My Fair Lazy: One Reality Television Addict's Attempt to Discover

by Jen Lancaster

CHAPTER NINE

  The Flavor of FAIL

  “Gross.”

  “Double gross.”

  “Yikes.”

  “Sausage factory.”

  “Boob-tacular.”

  I’m in the master bedroom in front of my full-length mirror with a pile of clothes heaped up on the bed behind me. I’m headed out on book tour again next month and I’m having yet another wardrobe dilemma. I got all these well-fitted dresses to wear on tour last year and now . . . they don’t fit so well.

  The truth is I kind of slacked off on my intensive exercise regime. I haven’t lapsed back into my old habits—at least not completely—but I’ve definitely back-burnered my previous level of effort. For example, I haven’t trained with Barbie since we moved. I’m only about three miles west of where I’d been living when I was so devoted, but now the trip to the gym takes an extra twenty minutes because of traffic, both ways. I mean, I meant to go see her, and we certainly chatted via e-mail, but I had a deadline and then I had to move and it took almost two months to completely settle into the new place and then it was the holidays and then the January editions of all my favorite shows came back on and . . . you know. Life got in the way.100

  Yes, I’ve since realized the value of consistency. I did a solid run on the treadmill earlier today, but thirty minutes of a moderate jog isn’t enough to make up for six months of lethargy, no matter how well intentioned it may have been. According to the scale, I haven’t gained more than a few pounds, but I’m pretty sure that’s because I’ve lost muscle mass. Plus, I don’t feel my strongs like I used to.

  I’m pissed off that I didn’t police myself better, although I can still get back on track. I could be all “Oh, no! I’m fat again!” but I already wrote that book and through it I figured out how to set myself right. I learned from the effort, which is actually why I have the tiniest of problems with folks like Bret Michaels and Miss New York and Flavor Flav. When I see them doing the same damn show over and over again—as much as I love ’em, can’t miss ’em, and plan my week around ’em—I have to wonder if any of them has even a shred of self-awareness. Do they not see their own patterns of relationship-destroying behavior?

  Or are the checks just so big they don’t care?

  Or is everything so far removed from reality that it’s nothing but show business?

  As for me, I took the first step today—thirty minutes of them, in fact. And I’m definitely more energized for having run. I forgot how much I liked the feeling of my heart pounding (for a reason other than social anxiety) and the V of my T-shirt dampening (not in terror sweat). Plus, I finally have a great bathtub—seems like I’d want to go out and make my muscles ache so I’d get to really enjoy a soothing, effervescent soak.

  The problem is I have less than a month before I leave, and given my schedule, there’s no way I’ll be able to work off what I’ve put on between now and then. So until I have the time to fully embrace fitness and clean living, I need to employ a little subterfuge. Maybe if I distract everyone by looking fantastic from the neck up, they won’t notice my embiggened 101 ass. I appraise myself long and hard in the mirror to assess the damage.

  I don’t need a trainer right now; I need an esthetician.

  And a dermatologist.

  I peer at myself more closely.

  And a cosmetic dentist.

  And a hairdresser.

  I glance over at the pile of discarded dresses behind me.

  And possibly a seamstress.

  As soon as I put all my clothes away, I sat down with my address book and began making calls and booking appointments. I figured that anything I got done would need time to settle in, so I planned a solid week of beauty rivaling anything you’d see on the now-defunct Extreme Makeover .102 Granted, my “journey” didn’t include a team of therapists standing behind me spouting positive affirmations because really? I already know I’m worth it. Also? No knives. I’m far too young103 for anything requiring stitches or general anesthesia.

  My rigorous week of beauty boot camp is over and now I have six throbbing red bulges in my forehead from Botox. My lip’s not only inflated as big as the twelve-foot rigid raft I’d so admired, but also severely bruised from Restylane injections.

  When I woke up this morning, Fletch actually screamed when he saw me. And then Maisy jumped out of bed and hid when she heard him because she hates conflict, so I had to give her all kinds of love and encouragement to coax her out of the closet. And then I saw myself and screamed and Maisy hid all over again.

