numb anus and aching nipples.
 

What city was this? I rubbed my nipples thoughtfully only to meet cold metal. My heart jumped and I looked down. I was thankful to find that it was only a pair of nipple clamps and not some weird piercing.
 

That was the moment I decided I didn't need drugs in my life.

I realized that if this is what drugs can do for me, waking up wearing only socks and nipple clamps after getting ass-raped in an orgy by a small-d designer and having no clue what city I'm in or where my Prada suit and Gucci sneaks are, I don't need them.
 

Surely if that sentiment could be squeezed into an anti-drug campaign to play during Saturday morning cartoons, there would be fewer kids on drugs.

I picked my way through the strewn bodies and into the bathroom. There were bodies there as well, two stacked in the tub, one caged in the shower stall, and one in front of the toilet who inchwormed away when I lifted the lid and peed. My head ached with the release of pressure.

Done. Shake. Shake.

I needed Aspirin. There was a small medicine chest on the other side of the room, beside the sink.

On the short walk to the sink to wash my hands, the slippery sensation of my butt crack led me to wonder. I flipped open the medicine cabinet and absent-mindedly fingered around for a bottle of painkillers before curiosity got the better of me. I glanced at the bodies reflected in the bathroom mirror to make sure no one was watching before spinning around and bending over. I craned my body to one side, like a swimming fish, to see my butt hole. I gazed at its reflection and felt a distinct disconnect from the puckered orifice.

How could it be that I had never seen it before, this unintroduced little stranger on my own body?

Without an intimate knowledge of my anus, I couldn't tell if it was any different after Paige's intrusion.

Was it supposed to look like that?

How could I not know every inch of my body after living in it for twenty years?

If I didn't know this about myself, what else didn't I know?

My butt hole was something on the outside, something that I could have seen if I had only looked. Yet there it was, a total surprise. Its presence led me to think, if I was such a stranger on the outside, did I truly know anything about myself? If I didn't know every inch of my own skin, where did I stand on bigger issues like how did I feel about the recent IRA action in Manchester? Was I a conspiracy theorist because I believed the crash of TWA Flight 800 was the result of an American missile attack? Where did I stand on fur in fashion?

Someone cleared their throat.

I bolted upright, immediately flushed with embarrassment, thrusting my hands in front of my creeping jimber in a hopeless bid for modesty.

“What are you doing?”

It was Paige, in a housecoat with the hotel monogram embroidered on it.

“Um, I'm looking for Aspirin.”

“Probably won't find any in there.” Paige laughed, crossed the room and kissed me on the cheek.

“Richard, you're amazing. We are so lucky we found each other, in this life I mean.” Then she said in an even, unwavering tone. “I knew one day we'd be together. I used to watch you with the others backstage. The world seemed to just move as static around a crystal clear you. Once, I even hid behind a rack of evening gowns so I could watch you uninterrupted. I'd watch you onstage, my eyes getting dry because I didn't even want to blink. I couldn't take my mind off you, even in my sleep. I knew you'd find your way to me and we'd be together again. Forever.”

What was she talking about?

“You should move in to my place,” she said. “I have space in my closet for your clothes.”

What happened last night?