Bohemian in Suburbia

I am very sleepy.

I stayed up last night folding laundry and watching Elizabeth: The Golden Age (the wretched sequel to Elizabeth, both starring Cate Blanchett), hoping some sort of Renaissance dance would occur because I am supposed to be choreographing a Renaissance dance for the production of Henry VI Pts. I, II & III that I am assistant directing. (Actually, there was a brief Renaissance dance scene, but it was not a routine I think I could legally ask minors to replicate.) There were also some pretty horrifying 16^th-century torture scenes, which I was slightly concerned would invade my nightmares, but I was so tired that despite being on the couch (since my bed has preceded me by an embarrassing number of days into the new apartment that I am paying rent on, though I have yet to actually spend more than thirty minutes there) I slept soundly till it was time to hit snooze on my alarm at 8 a.m.

Unfortunately, my attempt to then continue my sleeping in ten-minute intervals was thwarted by my mother, who announced that either my brother or I was going to have to get our ass out of bed and keep my sister company till it was time to go to the bus. Neva (age 10, 5^th grade) helpfully pointed out that since my brother is picking her up from school today, it was only fair that I be the one to get her off to school. I announced, without opening my eyes and still horizontal, that I would rise to the challenge, and my mother, though regarding me with some suspicion, left for work.

Neva sat down on the couch and picked up the sheets of paper I had been looking over the night before, my highlighted and partially scanned lines for Mercutio in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

“What’s a troach?” she asked, rhyming it with coach.

“What?” I said, still desperately trying to pretend I was asleep. I thought there was a typo in one of Romeo’s lines about torches, or maybe she was just reading it wrong.

“It says ten troaches,” she said, showing me my handwritten notes next to the typed text.

“Oh trochees,” I said, understanding now. “Um, a trochee is like, a beat…it’s a DUM dum…” I paused. How do you explain poetic rhythm to a ten year old at 8 a.m. before you even have your contact lenses in, much less your morning caffeine? “Usually Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter which sounds like dum DUM dum DUM dum DUM dum DUM dum DUM. But this line is made of trochees which sounds like DUM dum DUM dum DUM dum DUM dum DUM dum. And that is…important…to know.”

The wonderful thing about my sister is that she nodded and accepted this and continued to peruse the page. “Why does it say 12 and 6 here?”

I sat up and started to put my contact lenses in, wincing as I stuck my fingers in my dry, allergy-red eyes. (I HATE WINTER.) “Because there are usually ten, what’s called, feet in a line, and in those there are twelve and six.” As soon as I said this I remembered there are really only five feet in a line because each foot is two beats and realized I had led my sister astray in the one area I could legitimately offer her some expertise. Instead of trying to backpedal I decided to deftly change the subject. “Did you eat breakfast? And do you have a lunch packed?”

The answer to both of these questions was of course yes. Neva is about 100 times more capable, functional and punctual than I am. (She is also a better swimmer.) But I like to feel that I bring a certain sparkle to her life. Last night she and her best friend and I were galumphing about the kitchen, the two of them reading Romeo’s lines and me trying to remember the Queen Mab speech, till my mother told Neva to get thee to the shower, forsooth. (When I was in an Irish play, she would tell her to get up to bed, by Jaysus, or the potato blight would come. My mother has a creative streak too, but she hides her light under a bushel.)

Anyway, Neva left for school in plenty of time to catch the bus, and I breakfasted on high-fructose corn syrup and read a so-so A.R. Gurney play (in a coincidence, also called The Golden Age. Though in Gurney’s defense, I did also just reread Love Letters and find it fairly delightful). Thus fortified, I drove through the sickening DC Metro area traffic to the invigorating mix of scanning, data entry and staple removal that pays for my burgeoning artistic career, in addition to my as yet uninhabited apartment. As I drove, though, even though I hated traffic, winter, commercials on the radio, my dry itchy eyes and how long it would be before I could go back to sleep, I took some comfort in the thought that all I had to do was go to work, go teach my drama classes, and then go unpack my new apartment, whereas Elizabeth I, when I left her last night, was wracked with angst over whether to order the execution of her cousin Mary Stuart. My day might be long, but at least it was simple.

Nothing like comparing yourself to a 16^th century European monarch to gain a little perspective.

Something Solid and Weighty

Several weeks ago now, I was sitting in the dermatologist’s office looking at one of the trashy magazines and saw a story about Portia de Rossi’s new memoir, Unbearable Lightness. Since I am a sucker for both actress memoirs and body-image stories (aka weight-loss success stories) I figured I would go glance it over at Borders…and then that thing happened in my brain that usually happens when I’m drinking, but can occasionally happen when I’m shopping too, where my id says, quick, impulse suppressors OFF and I go briefly crazy and then I’ve suddenly bought things I should probably have talked myself out of. (It’s the worst! When there’s a book that I feel suddenly I simply HAVE to have, so I can read it RIGHT NOW, and then the moment I finish the last page I realize it’s trash and throw it across the room.)

That being said, however, I read this voraciously, neglecting all other responsibilities, and then instead of throwing it, reread it almost entirely as soon as I was done (partly because I imagined I would write a blog entry about it immediately after finishing it). And despite my tawdry, rubbernecky motivation for buying it, I actually think it’s an excellent, painfully honest piece of writing. It begins, more or less, when de Rossi joins the cast of Ally McBeal, and for the first time begins to really face the pressures of fame. She also reflects back on her teenage years as a model and a failed marriage motivated mostly by her increasing terror that she was gay, and the book is remarkably cohesive in its exploration of her all-encompassing mental illness. Her anorexia is not simply about being thin; it’s a mindset that extends to neurotic insecurity about her work, her sexuality, and her ability to fit into the fabulous world of Hollywood.

