My Body(17)
“I’ll never forget it!” she says. “You were looking out the window, we were visiting my brother in New York City, taking a cab to the Upper East Side to meet him. You turned to me and said, ‘Mom, I want to try it. I’m ready.’”
This would’ve been around the time Britney released “Toxic,” which is probably still my favorite song in her catalog. I especially like the musical interlude where she sings a long and haunting “Ahhhh, ahhhhh, ahhhh” that is cut off sharply by the sound of a DJ scratch. In the music video, Britney appears as a scantily dressed air stewardess on a plane full of old, overweight, sweaty businessmen careening through a dystopian yellow sky. Britney proceeds to spill liquid on the lap of one man, only to aggressively rub it off to the beat of the music.
Intoxicate me now with your lovin’ now
I think I’m ready now (I think I’m ready now)
By thirteen, I’d learned through the hierarchy of middle school that girls who were considered hot got the most attention. They were special. Britney was like that—she commanded a type of power that, through modeling, suddenly seemed attainable. I want to be one of them, I thought.
After that visit to New York, my mother drove me up to LA to meet with Ford Models. I wore low-rise Frankie B. jeans, my most expensive and prized item of clothing. The jeans had back pockets embellished with rhinestones, which made them hard to sit in because the hardware would pierce through the denim and into the skin of my ass. They were so low that my butt crack would peek out; I tugged up on the belt loops so often that they eventually fell off.
At Ford Models, a woman in her late thirties with curly hair measured my hips over those jeans. I looked down at the top of her head as she knelt down and circled my hips with a tape, then nervously glanced at my mother. “Thirty-four inches,” she announced, folding her tape measure into her hands. Then she said more quietly, just so I could hear, “We’ll take a few inches off because of these pockets.”
Afterward, we sat on white chairs in the waiting room. An agent brought out a thick stack of papers covered in lines and lines of small black text. My mother signed on my behalf. “This is all happening so fast. I didn’t expect this,” she said as she wetted the tip of her finger to flip through the pages, her glasses on.
Apparently, when Britney arrived at the salon and told them she wanted a buzz, the hairstylist tried to talk her out of it. Britney went ahead and grabbed a clipper and started doing it herself. She said, “I don’t want anyone touching me. I’m tired of everybody touching me.”
* * *
After parties on the weekends, Sadie and I would crash with her boyfriend Mike, a Scab Crew guy who lived at a family member’s house, a few blocks from the beach. I never laid eyes on the guy he lived with, but I knew he was fresh out of prison and had no interest in what we were getting up to. This was ideal. We could come in at any hour and be loud or stink up the house with weed. No one cared. Mike sold pot and E and coke out of his room; I don’t know why he lived there and not with his parents.
Three of us would bunk in the same bed: Mike on the outside edge, Sadie in the middle, and me smooshed against the wall. I kept on whatever clothes I’d worn that night. Crunchy, tight jeans. Mini dresses. I never slept well there, but having Mike’s bed to crash in meant that I didn’t have to worry about a curfew.
One night, I woke in darkness, Sadie’s head right next to mine on the pillow, her face turned away from me. I could make out her thick ponytail, slightly messy. Hands were reaching over her, touching me. My breasts were out of my shirt and Mike was squeezing my nipples. I froze, staring at the back of Sadie’s head, as I realized what was happening. I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep, sighed, and then rolled over onto my stomach, out of Mike’s reach. Goosebumps covered my torso and arms. I felt the cold air coming through the window above me and tried to breathe it in, hoping to soothe myself back to sleep.
I never told Sadie or anyone else about this late-night experience. Had I imagined it, anyway? I told myself that in choosing to reach over Sadie’s body to touch mine, Mike had complimented me. I told myself this was the kind of thing that would make Sadie jealous, which I knew was true. Your boyfriend likes my boobs better than yours, I thought. Did it give me some power over her? I even started to convince myself that I liked the feel of Mike’s touch. Maybe I was into it? Turned on, even? I knew that if Sadie found out, she’d blame me.
* * *
That same summer, Sadie and I would stop by Ford’s offices together on our weekday trips to LA when we had some extra time in between castings or needed to wait out the traffic before making the two-hour-plus commute home. Sadie would screech into the parking lot of the fancy West Hollywood high-rise and brake at the valet station with a jolt, our heads snapping forward. We’d climb out, the smell of French fries emerging with us and my legs tingling from being seated for so long. Sadie was confident in the high heels we wore on these outings, and I’d admire her gait as I stumbled behind in mine, watching the bikini string tied around her neck bounce as she moved. We both knew to always wear our bikinis underneath our outfits whenever we came by the agency.
On this particular visit, we were coming to pose for “digitals,” the unretouched and “honest” pictures the agents sent to clients as references. Once we were on the twelfth floor, in an office surrounded by huge windows offering panoramic views of Sunset Boulevard and the hills above it, we stripped down to our heels and bikinis. I remember leaning over, surrounded by agents in the middle of that large, open space, pretending to adjust my heel in order to make sure my tampon string remained hidden in my bottoms.