Intimacy
I stood in the elegant and slightly campy dressing room. Around me were photos of Marilyn Monroe….this was the Marilyn Monroe room. But I needed something in a Twiggy—a halter top bra that would give me enough shape for the dress my mom bought me for my brother’s wedding. My bras were always cheap, bought on sale at Macy’s or Nordstrom. I was still wearing the ones from 20 pounds ago, and there was a lot of empty cup going on. In a B cup bra. This could only mean one thing. I was an A. At best.
A year earlier, I had thrilled my friend Caroline by guiding her to Intimacy, a high-end lingerie shop. She is more of a Marilyn Monroe. Maybe a Jane Mansfield. And she found her salvation in Phipps Plaza mall. This store is a mecca for the big bosomed. The saleswomen all fit the curve, and they patiently bring you bra after bra after bra, each more expensive than the last, until you find bra nirvana. I had never seen my thrifty friend spend money so freely or with such satisfaction. Not only did the bras fit, but they were pretty, the kind she dreamed of while strapping herself in to white straight jackets with practically-shelves where the underwires go.
I would never have spent $70 on a bra. But this was a specialty situation-a halter top (!) with built in cups that were almost empty with me in them. The saleswoman brought me the few halter-top training bras they had, from a dusty drawer of A’s under the drawers of Ds, DDs, Es, Fs, Gs and even Hs! She then looked askance at the bra I was wearing. “What, this is still OK, isn’t it?” “I don’t think so,” she said. “I’ve been ill,” I explained. “Let me bring you a few more to try on.”
Well, at leas the halter was convertible. Almost like two bras in one, each costing $35 (still more than I’d ever spent on a bra). Plus two others, slightly cheaper but not much. I paid a bra bill of almost $200, plus fashion tape and special detergent.
At home, I slid up to my room, careful not to wake the sleeping children. Brett had put them to bed and retired to his basement lair. I concealed the gold shopping bag in my closet and got ready for bed.
In the blue glow of the television, all alone, I pulled up my t-shirt and looked down at my panties. My hip bone arched gently, with a hollow at my stomach. My legs, while not long, were nicely curved. My stomach was flat like the days before beer and babies (well, at least in the blue light it was). The A cups barely entered my vision, and while I missed the B cups, for the first time since leaving my teen years, I liked my body. I told myself it was good enough, that a man could lust after this body, could want me. And I cried because my husband didn’t—no one did.
I’m 10 pounds heavier, still down 10 from before the dumping, and I’ve held on to some of that “like.” I think it’s sort of sad that I couldn’t see myself that way until I was emaciated. My body now feels more like me, the always-me I see in my mind. Not skeletal, but not bulging, either.
While looking for black tights before work the other day, I came across the thigh-highs I bought after Paul inspired me to find my bridal lingerie (see New Pajamas). I then almost put on the hose with the seam down the back with my business suit. “Wow, I was a hottie last year,” I said out loud, although only the dogs heard. I moved the sexy stuff to the front of the drawer, and even wore it out to dinner under my conservative dress last night.
I’m back in my own skin, intimately familiar and even friendly with my body, yet still struggling to get back into my own head and heart. And that B cup.
