“There’s a display I want to see,” she told me once we reached the relative silence of the Studio Walkway outside the arena. “It’s part of the fundraiser and I’m sure it’s lamentably under-attended in lieu of that spectacle.” She gestured over her shoulder with a gentle roll of her head.
A short saunter found us at the Studio Ballroom. At the entrance, on a golden easel like the one in the lobby, was a dusty rose-coloured placard with gold letters spelling Milestones in Making Women Whole: A Recent History of Breasts.
We stepped past the sign, through the door and the last remaining vestige of noise disappeared. The room was coloured a deep tint of indigo. It was like suddenly being plunged into a vast, quiet ocean.
Stella and I stood, arm in arm, at the beginning of what would prove to be a winding corridor of displays. A spotlight flashed on, an amber tassel of light illuminating a series of grainy, sepia-toned photos. There was a static audio-pop, as if a needle hit a record. A series of ascending tones saturated the air before a soft voice played.
“Welcome to ‘Milestones in Making Women Whole,’ a celebration of one hundred years of breast enhancement…”
“I don’t like that,” Stella whispered.
“What?”
“Enhancements. It is the wrong word, has the wrong implications. They’re implants.”
“…performed the first recorded enhancement procedure in 1895, a procedure that became all the rage for actresses and prostitutes of the time.” A series of happy tones sounded.
I looked at the archaic before-and-after photos and wondered if there would have been cosmetic surgery advertisements in supermarket checkout-line gossip magazines one hundred years ago. Would this new breast enhancement procedure be advertised in the lower right-hand corner of the article about Oscar Wilde’s criminal libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry backfiring with a countersuit and Wilde getting sentenced to two years in prison for homosexual misconduct?
I wondered if there were celebrity gossip magazines one hundred years ago and, if not, what did people read?
Audio-pop.
“Immediate results were promising. Paraffin was injected into the chest cavity, which settled into a passable breast shape, though realism was lacking to touch. Unfortunately, a common side effect of this treatment was granulomas produced by prolonged exposure to the paraffin. These paraffinomas, along with high rates of infection, scarring and paraffin migration within the chest cavity, made this a limited and fleeting technology.”
There was another loud audio-pop and the light went off, leaving us in the deep violet silence. A moment later, another spotlight went on over a display table a short distance down the hallway.
Stella shook her head as we made our way to the second spotlight.
“Can you imagine?” she said. “Back then it was scandalous to get caught altering your body. Not only was it physically hazardous but socially as well. Can you imagine the psychological suffering to make a woman risk physical danger and social stigmatization, exposing one’s self, though unknowingly at the time, to cancers and scarring…”
Audio-pop.
We stood at a table with breast-shaped glass objects, sponges, a vat of yellow-pink gelatinous material, and several other unidentifiable objects and substances.
“Breast enhancement technology had advanced by the 1920s with innovative procedures and new materials that improved the shape and feel of the breast. Early adipose tissue transplants, removing fatty material from the buttocks and injecting it into the breast, returned positive initial results. However, over time, the fat absorbed unevenly leaving unattractive scarring and malformations. Injections of silicone followed, leading to natural-looking enhancements though some believed the chronic inflammation, serious infections and organ damage caused by silicone migration to be an irritant. Later, implants of glass, ivory, wool and ox cartilage were used but all resulted in substandard breast shape and texture. Massive tissue infections also detracted from the look of the enhanced breasts.”
The light went off.
“All for breasts,” I said quietly as we moved in the dark. “All for bigger, rounder breasts.”
Audio-pop.
“As the world entered the space age, so did the breast. With a wealth of materials manufactured by the newly founded chemical industry, the breast moved ever closer toward its potential.”
Audio-pop.
1949. Ivalon sponges made from a polyvinylic alcohol-formaldehyde blend.
Tendency to be toxic to organs and blood.
Audio-pop.
1959. Polistan implants made from a polyethylene derivative.
Toxic to the body, massive scarring and infection.
