The Princess Diarist(8)

So Pat showed me a variety of exotic looks—from Russian princesses to Swedish maids. I looked at the images, slightly alarmed. There was no Lady Gaga to guide me.

“These are meant to be worn by me?”

Pat smiled sympathetically. “Not all of them. Just one. And I’m sure they won’t want you to wear anything you don’t like.”

I regarded her doubtfully. Those sounded like famous last words.

“You worry too much,” Pat laughed, smoothing my hair back.

So image by image, we went through hairstyles that would look best when accompanied by clogs, an apron, and puffy white sleeves. A hairstyle probably sported by an Aztec Indian chief’s daughter on her wedding day. Swirling braids, flowing tresses, and towering wigs. I would sit miserably in front of a mirror and watch while hairstyles did to my face what fun house mirrors do to yours.

“This isn’t a hairdo, it’s a hair don’t.”

Pat would politely laugh at what I hoped would pass for wordplay and continue combing, pinning, spraying, teasing. And after each new hairstyle I would stand back at the mirror, gaze at the face, and struggle to make peace with my appearance. Was I round faced and adorable looking? Of course. I see that from this devious distance, but most of us look better at a distance.

Eventually, we arrived at the hairy-earphone configuration. “Well, what do you think of this one, darling? Be honest now. You’re goin’ to have to wear this hairstyle for a while.” She had no idea exactly how long.

“It’s okay,” I managed. “I mean, I like it better than a lot of the others! I mean—no offense, but—”

“Oh, pshaw, darling—no offense taken. I’m just trying to give ’em what they want, though I’m not so sure they know precisely what that is.”

“Can’t it be something . . . simpler? I mean, why does the hair have to be . . . you know, so . . .”

“It’s an outer-space fill-um, my lovely, we can’t have you larkin’ about wearin’ what I think you call a ponytail [and here she yanked on my very own ponytail!] with a fringe, can we now?”

I was silent. I thought the ponytail, after all the braids and hairpieces, sounded . . . if not good, preferable.

“No, indeed, so let’s you and me give the powers that be another little show, shall we?”

“Okay,” I responded briskly, “let’s get in there and kick some—” Pat looked at me and I smiled too broadly. “Fuck me twice and cover me with applesauce!”

We strolled onto the set, Pat looking clear-eyed and straight-backed with her silver hair and bright blue eyes, me looking as if all I needed was a dirndl, a goat, and clogs to be ready to take my place in The Sound of Music. We arrived at a small troop of traveling minstrels—no, I’m kidding. I wish we’d arrived at a small troop of traveling anything, instead of this group of three: the first assistant director David Tomblin, the producer Gary Kurtz, who might’ve been smiling under his usual fashion choice, a bearded straight face, and George.

“Well . . .” George practically said. Dave Tomblin spoke for the entire group when he repeated the same thing he’d said after at least six previous hair don’ts: “I think this one is quite . . .”

“. . . Flattering!” Gary finished.

“What do you think of it?” George asked me.

Now, remember, I hadn’t lost the requisite ten pounds and I thought any minute they’d notice and fire me before the film even started.

So, I replied, “I love it!”

? ? ?

it was also around then that I became uncontrollably enamored of a makeup enhancement that shames me even today: lip gloss. I had so much lip gloss on you might have slid off and broken your own lips if you tried to kiss me. I’ve never really understood what lip gloss is meant to enhance. Is that how much spit I leave on there when I lick my lips? Even if I was licking my lips in some come-hither way, that still wouldn’t account for that slap of sticky shine. No tongue is that wet, or if it was, it would have to be the tongue of a buffalo—or my dog, Gary, who has a tongue the size of two city blocks, enabling him, if he so chooses, to lick his eyes. But if you got all of Gary’s horrific long strands of spit slathered onto my—or some other unlucky lass’s—lips, I doubt it would provide me with that come-hither look. It would give me more of a come-slather look.

Giving Leia that high-shine look would make Vader afraid he might slip on her lip gloss and fall on his breathing machine. And who wears that much lip gloss into battle? Me, or Leia, of course.

The late actress Joan Hackett was a much older friend who taught me many of the things my mother wisely or unwisely failed to, including a love for, and thus the philosophy behind, lip gloss. I’ve since seen Joan in a movie that takes place in the old West, and in it, she is wearing enough gloss to wax a car, and it works on her, mostly—it really does. But in the final analysis I’ve learned that space battle and lip gloss don’t mix.

? ? ?

i don’t remember much about things like the order we shot scenes in or who I got to know well first. Nor did anyone mention that one day I would be called upon to remember any of this long-ago experience. That one day soon, and then for all the days after that, information about Star Wars would be considered desirable in the extreme. That there would be an insatiable appetite for it, as if it were food in a worldwide famine.