Maeve in America Page 9
I don’t behave like this with anything else nice that’s been offered to me. I smile and say thank you. The last time someone made me dinner, it genuinely was not good; it was vegetarian lasagna and it was, as the French say, “Tres disgusting avec too much poivre vert.” I ate it, and thanked my host profusely. In fact, I complimented it, saying, “Wow, I had no idea that green peppers even turned that color, it’s like witchcraft, but good witchcraft.” You see, the fact that they made it and offered it to me negated the fact that the food was bad. Unlike the way I decimate compliments, I would never dream of explaining in steps and stages just how stupid the cook was to make it that way, with those terrible ingredients and that outdated recipe. I did not tell the host my private rules for lasagna, which are, broad strokes, never make vegetarian lasagna, the more detailed version being to fry some pancetta for a moment before you add the beef to the pan. In that case, I mind my manners, so I should know better than to trash a compliment and the person kind enough to give me one. I know the proper response to a compliment, because my therapist told me. “Take a fucking compliment, ya dumb bitch, just say thank you and move it along!” No, wait, my therapist didn’t tell me that. Who said that? Oh, yes, the man lying on the ground outside the gates of Prospect Park right after I gave him the finger for catcalling.
The opposite of a compliment is an insult, and if you’re good at one, you’ll be good at the other. I pride myself on keeping my insult devil tamped down with a little pitchfork held by my compliment angel. I’m very good at giving compliments, and I use my power wisely. I know when a compliment slips over the line to flattery, and I know too when to rein them in. My friend Jon loves compliments so much that I hold back on them when he’s around. It’s a mean game, I know, but it’s truly exquisite to bring him up to the edge, from which he can’t help himself from asking, Did you hear my joke? Did you notice my new glasses? Didn’t I do wonderfully back there in the meeting? I relieve him then: I loved that joke, it’s next-level. Your glasses are cool, like something Lady Gaga would wear. And you did so well in that meeting I was proud to know you, and I think they will definitely feel the same!
I’m not one of those people who desperately hands out compliments the way an unpopular child hands out invitations to her birthday party. There has to be some self-control employed; if there are too many compliments delivered with too much neediness, they will become impotent, pointless, what’s known as “an embarrassment of compliments.” Remember the song that went, “Compliments girl on your kiss?” Now, that’s a great compliment. Many of us are insecure about our kissing prowess. I’ve certainly asked myself a number of questions while kissing: Is my breath okay or can he tell I popped a quick Babybel right before I got here? Should I play dead and pretend he’s doing CPR and cough up water like he saved my life? Is it normal for his tongue to bleed so heavily after I’m done with him? My point is, it’s great to get some reassurance.
The problem I have with that song is the line that follows the compliment. “Compliments girl on your kiss. / You’re number one girl on my list.” Oh, I beg your pardon, you have a list? Revealing the existence of said list does not imply confidence. Besides, the opening lyric of that song is “Compliments to all nice and decent girls, / Coming from the DJ Red Dragon.” Oh, dear, DJ Red Dragon. Don’t you understand? That does not work. You’re spreading yourself too thin. Personalized compliments are the only ones that work. There is no point in complimenting everyone at once. It makes you seem phony and wrong. I’ve been to too many Irish weddings, the “traditional” ones where women do not speak, when the red-faced best man stands up and says, “Well done to all the bridesmaids, who are all gorgeous today,” thereby revealing the true ornamental purpose of women in this sorry affair while also failing to convince any of the bridesmaids that they do, in fact, look gorgeous.
The most memorable compliment I ever received came from a pig farmer’s wife when I was twelve years old. My family took just one summer holiday when I was a child, to France, where we stayed in a trailer park and ate lots of bread sticks. We still talk about it, how we spent hours marveling at the canned French food in the supermarket and how my baby sister chewed off the only nipple of her bottle on the ferry there, and my parents couldn’t find a replacement and she had to move immediately on to solids, much to her fury. The other summers, we would take occasional day trips, but this was a time before amusement parks and petting zoos, at least in Ireland. We did visit a few pig farms within driving distance, and it was during one of those trips that I got my first future-tense compliment.
