KISS and Makeup

Makeup and I had a dysfunctional relationship. We’d start out on a date cordially enough, a dab of foundation, a whisper of blush, a hint of eye shadow. About an hour into the date, in a Jeykell/Hyde style transformation, Makeup would start doing impressions of Heath Ledger in his role as the Joker. The whole point of cosmetics is to look more attractive. Makeup wasn’t holding up its end of the contract. Like any sensible modern woman in an abusive situation, I broke it off. This wasn’t much of a sacrifice until recently, when I noticed I now look like an extra in a zombie movie even without Makeup.

My first public appearance as a author is tomorrow. In honor of the occasion, I decided to give Makeup one last chance. I poddled out to cosmetics counter at the local department store and heaved my backside up onto the makeover stool. Instantly, I was reminded of the last time my derriere hit a similar stool. Because I’m a little pressed for time this week, I’m resurrecting the original description of that debacle from a now defunct blog.

*

In 2003, I had a day to kill in Manhattan while waiting for a flight out to St. John’s, Newfoundland. It was the last week in June. The temperature was ninety-five degrees, the humidity eighty percent. Passing Saks Fifth Avenue, I decided to nip in and pretend I had enough money to shop there while taking advantage of their subarctic air conditioning. Just inside the door, a young man in a lavender shirt and cream slacks accosted me, smiling so broadly and brightly I had to fight the urge to put my sunglasses back on.

“How would you like a free make over?” he asked.

Just my luck. I hadn’t made it three feet into the store and my nefarious plan to steal frigidity had been exposed. I told him I’d love a makeover but couldn’t really afford to buy any of the products he was going to try to sell me.

“No, no!” he protested. “You don’t have to buy anything. Just sit over here in the window and let me make you up.”

“Like an animated window display?”

“Exactly.”

“And I don’t have to buy anything?”

“Pinky swear.” He was the kind of young man who could say something like that with a straight face.

It seemed as good a way as any to spend half an hour. Certainly better than walking around the store looking at things I couldn’t afford. I plunked my butt down on the tall pink stool in the window. The young man asked me to remove my glasses and used a thumb and forefinger grip on my chin to tip my face from side to side.

“Day or evening?” he asked

I figured I could afford a jar of makeup remover pads. “What the hell. Evening.”

His name was Rico. We chatted amicably about the weather, his new apartment and his bitch of an ex who’d made finding a new apartment necessary, while he cleansed, exfoliated, toned and moisturized with two kinds of cream and something that smelled suspiciously like Preparation-H.

He fell silent when the real work began with the attaching and curling of the false eyelashes. Concentration furrowed his brow as he selected concealer, foundation, eye shadow, mascara, blush, lipstick, lip liner, powder, highlighter, cheek gloss and lip gloss. He smeared and dabbed and brushed for about twenty minutes while a small crowd of women formed outside the window to watch him work with increasingly awed expressions. When there was nothing left to brush or dab or smear, he stood back and held out a hand mirror.

“Well, what do you think?”

It was a miracle. The face in the mirror looked gorgeous, glamorous, sexy - nothing like me. “Wow!” I exclaimed. “You are a seriously good at your job.”

He grinned without the least hint of modesty. “You got that right, honey.”

I thanked him profusely and climbed off the stool. A lineup of women had formed in the entry to the display window, waiting for their own miracle makeover. They complimented me as I walked past them. I strode out onto the streets of Manhattan with an extra spring in my step, feeling like a new woman, a beautiful woman, a woman who was ready for any adventure.

I had a wonderful day, albeit a tad myopic due to my unwillingness to put on my glasses and ruin the effect of Rico’s art.

I accidentally joined the Gay Pride Parade when a group of celebrators shoved me into the path of a marcher wearing silver studded leather straps and not much else. I had to walk with him a block or so before making my escape through a gap in the spectators lining the streets.

I got into a shouting match with a fat man wearing a powder blue ball gown complete with tiara, who thought I was trying to steal empty beer cans and bottles from his shopping cart.

I bought lunch from a street vendor and took it into Central Park, where I was mugged by a squirrel for my hot dog (yes, I thought squirrels were herbivores as well) so I bought another hotdog and sat down on the steps of the American Museum of Natural History where I had an entertaining conversation with an intense, middle-aged man wearing a faded grey t-shirt sporting Gerry Garcia’s face on the front and the slogan I SEE DEAD PEOPLE on the back, who mistakenly thought I shared his passion for gruesome rock lyrics.

I walked around Manhattan all afternoon, had fabulous Coquilles St. Jacques at a French restaurant for dinner and arrived back at my hotel late that night, tired and happy - until I caught sight of my face in the mirror lined elevator.

One of my eyelashes had gone AWOL. The other drooped precariously. Sweat had carved pale runnels into the caked remains of foundation, rouge and powder on my cheeks. Smudged mascara blackened both eyes. Of my lipstick, only hints of scarlet that had bled into the lines around my lips remained.

New York City is the only city on earth where I can wear makeup. There, it is possible to walk around an entire day looking like a KISS groupie on a bender and blend right in.

Paper Baby

Recently, I had a few days of inner conflict while I tried to decide whether I should get my abscessing tooth pulled ($195) or make a desperate bid to save it by taking it to visit the endodontist ($1800). In the end, I decided to spend my money on fun things. I called the dentist as soon as the decision was made and insisted on an extraction appointment the next day. After days of obsessing over the decision, I had no intention of spending another week under a cloud of impending doom. When something nasty has to be done, I like to get it over with as soon as possible.