  The bruise starts out all purple and blue at the upper inner tube presently taking the place of my lip and has blossomed to the exact size of a fist across the right side of my face. The contusion begins to yellow about halfway up because I got injections in the nasal-labial folds around my mouth, too.

  In the unbruised parts, my face is like corduroy, with alternating red and white stripes running up and down from microdermabrasion. Normally my skin isn’t so sensitive, but my face was terribly tender from having my mouth pried open for so many hours earlier in the week, first for the tooth bleaching and then with the new veneers. By the way, I can only drink room-temperature liquids at the moment, and I have to breathe through my nose because my gums are the consistency of a flank steak.

  Did I mention the hair? My tour is eighties-themed, so I had hair extensions put in to better embody that time period. What I didn’t realize is that for the first week, all five hundred individual extensions feel like grains of wild rice digging into my scalp and that it will hurt so much, sleep’s pretty much impossible. So, even though I haven’t actually been given two black eyes, the deep, exhausted shadows replicate them nicely. Couple that with the eyeball redness and lid irritation stemming from the prescription lash-growing medicine I’ve been applying, and there’s officially not one part of me from the chin up that’s better than when I started.

  Suddenly having strangers wondering if I’d put on a few pounds doesn’t seem so bad.

  You know what? This is exactly why producers made all The Swan ugly ducks live in apartments without mirrors during their treatments. I’m seriously hideous right now. What’s funny is I wanted the enhancements to make me all pretty and polished and Real Housewives, and instead I’m much more scabby and bruised and Flavor of Love. Argh.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t go to the dealership today,” Fletch says, wincing every time his eyes light upon me. “We could wait until you’re less”—he waves his hand across his face—“whatever you call this.” He doesn’t say “terrifying”; he doesn’t have to.

  “Are you kidding me?” I say. “We must go. Next weekend will be too late.” Today we plan to trade in the ten-year-old, dented, Maisy-scented104 SUV that I’m stuck driving, and I couldn’t be more excited. I’m getting my first car. I mean, yeah, I’ve had a license for twenty-four years and I’ve owned plenty of other automobiles, but I’ve never once been the one to decide what I’ve gotten. The locus of control went straight from my dad to my husband.

  Okay, technically I never actually wanted to pick out my own car, but still . . . Also, I kind of made Fletch do all the research and the cost comparisons, so I’m going to choose from the four models he hand-selected. But if I want it in silver, damn it, I’m getting silver. Also, since this’ll be my car, I can eat in it whenever I want. HA!

  “Why are you insisting we go today? I mean right now you’re . . . wow. I think the kids call it ‘tore up.’ You really want to be outside like this?”

  “Of course!” I’m completely emphatic.

  “But why? ” he beseeches. “You don’t get the mail before you put on your makeup. You look like you’ve gone three rounds with Mike Tyson, so what’s up?” Maisy’s been particularly concerned about me this week and I have to keep dodging her tongue. I guess she’s noticed that I’m all banged up and would like to heal me.

  “Simple,” I declare. “It’s all part of my car-buying strategy. When the salesman sees my face, I’ll say, ‘Oh, please, sir, give m
e a good deal or my husband will beat me again!’ ”

  “Excellent call,” Fletch dubiously agrees. “That can’t not work.”

  “Exactly.”

  While he heads off to take a shower, I try to decide what kind of sandwich I’m going to eat in my new car first.

  I think maybe turkey.

  You know what?

  I should never be allowed to talk, ever. I should get surgical tape to slap over my mouth every time I leave the house. The second I opened my bruised cake hole at the dealership, I’m pretty sure I added ten percent to the price.105

  According to my husband, Donald Trump, it’s poor negotiating strategy to squeal, “I love it so much that I’ll do anything in my power to possess it!” when out for a test drive.

  But come on—there’s a refrigerated compartment in the console. I could keep cold sandwiches in there all the time.

  How do I not get excited about that?

  “You have fun at the museum?”

  I’m sitting on the edge of the bed while Fletch changes out of his work clothes. “Sort of. I had trouble with the car.”

  “What happened?”