These farms were no rural idylls; rather, they were like pig factories, where the creatures were stacked and stored in crates, frustration gleaming out of their little piggy eyes. They weren’t open for tours or anything—my father would just look them up and phone ahead, explaining he had seven kids and one long summer, and ask if we could come take a look. At one farm, right after she’d explained that the sows tend to squash their piglets when they roll over in their sleep and that’s why they’re separated at night, the farmer’s wife turned to me and said, “When you’re sixteen, you’ll be absolutely stunning.” It was an odd thing to say to a twelve-year-old, a chubby one in a BMX sweater, peering at piglets through giant glasses, but it kept me going for years. For four years, to be exact. That compliment withered and died on the vine when my sixteen-year-old self discovered she was pretty much the exact same as all her previous incarnations, and certainly not yet stunning.
That sorry affair did convince me of one lovely thing, though, that is the impact of a compliment can last much longer if the recipient is a compliment squirrel, a creature who stores compliments away and revisits them as needed, perhaps right before she falls asleep, so her chubby cheeks dimple into a small smile at the memory of a kind word, and she dreams of a stunning future. So I will continue to dole out compliments as needed, and I hope you will do the same. As for taking them, I’m working on it. When I see one headed my way, I no longer duck for cover. I catch it softly, like I would a tiny piglet someone had inexplicably thrown to me. I refuse to crate her up; instead, I give her a little kiss and send her out to play in the great green meadow of good manners, where she will thrive and grow into a wonderful old sow who adores herself, oinking praise upon others in between lazily scratching her own back on the fence post and rolling happily in the mud.
Summer Isn’t the Same Without You
AS I SQUINTED AND SWEATED to the office on Monday morning, I realized that summer’s here and it’s too late to work out. This is the body I find myself in, pale as the moon, heavy as the soil after rainfall, the only one I have to get me through to September. “It’s not designed for heat or brightness,” I complained to the guy getting coffee beside me in the kitchen. “This is the worst thing about being white and . . .”—I search for the word—“and portly!” He was not white and not portly, and looked at me for a moment before saying, “I believe it, and you should really think about that.” I told him it was all I could think about, then I showed him my heat rash.
On summer days, the city boils hotter than the countryside because of the asphalt, concrete, and metal that trap the heat. And all those sizzling hot dogs don’t help either, probably. Scientists call Manhattan “an urban heat island,” and it feels that way too, shimmering and expanding during the long, sweltering days. Street smells ripen, sidewalks bulge with tree roots, and birdsong turns to bird-roar over the rising pleas of the ice-cream truck. The sun is a mad conductor, whipping his metropolitan orchestra into a din that pummels every sense. Everything gets louder, closer, brighter. Underneath all of this the subway trains rumble along, packed with grumpy commuters, oblivious schoolkids, and anxious tourists, all pressed tightly together. On a stalled 6 train, in a car with a busted air conditioner, a collective sigh goes up. A crammed woman looks up from her phone and asks nobody in particular, “Am I crazy, or is this train taking forever?” A man whose armpit I’m facing and whose toolbox is
squashing my feet speaks into my hair. “She needs to chill, bruh.” I squeeze my eyes shut and pray silently, to nobody in particular, Give me an airy mountain, a rocky glen. The train shunts forward, and only the toolbox keeps me from falling. Give me a silty stream with moss-covered banks that I may lie down and die in! I need to chill, bruh.
My bald friend Gary gets to the bar and announces, “This town is so sexy in the summer.” I mutter, “No, it’s not,” as I unpeel the back of my legs from the stool. My friend Lindsay sails in, long-limbed and honey-colored, talking about how she needs this summer to go on forever, and how we should go to the rooftop and soak it all in. Gary is happy to, because people wear less up there, and he has his little sun hat with him. I agree to go up on the condition that we sit in the shade, because I haven’t plucked in days and the sun loves nothing more than to expose imperfections. The antiseptic qualities of heat and light are much lauded, I know. And bad things fester and mushroom in the dark. It’s just that the cold suits me. Put me in a caped woolen coat, see how my gray-blue eyes narrow instinctively against the drizzle, witness my wintry magnificence! Now, wedged into a sundress, I am humiliated.