What is most striking to me about this memoir is how unflinching de Rossi is about the punishing extent of her mental illness. There is no way, reading this book, to think of anorexia as remotely desirable or glamorous, or to idealize de Rossi as an admirable icon of self-discipline. She describes mixing no-calorie butter spray into everything she eats and using chopsticks so she’s forced to take tiny bites, and at one point in time, admits to living entirely on pickles and mustard. She does sprints through a parking garage in 5-inch platform wedges (which she never takes off, even at home, in case she sees her reflection in a window) barely missing getting hit by several cars in the process, because she “binges” on an entire pack of sugar-free gum (60 calories). She wears only her underwear at home so her body will burn more calories to keep her warm, and vocalizes her self-loathing thoughts because she assumes speaking must burn more calories than not speaking. When she lands the lead in a feature, she avoids telling her beloved brother because she knows he’ll want to take her out to dinner to celebrate. She moves into an apartment that’s left partially furnished and never redecorates, because if she doesn’t commit to her own style, she can’t be criticized for how it looks. Her acting successes bring her no joy, only relief that she hasn’t failed and anxiety about fitting into her costumes. As she gets sicker and sicker, she begins to lose her mind slightly—chasing down a valet parking her car because she thinks it’s being stolen, looking at her emaciated body in the mirror and being relieved she isn’t attractive. “I knew I wasn’t attractive, and that was fine with me. If I didn’t attract anyone, I wouldn’t have to lie to anyone.”

She never relaxes. She seems to enjoy nothing, and finds it difficult to make new connections; her anorexia puts a strain on her old relationships. She’s self-absorbed, closed-off and demanding. The physical toll the anorexia eventually takes on her body is horrifying, but to me nowhere near as powerful as the years she spent desperately unhappy in the mental and psychological grip of the disease. She believes her anorexia is driven primarily by her feelings of shame about her homosexuality, but what seems more evident to me is that from an extremely young age (in the earliest scenes in the book, she’s 12) she was driven by a desperate desire to please, to both fit in and stand out; to be special, without ever quite knowing what was special enough. She becomes a teen model as “proof” that she’s pretty, even though she quickly discovers hates modeling. She attends a year of law school as “proof” that she’s smart, but she’s too busy modeling to go to class. Everything is about external validation, and to be a sexy blonde A-list star in the late 90s means absolutely not undermining that image by admitting she’s a lesbian. Her mother, who is a complicated figure in the book, initially encourages her to keep her sexuality a secret “for the sake of her career;” de Rossi believes she could not have recovered from her anorexia without her mother’s eventual acceptance and reassurance that being gay does not mean she’s a disappointment as a daughter.

When de Rossi does begin to talk about recovery, she’s equally frank about its difficulties. She doesn’t feel healthier right away; although she knows she has to eat or she’ll die, she’s so conditioned to resist food that it’s incredibly difficult, and she hates the way her body begins to return to its normal, uncomfortable functions—menstruation, constipation, bloating, gas. She gains weight immediately and feels tremendous shame about checking into an eating disorder treatment center weighing 125 lbs. She then gains more weight, stops her treatment before she’s ready, yoyos for awhile, and feels as though she has lost the support system that was so concerned while she was on the verge of starvation. It’s not until she lives with a girlfriend who eats healthily and normally, according to her body’s needs, and stays thin nonetheless, that Portia begins to slowly consider the idea that there might be an alternative to endless dieting.

She met her wife Ellen de Generes weighing 168 lbs, and has a wonderful line about how realizing her two biggest fears—“being fat and being gay”—led her to the greatest happiness she had ever known. She also talks about the importance of replacing her obsession with food with new passions, including horseback riding, emphasizing the way she has to redesign her whole lifestyle, not just her eating habits, to really be healed. Finally, and I think this is crucial, she admits that she looks in the mirror and still doesn’t always love her body the way it is—“I still wish I had thighs the size of my calves. The difference is that I’m no longer willing to sacrifice my health or happiness to achieve that or even to let it take up very much space inside my head.”

Reading this book reminded me of reading Truth and Beauty, Ann Patchett’s memoir of her friendship with the talented, wild poet Lucy Grealy. Lucy suffered regularly from bouts of deep, intense depression where she would cry on the phone for hours, or vehemently insist that she was hideous and no one loved her. Both depression and insecurity are things I’ve struggled with, as I’m sure most of us have at some time or another, and in reading these two books I felt both a sense of recognition and sympathy—god, yes, I’ve been there—coupled with profound gratitude that I’ve been fortunate enough never to descend to those depths of illness. Truth and Beauty is a book I’ve turned to again and again to help me cope, not only with depression but with being a broke aspiring artist, with difficult friendships, and with a friend going through an addiction problem. Over and over, just as I think I’ve squeezed every possible moment of meaning and comfort out of it, I find some new life problem I think Ann and Lucy can help me address. Unbearable Lightness addresses fewer issues, but ones that run deeply for many of us—self-esteem, body image, balancing career pressure and personal fulfillment. I don’t begrudge the $20 I spent on it after all. I suspect it’s a book that will travel with me, reminding me not to attach too much importance to beauty, particularly a distorted idea of my own beauty. It was funny, sad, and in a way heartening to hear how matter-of-factly de Rossi repeats throughout the book, “I knew I wasn’t pretty” when she’s an actress I’ve always considered beautiful. And as cheesy as it sounds, it’s a punch-in-the-gut reminder that self-esteem really doesn’t come from external success, career validation, money, or what would be objectively judged as good looks; it’s a continuing struggle to find something solid and unbreakable within yourself, something that anchors you to yourself, the world and whatever larger cosmos you may believe in.