  What happened is I picked a vehicle because it had a refrigerated compartment, which I haven’t even used because what sane person drives around with a bunch of sandwiches in her glove compartment? Also, the new car’s way bigger than the old one, and I keep getting it stuck in places because I continue to underestimate its size. Today I got wedged in the wrong way in the parking garage and had to make a sixteen-point turn to get out. Then, once I finally made it onto the street, a bus stalled in front of me, and I got trapped in the middle of the crosswalk at the commuter train station. At rush hour. For five full lights. I can’t even begin to count how many people shouted at me. The crowds’ consensus was “moron,” although “asshole” made a strong showing as well.

  “The usual,” I sigh. He nods; he’s ridden with me.

  “As for the Art Institute . . . I was surprised at what I did and didn’t enjoy.” As part of my project, I’ve been hitting all the local museums. I’ve been to most of them before—the Field Museum, Museum of Science and Industry, Adler Planetarium, Museum of Contemporary Art, et cetera. However, I’ve never set foot past the gift shop in the Art Institute of Chicago until today. “I thought I’d be completely gaga for the Impressionist stuff, but I’ll be damned if Cher Horowitz wasn’t right. Up close, they’re a big old mess.”

  Granted, there’s something a little amazing about being able to put my face thisclose to the actual pieces of canvas that van Gogh and Monet and Gauguin touched. But in the end, the pictures weren’t what caught my attention. Instead, I marveled at seeing the texture of the paints and the imprints left from the brushes they used. That’s a moment frozen in time forever. Had the decrepit old security guy not gotten all shout-y with me, I could have stared at the up-close detail all day. Given time, would I have spotted stray fibers or specks of dust or maybe even one of the artist’s hairs affixed for eternity?

  I read each of the little placards under the paintings, so I’ve pieced together a vague understanding of why the Impressionist movement set the art world on its ear, but I’ll be honest, I still prefer the older stuff. I love the French and Italian church paintings from the Middle Ages. But I’m also interested to learn more about who was the first to make the leap from religious art to secular. That couldn’t have been a small feat. Who was brave enough to say, “You know what? Enough of Jesus. I’mma paint me this here bowl of fruit and then I’mma paint my girlfriend . . . naked!”

  Did artists revolting against church tradition bring on the Renaissance? Or did the Renaissance happen and that inspired all the new art? Seems like something I should find out for myself. You know what? Suddenly art history doesn’t seem like such a bullshit major, and I feel like there are a whole lot of former college classmates to whom I owe an apology.

  Still, I could look at the older works all day long. I’m fascinated by how vibrant the colors still are. What kind of paint did they use that they’re still so bright five to seven hundred years after the fact? Is there some kind of preservative brushed on them? I want to know the mechanics behind the art. And I wonder how these artists would feel if they knew their work would continue to live on so many centuries later.

  Seeing these paintings makes me want to discover more about how they came to be. I want to read the backstories about the artists and their inspirations and their lives.

  I guess today’s lesson is that although pictures are interesting, I’m always going to be more captivated by words.

  “Do you feel extra-cultured now?” Fletch removes his work shoes and promptly fills them with cedar shoe trees.

  “Yes and no. On the one hand, I was excited to take it all in, but on the other . . . I couldn’t stop being me while I was there.” Maisy and Loki then enter the room, both with big yay-my-people-are-all-home grins on their doggie faces. Loki curls up at the foot of the bed and Maisy wedges herself in next to me. I hug her, inadvertently taking a whiff. Good thing she’s charming because that dog has a stink no bath can conquer.

  “Meaning?” He then neatly folds his pants before depositing them into the dry-cleaning bag.

  “Meaning I couldn’t turn off the hyperparanoid, danger-danger-danger part of my brain. I kept thinking about that short-lived show Traveler, where the bad guy blew up the museum and I was all ‘Today will really suck if I get exploded.’ I kept looking for hipsters with video cameras and backpacks and roller skates. Then I really started to assess the security situation, and it turns out the whole place is staffed with guards who are either old enough to have modeled for the artists featured in the Impressionist wing or as fat as me. Plus, they carry walkie-talkies, not weapons. Maybe they have a nightstick or something, but that’s only going to work if they can keep pace with whomever they’re trying to clobber.”

