Fresh on the heels of my latest ill-advised dalliance - a tryst which, despite its casual intentions, has nevertheless left a pesky and tenacious residue of sentimentality and mushy girly feelings clinging to the inner walls of my heart - I am thinking again about the life path I have chosen. Or rather, the one that seemingly chose me, and pretty well from birth.
As a toddler and a young child, I displayed an appalling lack of interest in baby dolls, or in "playing house". My preoccupation was chiefly with fantasy, glamour, prettiness, aesthetic perfection: My Little Ponies and assorted fantastical unicorn figurines; Barbie dolls, for which I crudely stitched together specially-designed garments; plastic play jewelry and my own little pink vanity mirror that lit up, and into which I would stare fixedly while combing my reddish-brown, child-thin hair, ( "100 strokes a day," my grandmother once told me. "A woman's crowning glory is her hair").
Being preoccupied with appearances did not prevent me, however, from gradually becoming one of the ugliest children this side of the Rocky Mountains. At my worst, during the early years of elementary school, my thick eyebrows and eyes perpetually ringed with dark shadows betrayed the less-desirable qualities of my Mediterranean pedigree. Not only that, my strange, pointed, lobeless elf ears, which stuck hopelessly out from the sides of my too-narrow skull, were afforded nothing in the way of camouflage, thanks to my mother's concept of a "hair cut" . None of this mattered too much to me, though, since by this point, I was hopelessly entrenched in the world of books.
I read voraciously from the time that I could; even before I could, I would demand that my books be placed in my crib, so that I might sleep beside them. Learning to read came easily to me, and once I had mastered it, I did little else. I lived, thus, in a waking dream, a gauzy veil under which I moved through my childhood world. When I couldn't read, I told myself stories. I lived an entire life as a character known only as "The Princess". I would tell myself these sorts of narratives while walking home from school, or attending to mundane daily tasks - "The Princess rode her white palfrey through the dappled, late Autumn afternoon", etc. So for the most part, I was happy in my insular, imagined world, and the attention or admiration of others was of no concern.
Suddenly and quite rudely, puberty happened. My heretofore unnoticed nipples became swollen and itchy; I developed two horrific lumps of jiggly flesh on my chest. My forehead and nose shone with the incandescence of a mysterious oil; and surely, most surely, this could not be the hair of which grandmother spoke as a crowning glory. Oddly enough, while my body seemed to be betraying itself, I began, for the first time, to notice that boys were looking at me. Often it was with pained, confused expressions, barely-concealed angst that resulted in insults or playground balls hurled in my direction. But my goodness - they certainly did look! By the eighth grade, the insults ceased, and I found myself, most unexpectedly, with a train of moony-eyed admirers. And for the first time, I felt the heady rush, the hit off the proverbial crack pipe, that came along with being showered by ardent attention from clumsy boys.
It took me some time to realize that the type of attention I was receiving was, for the most part, anything but romantic. I had developed, by several twists and turns, into a nubile and presumably-fertile birthing member of the human race, with all the appropriate features designed to conceive, deliver and suckle infants. Moreover, a potent combination of Russian and Italian heritage combined to create an appearance which was seemingly viewed as exotic, foreign and probably ultimately dangerous. I was no apple-pie, rosy-cheeked approachable girl next door, of the sort who "went steady" and held hands in the park. I was, instead, a dark eyed, black haired temptress with an acerbic wit and an intense emotionality, an intriguing distraction from Kelly or Jennie or Sarah, something to be fanaticized about, something to be indulged in, to be made out with with reckless abandon behind the school, after a mickey of vodka, but ultimately, something to be regretted and abandoned for the safety and predictability of girls with non-threatening, Aryan coloring, pliable personalities, and soft, uncomplicated minds.
And thus, with certain exceptions, I have played this role to its fullest to this very day. I was never meant to be Mrs. So-and-So. the little wifey, or Mommy Dearest. I am, as I have always been destined to be, a Good Time Girl, a Bit of Fun, the Other Woman. Bold colors, sharp edges, a whirlwind of meaningless passion. Distraction, chimera, wet dream, pretty bauble, quickly dropped, probably shattered in the process, but easily swept under the rug. I know this and I play it well. I play it by heart.
Thus, my latest experience, and the sudden sadness and emptiness I feel, is beginning to irk me. I have brought this on myself, because it is the only soliloquy I've ever been suited to reciting. I know how this play ends; I've performed it a thousand times. I was never going to be cast as the ingénue, but I've certainly made for an intriguing plot twist in many a pantomime.