I watch an elderly woman in a tidy red pantsuit walking her dachshund down Greenwich Ave. Despite the material in their outfits (nylon and fur, respectively), they look cool, unbothered. I examine the woman closely as we wait at a light. Is that . . . talcum powder? She moves away; I’ll never know. A cabdriver leans against his car, playing Candy Crush in a blissfully loose shalwar kameez. I look at him jealously. How is it that he can wear so much more fabric than me, yet be so much more comfortable? In the seminal New York City in the summer movie, Do the Right Thing, Rosie Perez wears a fantastic yellow tank top. I try one on, but it makes me look sickly. That gives me an idea. Perhaps I could model my summer style on the dying woman in the movie Beaches—you know, Bette Midler’s dull friend! She wore white shirts with cream cardigans, huge straw hats, and actual blankets. It’s settled. I find these outfits ideal, in that they prevent both sunburn and male attention.
Summer makes my battle with body image loom large. I understand that body image, as defined by Psychology Today, is the “mental representation one creates, but it may not bear close relation to how others actually see you.” I absolutely concede that “body image is subject to all kinds of distortion from internal elements like our emotions, moods, early experience, and much more.” I’m sure that my brain is messed up and my body image is refracted through many demented lenses, all of which make it bulge and twist unfairly. Nevertheless, my body image strongly influences how I behave. There are days when I can’t stand the sight of myself and prefer to stay in rather than face the world outside in my current form. Isn’t that wild? Intellectually, I’m very disappointed with myself. I’ve let them win! But who is “them”? Isn’t it me, deciding what is beautiful and what is important? I suppose I’m talking, really, about thinness. Not being fat. Isn’t it crazy to say, “I am fat,” as if that’s the be-all and end-all of me? Fat is just a substance, a type of matter, but it’s the matter that matters. If you let it, and I guess I do. I grow furious at myself that I’ve seemingly subscribed to this narrow set of beliefs that values just one version of beauty. I know too that it’s possibly not my fault, perhaps I’m just picking up on what’s around me, the space in the world I occupy.
I know I’m sort of beautiful when I’m listening to my friend at dinner relive her breakup and really hearing her, when the sun strikes my eyes at three p.m. and the gold flecks through my iris glint in a way nobody else’s do, when I’m absorbed in a game with my nephew. Ultimately I understand that this is real beauty, it’s compassion and individuality and connection all at the same time. These are the reasons to love someone. But . . . blah blah blah, you know? I can actually look something like conventionally beautiful—I’ve forced it from time to time. It’s effortful and rare. It takes a village: a trainer, a nutritionist, a makeup artist, a certain angle, the right light, an expression that does not come naturally. I’m very bored by the self-loathing I’ve felt for the past twenty-five years, and with the help of therapy and books, I’ve managed to turn down the volume on much of that chatter. But the fact remains that accepting, let alone liking, the way I look has proven elusive.
I resent spending time “working on it,” even though I’m one of those hypocrites who likes, loves even, how other women have managed to figure it out. I follow a number of body-positive women on social media, and they’re awesome. I don’t mean awesome in the way that it’s used in the United States, to describe a particularly tasty bowl of soup. I mean awesome in the true sense of the word: jaw-dropping, dumbfounding, epic in scale, and stunning in bravery and brilliance. I thought to ask my friend Karolena, a comedian and plus-sized model, about what body positivity meant to her. The night we’d met she’d said something so funny to me, I’ve always remembered it. We were both in our mutual friend’s indie movie, and I told her that I’d had trouble figuring out what to wear. She’d told me, “When in doubt, boobs out.” Then she jiggled, and it was heaven. She was so funny and beautiful and comfortable in her body, I thought she must have always been that way. But even for her, she told me when I asked, loving her body was not an easy journey. She works on it still, and told me that as a black Latina woman, loving her body is a form of resistance, a way of standing up for herself and refusing to feel ashamed of who she is. There are an increasing number of these awesome women—not as many as the hordes of us who stay inside and wish, but still enough to make their presence felt online. I can’t believe how cool they are, and I examine them, I share their images, I feel so glad for them, and bewildered as to how I can have so much love for what they are doing, yet count myself out of any such experience.