Audio-pop.
1960. Polymethane breasts.
Audio-pop.
1961. Polyglycomethacrylate breasts.
“All of this research,” I marvelled, “in the quest for the most natural-looking, natural-feeling, artificial breast. All of that experimentation, all of those oozing infections, all of those poisoned organs to bring into the world the perfect breast, and it’s fake.”
“I beg to differ, my dear,” Stella said. “The very presence of an implant is real and the fantasy of what a breast should look like, being made into reality by a physical implant makes it as real as any unaltered breast.”
“But people were mutilated,” I pleaded, thinking of the spectacle going on in the Garden Arena. “People died for this.” I pointed at a picture. “This, two half-grapefruits sitting high up on their chest.”
“They were people, nonetheless,” Stella countered. “People no more or less worthy than you or I to live the life they wanted to. People with desires every bit as real as yours and mine. Their needs, wants, insecurities, imperfections and potential were every bit as real. People don’t get implants for a laugh, there’s a reason for them. The tragic part is that many had to die in pursuit of their potential. These implants are real, on real people; these surgeries are real and make people real. Such body modification is not simple vanity-induced mutilation, it’s a cure for a concrete, tangible unhappiness at the point where the body and mind meet.”
“I’m unconvinced.”
Audio-pop.
“The year 1961 was revolutionary for enhancements. The first encased silicone breast enhancement brought new, unparalleled realism to the look and feel of the breast.”
The year Stella and I stood at that display, Dow Corning collapsed under the weight of a lawsuit backed by half a million women unhappy with their breast implants. They weren’t just unhappy—their silicone tits were poisoning them.
Audio-pop.
“In the 1990s, Mother Nature was recruited to fix persistent problems in her own design. Natural sources were tapped to enhance the breast. New implants utilized soybean oil as a medium. Though these became toxic as they degraded, they paved the way for the pinnacle of a century of breasts, the saline implant. Saline implants require minimal maintenance and have no known health effects.
“Thank you for visiting and celebrating ‘Milestones in Making Women Whole.’”
“Minimal maintenance?” I asked.
“They have to be reassessed every five to ten years,” Stella said sadly as we made our way back into the Studio Walkway. “They have to be monitored because they tend to wander in the chest wall. Scar tissue also builds up around them, constricting them. On the scale they use to measure, the hardest are Baker’s Grade IV breasts, with so much scar tissue they are immobile, hard lumps, which is a constant source of pain and is in danger of rupturing.”
“I never knew any of this,” I stammered. “You seem to agree with all of this.”
“To me it’s not a moral issue or some judgment of vanity. I’m part of that. My breasts were cancer,” Stella said. “I had a double mastectomy. It was something that affected me so profoundly, it crippled me with depression. I felt so incomplete, I wanted to die. A part of me was missing. I had to stop modelling. I had my chest reconstructed and here I am
. I don’t doubt it saved my life. I don’t doubt that there are other women that feel the same way as I do.
“One hundred years of suffering,” she continued, “and the result is not simply two half-grapefruits sitting high on my chest. The result of one hundred years is also making women whole again. The result of those hundred years is both good and bad, both painful and amazing. It can’t be categorized as any one of those things.”
I couldn’t argue with a word she said. I watched Stella talk confidently. Her beauty was real even if her breasts were fake.
Fantasy became reality. The line between the two disappeared.
CHAPTER 11
Sexy Beef in the Slaughterhouse of Desire
Modelling is the communication of want, desire, sex and fantasy. At a show, when I rounded the corner from the back of the house to the front, I recited my anthem, my mantra. Lights blazed, flashbulbs fired, television-camera eyes stared and I had twenty seconds to make it all happen, to be watched, to be the one thing that was branded onto the soft grey tissue of their minds. I wanted to be the sun they stared into, the deep purple spot burned into their retinas that they would see every time they blinked.