One of the fun things I decided to buy with the money I saved was a signing pen, because my first book signing is scheduled for next week.  I invited friend Wen to join me in my search for a sexy writing implement. She has the same relationship with stationery stores that chocoholics have with Belgian truffles. I like to give her a thrill whenever I can.

As we drove to the store, I mentioned that all the reviews of Sisters of the Sari I’d seen so far were positive and wondered when the bad ones would start coming. Because we see each other so often, Wen is subjected to much more of my pessimism than you, as reader of this blog, have to endure. “Why are you always assuming the worst?” she said, with a smidgen more than a hint of annoyance. “Why can’t you just accept that people like the book?” It was a good question. I thought about it, and decided it was exactly like getting a tooth pulled – no fun, but the sooner it happened, the better.  She didn’t care much for this explanation, pointing out there was no proof it was ever going to happen. Wen is nothing if not logical.

Yesterday, when I checked on how my novel is fairing in the blogosphere, I found not one, but two book bloggers who were far from enthusiastic. I immediately fired off a hah-hah-told-you-so email to Wen. Then I stomped around the house for twenty minutes, holding imaginary conversations with the bloggers about why they were SO WRONG.  Which seemed to be all that was necessary to get over myself.

Naturally, these reviews dimmed my day a little, but there are two silver linings to this cloud I can appreciate.

1)    Followers of those blogs are probably people who enjoy reading the same kinds of books as the reviewers.  In my time, I’ve bought lots of books I didn’t like. I’m happy these people have been spared the frustration of paying for the opportunity to throw my book against a wall after reading the first few pages.

2)     The worst is over and I survived.

Okay, so some people think my baby is ugly. Other people think my baby is cute. In the end, it’s what I think that counts. (For me at any rate, the publisher probably has a different opinion.) I think my paper baby is beautiful. Of course, I have to. I’m its mother.

So Many Words – So Few Fingers

Occasionally  in the writing life, the number of words to be written exceeds the number of fingers available to type them. I hit that point this week.

SISTERS OF THE SARI released on June 7^th and my fingers are too busy touring other people’s blogs  to produce a post for this one.

If you’d like to see what the magic fingers have been up to, check out Nathalie’s interview on Multiculturalismrocks or visit Amy’s blog for the tale of an almost marriage proposal.

Tune in next week for our regularly scheduled drivel, or, if I’m still touring, more blatant self-promotion.

Suffering Illusions Gladly

“A wise man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion, does not act as if it is real, so he escapes the suffering.” Siddhārtha Gautama

The other day I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean – On Stranger Tides. Even though the cinematography was visually stunning and Captain Jack Sparrow is still one of the greatest characters ever created, I left the theatre mildly annoyed. I couldn’t put my finger on it until this morning, when I had the same sensation after reading posts from a couple of FB buddies warning about a new cellular phone directory that would allow telemarketers access to previously un-findable mobile phone numbers.

Suspension of disbelief is defined as a willingness to suspend one's critical faculties and believe the unbelievable. The human brain is incredibly willing to suspend disbelief. It’s almost as though we are preconditioned to throw reality out the window when something we like better comes along. We do this in one of two ways:

Fictional suspension: When we know that what we are seeing, reading or hearing is untrue, we create a temporary mental dictionary of stuff-to-accept-without-question. Here’s an example from the movie:

Mermaids (noun, plural) [ˈmɜːˌmeɪdz]: vampiric half-fish, half-human creatures, all female, inhabiting Whitecap Cove.

Once an entry has been made, we embellish it with our own understanding based on previous encounters with the concept, adding qualities like: “breathes underwater” and “flops around on dry land”. This is why movies and books have those weird, non-sequitur dialogue sequences.

Captain: All hands to the yardarm, me hearties! Make sail for Whitecap Cove!

Crewman #1: But Captain, I’ve heard tell of mermaids in Whitecap Cove.

Crewman #2: You know, it’s a common misconception that mermaids only breath underwater. In fact, they need both air and water to oxygenate their blood. On the other hand, the rumor that their tails become legs when they dry out is entirely true.

Without this kind of setup, our critical faculties kick back in when we encounter a plot point that depends on a characteristic at odds with the entry in our temporary mental dictionary. Which is why I lost interest in everything except Johnny Depp’s awesome acting ability by the middle of the movie. The setups were missing and my disbelief was unsuspended by too many of these fictional faux pas.

Non-fictional suspension: This type of disbelief suspension works the opposite way, we accept new information as true when it fits into our world view, imbuing it with the halo of veracity that surrounds real-life experiences, especially when it’s presented in a factual manner. (Remember this, there’s a test at the end of this post.)

Would two of the most notorious, unscrupulous attackers of my wallet - cellular service providers who ding me for full minutes of airtime when I only used a few seconds and telemarketers who harass me at dinnertime to sell me stuff - join forces to fleece me even further? Of course they would.

I managed to unsuspend my disbelief long enough to do some research. The consensus of internet opinion is the cellular phone directory does not exist. Unfortunately, most of the people who hold this opinion also state telemarketing to cell phones is illegal, but when I read through the FTC guidelines for complying with the Telemarketing Sales Rule, I could find no mention of this commonly held belief. So now, I feel the same way about the cellular phone directory as I do about the mermaids of Whitecap Cove. Conflicting information has made both equally annoying to me.

Maybe I should consider everything I hear (or read) as though it were fiction. The Buddha said if I do this, I will escape suffering. But then again, I read about that the same place you’re reading this post - on the internet.