And now it’s summer and there’s no swirling coat, no layered woolens, no elegant snood to hide in. It’s sticky and humid and ninety degrees outside. Women are wearing tiny tank tops with holes cut out of the sides for ventilation. Skirts are shorter than ever, long legs cross over twice, once at the knee, again at the ankle, like vines in love, and bony brown shoulders shrug off any hint of self-consciousness, while I sweat and fume in my big pale self. I should probably tell you that nobody I have slept with has had any complaints about my body, but that’s not the point. The point is that for most of my life I’ve been furious at my physical form, as uselessly as a mermaid who curses her tail and only wants to be on land. I’m sure if I was unlucky enough to find myself living in a war zone, or with a disability, or even just exhausted from working jobs at three different Starbucks, body image would be the least of my worries. I tell my therapist about my summer dread. She nods. We’ve been though this before. Not a solution-oriented person, she proceeds to remind me that she will be away for the month of August. That’s going to be the hottest month! What am I supposed to do then? I verbalize in the way she taught me that I feel abandoned (in advance) and this behavior (vacation/disappearing) does not meet my expectations of our relationship. She nods. I follow her eyes to the clock; my time is up.
I go home, and all of this heat and sweat mean I need another shower. Why’s this season got to be so confrontational? I stand still after the shower and look at this body in the mirror, my only permanent companion, for as long as we both shall live, until the second, that same second, when we both shall die. The folds in my belly smile up at me, a big wide smile. I smile back, thinking that this is the truest form of navel-gazing. I cover it, or should that be me, in sunblock and a white dress, then we, or should that be I, head out the door.
I walk alone and slowly through Prospect Park in Brooklyn, the trees leafy and generous, dappling my way. Families are out, every kind of family. Ghanaian teenagers play soccer, old Puerto Rican men dance with their grandbabies, a net is strung between bushes for a volleyball game between a bunch of laughing women in hijab. Various flavors of smoke mingle in the air, and the sun watches over us all, very pleased with himself. I fold the brim of my hat for a se
cond and look up, nodding to my old foe. He stings my eyes and I retreat, settling under an elm tree. It’s calm here, the noise of the city just a warm rumble now. Without my body, how could I sit here? The tree trunk is solid as my back relaxes against it, my feet tip outward as my legs give in to the grassy ground. My phone slips out of my hand and I leave it. I don’t need anything; I’m not hungry or too full, I’m just here, physically present; for once my brain is lined up with my body and they are both just fine. It’s cooler here too, and I can’t help but feel that most simple and elusive of feelings: This is so nice. Then something tiny and buzzing lands on my leg. Is it stinging or biting? I don’t know, but I’m certainly slapping. And just like that, the summer rage blooms within me once more.
On the way home, I get so angry at my body walking up the subway steps I start to laugh. I’m out of shape, and losing my breath a little, my back aches, my face is red. Why can’t I skip up those stairs like a little urban deer? Why can’t I be one of those small-bodied women who bound around like so many frightened impalas? I picture myself thin and tanned, and grow convinced that everything would be different. I suspect I would be happier, wealthier, more loved, generally better at this and every game. It’s so unfair! My friend Mona wants me, her, and our other friend Emma to organize triple dates using dating apps. Emma says we should all dress identically, like nuns, in white turtlenecks with baggy black dresses; that way our dates will have to choose by our personalities only. My problem with this, I explain to them, is that I’m bigger than them. And dressing identically would actually highlight this fact. In that beautiful female way that sees the person before the body, Mona is appalled. What makes you think that will make any difference? I explain to her that my experience, and also society, make me think that my size will make a difference.