In those twenty seconds, I expressed myself in the most primal way. My walk, my hair, the expression that I pushed through my face like a fist through glass, like a bullet through a brain. I didn’t have to speak to tell them a story, no matter what country I was in. I didn’t need to speak Spanish, Russian, French or Whateverthefuck because what I did translated into all languages and kicked through all cultural barriers. My mind projected through me and drove my look to something deeper, psychic and subconsciously perceptible that heightened physical attraction from good to great, from great to irresistible. It’s attitude more than look. It’s intense and personal and animal and it was there as I went around the corner and into the light of the most important thirty-five metres in Whateverthefuck country I was in. My mantra growled in my head.
I am pure animal lust.
I am the most desired slip of skin that ever walked.
I am a firecracker exploding in your face. I’m taking an eye with me. It’s mine, now. I own it.
I fucked your wife on the hood of your Porsche.
I am a screaming baboon shaking a tree.
I am a hurricane laying waste to your jungle village.
I fucked your sister on the dance floor and yes, that Primitive Radio Gods song was playing.
I am the sexiest side of beef in the slaughterhouse of desire.
I am a holiday-Monday, sleep-in slow fuck.
I am a memory.
I raged off the runway and into the tight crowds of bustling half-naked bodies backstage. I made my way through the dark chaos to where I had left my duffle bag and draped my street clothes over a rack. The crowd parted and Stella Supernova towered over the throng. She smiled, winked and strode by leaving a swirling scent of apricots in her wake. I stared at her, open-mouthed and awestruck, as the chaos enveloped her again.
I spied Donna through the fleeting gap. She sat at a mirror framed with light bulbs. A makeup artist flitted from one side of her to the other. I hadn’t seen Donna in weeks. Our schedules had kept us on opposite ends of the world.
As I approached, I noticed something different. Her face sagged slightly on one side. Worried thoughts sprung to mind. I had known Donna to occasionally partake in cocaine. I had known cocaine users to have strokes. My heart skipped a beat.
Did my Donna have a coke stroke?
“Donna.” I clasped her by the shoulders. “Are you okay?
“I am so happy,” she squealed, though her face did not move. A stitch of a wrinkle puckered the bridge of her nose. Her forehead had all the expression of a steak. The left half of her face drooped. The makeup artist elbowed her way through my embrace, maniacally powdering and applying lipstick, trying her best to even up Donna’s face.
“Your face…” I stuttered.
The makeup artist glared at me.
“Isn’t it amazing?” Donna screeched. “I got Botoxed.”
“What?”
“Botoxed. They use it on spastics and stuff.”
The makeup artist sighed and took a step back.
Donna looked at me as if I was a dog that pooped on the rug. “You know, multiply sclerotics and people with muscle spasms and stuff. It paralyzes the muscles, you know, to stop their flailing around.” She waved her arms for effect. “And it gets rid of wrinkles,” she squealed again.
I had trouble aligning the excitement in her voice to the lack of expression on her face. The disconnect was disconcerting.
“Dr. Bella sent me to Canada to get it.”
The makeup artist shrugged and wandered off.
That evening became a blur, the show ending, the cab ride to the airport, Donna at my side on the plane. The cabin lights dimmed and both of us got ready for our first sleep in what seemed like months. I declined the sleeping pills she offered and wound up shifting back and forth in my seat for eight hours.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the captain’s voice oozed through the speakers and into the dimly lit cabin. “Good morning from the flight deck. Myself and co-pilot Jeff hope you are having a pleasant flight. We’re about halfway through our journey and are a bit ahead of schedule due to a friendly tailwind. Our lovely flight attendants are going to be coming through the cabin in a few moments to offer our inflight breakfast service. We do expect to encounter a bit of turbulence once we’re over land again but the disturbance should be weak, so please, sit back and continue to enjoy your flight. On behalf of co-pilot Jeff, myself and your cabin crew, thank you again for choosing American Airlines.”
