Notes On Another New Life #26
Job Offer
The other day, a gorgeous young woman asked if I would be a model for an underwear company. I said of course. The gorgeous young woman is named Elle, and Elle has founded a media company. She publishes writing, and she cooks up events with other companies for the reasons companies cook up events with one another.
I didn’t hesitate to say yes because I like Elle very much. She is ambitious the way a giant boulder on a mountain just sits there, not appearing to move. Elle is ambitious the way rain doesn’t ask permission before it falls. You know how you like watching rain fall on grass and flowers? That’s how I like watching Elle advance in life.
I looked up the underwear company and saw pictures of women in different shapes and sizes and with different skin colors. It’s a thing now for people to model who don’t look like models. I suspect some people who need underwear feel conflicted about liking beauty as much as they do, and so to comfort them, companies design campaigns with people who look like me.
Elle said the company gives you free stuff. I think they sell long-sleeved shirts as well as bras and panties. Free stuff gets my attention, although not so much this free stuff. If there was very expensive perfume in the package, then we’d be talking. I was telling my friend Lila about the modeling gig. Lila is a former model who was hired not as an alternative to tall, beautiful people—but for those very traits! I showed her a topless picture of me I had taken in the upstairs bathroom mirror, where the lighting is the only lighting I will look at myself in. She said, “Yes, that will work.” She is encouraging, and I had her cornered.
Why do I have topless pictures of myself on my phone? I was prompted to take them by photographs of my friend Sonya, who is a body artist. Sonya has been documenting her breast reconstruction surgeries following a double mastectomy for breast cancer. I thought if Sonya can show the world what her body looks like as it undergoes change, I should be able to do that as well. Why? I don’t exactly need to know. If the theme is hanging your breasts out there for everyone to see, I can get on board with that.
So far, I don’t have details about the shoot and what I’ll be asked to do. It leaves room to imagine it. I’m in a studio with bright lights. There is a makeup person, and a hair person, and a wardrobe person. They’re friendly. It’s their job to be friendly. Who would not like to be with a bunch of friendly strangers.
I’m 78. I’m thinking I’ve been cast as the old lady. The old lady in a bra. The old lady in a bra looking at the camera. You point a camera at me, and I will smile. When I smile, you can’t see as many lines in my face, but the smile isn’t calculated. I’m happy to see you.
At the shoot, I hope no one says, “You look great for your age.” It’s a lie and who cares. I love life more than ever. I just love it to pieces. No time to waste. This is not a gift of getting older. It’s just a fact. I have nothing to tell you that will make you happier about being younger.
* * *
I wish my mother were alive so I could tell her about the underwear shoot. She is still alive, although she is dead. She’d say, “Why would you do such a thing?” I’d say, “You get on the plane that’s leaving the airport. You never know what will happen when the plane lands.” She’d say, “I can see your point.”
If my mother were alive, we’d talk about my sister Ellen, and we’d walk on the beach. I’d say, “I didn’t know you. I must have loved you, or why would I be missing you? I find myself using your Yiddish words in my head and using them more and more out loud. Who’s going to know where they come from? Everyone in the family is dead, and how was I to know I would be lonely for you?”
One more meal out together? Ellen and I are on one side of the banquette. The waiter greets daddy with, “Fried rice, no egg.” Why no egg? My mother will order roast pork with Chinese vegetables. Ellen and I have eggs rolls and lobster Cantonese. I can’t remember a time we didn’t go to restaurants. Daddy was always, “Let’s go out, Tobe.” He didn’t want you to bother cooking and cleaning up. We liked being gathered up in his overcoat.
When Ellen was alive, we talked about you, and the more she remembered you moving away from her on an escalator while she went off in the opposite direction and you kept calling to each other like whales in the ocean, calling and laughing, the more she brought us all back to Saks Fifth Avenue, the more intensely I smelled your Chanel perfume.
You, mom, are a great snowy owl. Even when you were almost dying buy not quite dead, you wanted me to tell you about the time I accidentally went off to school with your sable scarf pinned to the inside of my coat and I called you, wondering what the strange animal was poking out of my sleeve. You used to send me postcards at camp. One postcard a day. Sometimes several would arrive at once, and I’d find them fanned out on my bed. I’d lie there, looking at the ceiling, and there you were, looking down from the rafters. Not everyone has a pretty mother.
The best stream of consciousness written. Ever. Plus you got all 100,000 readers of Oldster taking selfies in our bathroom mirrors and missing our mothers, as if we didn't already.
You remind the world that no matter how old we are there is so much beauty in us to share. When I was young, my father used to take us on Sundays for waffles. So I would love to have a meal of waffles and real maple syrup and bacon with him and learn more about who he was as a young person. It is only now as I slowly purge the family home that I find remnants of him under a stack of magazines or in an old shoe box or hidden in letters secreted away.