Meeting Meryl

October 9th, 2005

Drive by a bunch of men installing a public sculpture near your home. It is an impressive rock, sliced in half and suspended with steel cords between four metal poles. Squint at it as your husband says, “What the hell IS that?”

Pass the rock several times over the next few days as you run errands. It’s a nice rock, and you are growing fond of it. Sometimes you feel like that rock, split in two, pulled in opposing directions. But you are too busy to philosophize much more than this, for you Must Do Your Part to Keep Your Family Alive and Passably Hygienic.

Attend to your children; attempt to get them to eat more than a half ounce of food per day, attempt to get them to brush their teeth more than four times a week. Fail at these things. Vacuum listlessly. Wonder if it is too late for law school. Wonder why the student loan people are surprised that your MFA in Theatre has not garnered you the $58,000 you still need to pay them off.

Sift through a long-neglected pile of mail. Peruse a calendar of upcoming events at the local art museum, a place that has exhibits like exploding cars, taxidermied tigers run through with hundreds of scary arrows, and photography of forked-tongued women sitting in trees globbed with fake flesh. You like this place.

Stop breathing. You are looking at the name of the husband of your favorite actress in the universe. Her husband is an artist, and an exhibit of his work is opening at the museum. It is HIS rock.

Immediately email your friend who works at the museum. Say you noticed that this artist is having an art opening. Ask when that opening is. Wait. Your friend writes back. He knows what you are asking. The opening is tomorrow afternoon. She is expected, he writes. Would you like me to get you on the list?

You would like. You would like very much. You convey this to your friend via a stream of overly high-spirited punctuation.

Your friend replies at once. You are not surprised, as he is a kind, dependable man, a man who is frequently called upon to accommodate the rabid enthusiasms of others.

His email contains several sentences, but one word rockets off the page, right through your dilated pupils. The word zaps up your optic nerve like cartoon TNT, exploding into your brain: Done.

You are on the list.

At this time tomorrow, if you play your cards right, you will be inhaling the exhaled molecules of the finest actress of all time, the actress you have loved from afar since you were ten years old, old enough to see her films, old enough to be a regular reader of Ann Landers and the horoscopes and the Daily Celebrity Birthdays in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

There is no reason to wait. This is a blog post; you may certainly time-travel if you wish. Fast-forward to tomorrow afternoon, which finds you grappling with foundation garments at the top of your staircase—an exceedingly dangerous place for such grappling to occur.

You have never needed the BG more. You struggle as you have never struggled before, nearly toppling over the banister and plunging headfirst to the most humiliating demise of all time. Wonder if the mortician has dealt with this before, a bloated corpse trapped mid-thigh in a spandex butt girdle.

Hop away from the perilous staircase and into your room, where you lose your balance and slam your elbow against the dresser. Ignore the blinding pain; continue to fight the good fight. Wonder if you can buy one of those Jaws of Life contraptions on QVC, just to keep on hand for times like this. If you cannot get the butt girdle on, you cannot go. The people at the door will refuse to let you in, saying We’re very sorry, but we simply cannot accommodate the beluga whale you’re wearing around your waist.

Cry out in frustration. You are running out of time. Pray to the patron saint of butt girdles. You do not know who she is, but you would bet the farm that she is a she, and that she has a very unattractive name like Hedwig or Katrinka or Myrtle. Decide on Myrtle because you like the idea of a patron saint whose name rhymes with the thing she’s patronizing.

At this very moment, several size-2 heavenly angels in kitten heels are wheeling St. Myrtle into the operating room for a little liposuction. Nevertheless, Myrtle hears your plea. She doesn’t get a lot of calls these days, and she appreciates the business. Feel all tingly as St. Myrtle sprinkles some sparkly, religious butt girdle lubricant on your head and other pertinent body parts.

The BG slips magically into place. You know it is doing its job because your lower body now feels as though it is encased in concrete, or in that carbon-freezing chamber that Han Solo had to put up with for a few scenes.

Elation courses through your veins as you struggle to breathe. If you could gather enough air into your lungs, you would yell, You rock, St. Myrt of the Girt! Instead you emit a strangled guttural noise that sounds like ankooeezus.

I’m sorry. As much as I know you’d like to, you cannot time-travel, not right now. Forget what I said before. You have another foundation garment to struggle into, the flesh-colored upper-body one that will do its best to smash your obscene bosom into submission so that it does not dip into the artichoke dip at the reception before you do.

“What are you doing?” your husband calls from the bathroom at the end of the hall. He asks this because once again you are slamming into walls and furniture and moaning like a wounded antelope.

What are you doing? You are busy being a National Geographic special. You are going to be late to your one and only chance to occupy the same airspace as your hero because you are a chubby, squishy warthog who is being squeezed to death by a vicious Lycra python.

This is not good, not good at all. Abort! Abort!

When you dislocate your left shoulder in a failed attempt to extricate yourself from the Tube of Death, give in and squeal for help like the pathetic warthog you are. Your husband comes to your aid, but he does not know where to grab. Your brain has gone without oxygen for more than three minutes and you are now saying things like, Pull up pull down pull it off pull it in pull it god just pull it pull it pull it.

Your husband gives the Tube of Death one last, savage tug. Miraculously, he has managed to pop it into place. From your armpits to your knees, you are immobile, and it is good. In a short time, your extremities will begin swelling, rendering you blue and unrecognizable, so there is no time to lose.

Now you may time-travel again. Hurry. Opportunity is knocking, and soon you will be too brain-dead to figure out where the knock is coming from.

Mince your way to the big suspended rock across the street from the museum. Lots of people are milling about, but no one seems to be sweating as profusely as you.

Drink a free cup of Perrier. Scan the scene. No sign of her yet. Forget that you have not finished your Perrier when you motion with your cup for a refill. Your Perrier backwash flies from your cup onto the Perrier bartender and into all of the other cups of free Perrier.

Slink away from the Perrier bar and its frowning bartender. Hide behind one of the big metal poles that the big sawed-in-half rock is suspended from. Wonder what the rock means. Wonder if the rock minded. Wonder how many people the rock would kill if the cables snapped.

Take a few steps back. Scan the scene again.

And just like that, there she is. Crossing the street on her way to the rock, greeting friends, laughing. She is lovely. She is coming closer. Two foundation garments, one dislocated shoulder, the Perrier moment—it has all been worth it.

To be continued…

Entry Filed under: Uncategorized, Scribbles. (Writing & Art), Pretty flowers. (Berkshires), See Mommy laugh. (Favorites)