Donna snorted in her drug-induced sleep, her head lolling to one side. A strand of drool hung glamorously from the corner of her wrinkle-free mouth.
I didn’t do drugs though I tried them once. I can’t really be more specific about what I took. They were the generic kind of drugs that one takes and then can’t remember a thing about the previous night.
I took drugs on the evening I proposed to Donna. Donna was getting ready for her flight to Miami for her labiaplasty appointment. She had booked with a pre-eminent labiaplastist and had been on a waiting list for more than a year. I remember her telling me in detail how she wanted smaller labia majora and plumper labia minora. She told me labia medius was all the rage these days.
I remember Donna, smiling, looking down at me on one knee and nodding at the ring.
Me, welling up with pride, interpreting that as acceptance.
Donna, checking her plane ticket and saying, “I gotta run.”
Me, saying something romantic like, “Baby, can I call you a cab?”
Donna, leaving in a taxi, her silhouette talking on the cellphone.
Me, waking up on the floor of a cavernous hotel room with an overwhelming pressure in my bowels and the sorest nipples I have ever experienced. I lay on my side, the arm draped across my chest wasn’t mine. It was woven under my arm and belonged to whoever was spooning me. It was hard to focus at first but, after some rapid blinking, a sea of naked arms and legs spread out before me.
I glanced over my shoulder.
The arm belonged to Paige Green.
As I wiggled away from her, the pressure in my bowels eased. It was then I realized I had been impaled by the strap-on Paige was wearing. As it slid from between my greasy cheeks, she smiled and sighed but did not wake up. I was startled and slightly intimidated by the size of it, a deep blue latex phallus draped to the floor as casually as her arm had draped over me. I was also a little confused by how natural it looked on her, as if she had found the perfect Chloe clutch for a stunning Mouret gown.
There was a small, white tag with black print on it stitched to the leather between the studs, beside the snaps that bound the strap-on to Paige.
Johnson DeLong. Made in China.
What would the little peasants working in the Johnson DeLong Strap-On factory think of making giant penises en masse for export? S
helves upon shelves of droopy, multi-coloured phalli in storage, waiting to be boxed and shipped to North America. I was embarrassed for our continent. Surely the little peasant workers’ sensibilities would have tended toward the more practical, such as food and clothing and the like.
I stood, wearing only socks, the sole vertical body in the room. I glanced out the wall of windows. Midday traffic bustled by in silence twenty storeys below. Those people down on the street, out there in the sunshine, were wholly unaware of the sleeping Twister game happening here; they were oblivious of my numb anus and aching nipples.
What city was this? I rubbed my nipples thoughtfully only to meet cold metal. My heart jumped and I looked down. I was thankful to find that it was only a pair of nipple clamps and not some weird piercing.
That was the moment I decided I didn’t need drugs in my life.
I realized that if this is what drugs can do for me, waking up wearing only socks and nipple clamps after getting ass-raped in an orgy by a small-d designer and having no clue what city I’m in or where my Prada suit and Gucci sneaks are, I don’t need them.
Surely if that sentiment could be squeezed into an anti-drug campaign to play during Saturday morning cartoons, there would be fewer kids on drugs.
I picked my way through the strewn bodies and into the bathroom. There were bodies there as well, two stacked in the tub, one caged in the shower stall, and one in front of the toilet who inchwormed away when I lifted the lid and peed. My head ached with the release of pressure.
Done. Shake. Shake.
I needed Aspirin. There was a small medicine chest on the other side of the room, beside the sink.
On the short walk to the sink to wash my hands, the slippery sensation of my butt crack led me to wonder. I flipped open the medicine cabinet and absent-mindedly fingered around for a bottle of painkillers before curiosity got the better of me. I glanced at the bodies reflected in the bathroom mirror to make sure no one was watching before spinning around and bending over. I craned my body to one side, like a swimming fish, to see my butt hole. I gazed at its reflection and felt a distinct disconnect from the puckered orifice.
Imperfections Page 14