  I stretch and reposition myself on the bed before continuing. “So then I started examining each doorway to see if they had those metal bars that would clamp down when the alarm goes off like in The Thomas Crown Affair, and they had nothing! All I saw were unobscured doorways! I’m telling you that place is wide-open for any wannabe art thief to come in and steal a priceless Degas because neither the Oldies nor Fatties are going to have the wherewithal to chase ’em down. You don’t need to be Thomas Crown to steal fine art; you just need a razor blade and some sneakers.”

  Fletch pokes his head out of his closet. “Tell me that I’m not going to get a call at work that you tried to run off with a Renoir.”

  “Oh, please, that’s not a problem. I’m not fast enough.”

  Yet.

  “How’s your face?”

  “Better, thanks! Everything’s shrunk back to an appropriate size and kind of smoothed out, and I can’t see my top lip when I look down anymore. Plus, all the bruises are gone and I can eat hot food again. Just in time, too, because I’ve got to fly out to my meeting tomorrow.”

  I’m sitting on the kitchen counter talking to Angie. Normally I don’t like to put my butt where my food goes, but the cord on this phone’s really short, and there’s only the one working phone jack on this floor. One of the few downsides about this house is that although there are plenty of jacks, most of them haven’t been wired. And yet I really need the exercise I get every time I have to run for the ring, so I haven’t yet gotten them fixed.106

  “Wait, what’s tomorrow? I thought you didn’t leave for your tour until next week,” Angie says.

  “I don’t. I’ve got a dinner with a retailer tomorrow who carries my books.”

  “Are you nervous about talking to them?” There’s clicking in the background, and I can’t tell if Angie’s checking her e-mail or initiating a launch sequence.

  “I get the feeling I’ll be okay. I mean, I’ve been putting in a lot of effort on the whole Jenaissance thing, so I’ve got some great topics of conversation. For example, you know my friend Gina? Well, her dad’s this famous blues musician, so
I set up a time to talk with him about why I hate jazz.”

  “Yeah? How was that? You still hate jazz?”

  “Actually, yes. But now I know why I hate it. Gina’s dad explained how jazz doesn’t really follow the standard format of orchestral music, which is four movements which go from theme, to theme development, to buildup, to the fourth movement, which wraps it all up. Symphonies totally make sense to me now, whereas modern jazz is harder to follow because it doesn’t stick to typical linear progression and I’m all about a good story, you know? I need a beginning, a middle, and an end. I have a better appreciation for how technical jazz is, even if I don’t like it.”

  “Cool! Can you eat waffles again?”

  “Had ’em for breakfast, baby! Anyway, you know what’s funny? I’m totally fascinated by the blues now. I used to hate them, too, because I always thought they were totally depressing.”

  Angie laughs. “Hence the name.”

  “Hence the name. But Gina gave me this huge box series of DVDs by Martin Scorsese about the birth of the blues, and I’ve been so drawn in by them. I can’t stop watching. Plus, Mr. Barge explained to me that they started off as slave chants and progressed into what they are now. Men would sing about how much their woman mistreated them while they were sweating in the fields, but really the lyrics were just code about how awful the foreman was. Workers used the blues to express themselves in situations where speaking the truth was too dangerous.”

  “That actually does sound interesting!” I can still hear her tapping away on her keyboard. Her ability to pay attention to so many things at once astounds me, particularly if she’s, like, repositioning satellites and not just checking comments on her blog.

  “That’s what I’m saying! So I was sitting there in Gina’s kitchen with my notepad, all Jen Lancaster, Girl Reporter, but the minute Mr. Barge started telling stories, I put my pen down and just listened. Fletch was with me and we were both . . . I guess enchanted, for lack of a better word. Enraptured? I mean, we started off talking about music, but as he told us about his past, I began to pick up on stuff that blew my mind. Back when he was touring in the sixties, he wasn’t allowed to stay in the hotels he’d play in. He had to check into guesthouses on the edge of town, which led to a discussion of the civil rights movement. He mentioned how his friend Doc did this and how Doc did that, and I was all, ‘Hold the phone. Do you mean you knew Dr. Martin Luther King? ’ And he did.”