Unbearable Lightness

by Portia de Rossi

  The Angeleno cover shoot was a reward for my hard work. I had trained hard for the event and knowing that I had done the work, all I had to do was relax and enjoy the ride. The ride was a gentle downhill slope with smooth pavement beneath me. The ride was my feet off the pedals, feeling the wind through my hair, smelling the wildflowers as they rushed past me firmly rooted in place. No panic. No doubts. No disgrace. The interview was different. It took place at my favorite restaurant, The Ivy, which was my favorite because they blanched all their vegetables and never brushed them with oil. I ate my vegetables (with no lip gloss or lip balm—one can never be too careful) and attempted to maneuver gracefully around personal questions as fundamental and important to a person’s character as their desires to marry and have children. Being secretive was exhausting. But the interviewer had a secret, too. She secretly didn’t like me while pretending to find me delightful. She suckered me into being a little looser, a little more truthful. What added to my uncharacteristically easy mood was that the interview took place on my birthday, and when the manager at The Ivy presented me with a large slice of birthday cake, I looked at my new journalist friend and said with a wink in my voice, “Like I’m gonna eat that!”

  An Australian tabloid picked up the story and on the cover it printed, “Out to Lunch with Portia.”

  A cover is still a cover.

  “Good news!” I stood in my kitchen looking out onto the Sahara desert that was the yellow wall of the Sunset 5 shopping mall and tried to rally excitement for my impending movie. My mother loved to hear of my accomplishments and because of the hell I had put her through over Christmas, I felt that the “good news” of an exciting role in a big studio movie was what she deserved to hear. As I began to describe the film, “It’s called Cletis Tout,” who was cast to star in it, “Richard Dreyfuss plays my father!” and where it would shoot, “In Toronto—you’ll have to come visit,” my excited, energetic voice was in stark contrast to the exhaustion I was feeling. Landing the role wasn’t exciting to me, it was merely the end of the long uphill climb of auditions, callbacks, and negotiations. Getting the role was a relief, like the moment of collapse at the top of a mountain before you begin worrying about how to get down. Like a tourist who travels not to experience foreign places but rather to tell people that she’s well traveled—this was how I viewed this excursion to Toronto with its film set and its respected actors. “I’m doing a movie this summer.” That was the reason I wanted the movie. As my Ally McBeal cast mates had seemingly all succeeded in landing movie roles, I too must do something extraordinary to fit in.

  I hung up the phone and felt empty, vacant, directionless. I knew I should celebrate, but I didn’t know who to call. I didn’t know who would care. I couldn’t call my brother because he would want to take me out for Mexican food and margaritas and I couldn’t think of an excuse not to go. I couldn’t let him see me in person because I didn’t want to upset him again. He could think that I was eating more and loosening up on my strict diet from the picture on his TV screen, as everyone looks ten pounds fatter on TV. He could check in with me as Nelle Porter once a week and be pleased with my progress as the wardrobe department had cleverly quilted a disguise of flattering clothing to cover all my flaws: a patch to cover my thin arms, a patch to cover the gap between my thighs. I thought about a glass of wine—heck, champagne!—but knew I couldn’t enjoy it without feeling guilty. I was the leading lady in a movie, after all, and Christian Slater was my man. We had chemistry, apparently. A shape-shifting, sexless androgynous girl could have chemistry with anything. My life was just a fantasy with its fantasy lovers and its make-believe conversations with make-believe people in my head. So I was a perfect candidate to fall in love with a make-believe man and consummate our pretend love in a make-believe house. Reality was the difficult part. And the reality at that moment was that it was Friday at 5:00 and I didn’t know what to do. So I went to the Pilates studio.

  Santa Monica Boulevard, the gay part of town, had an exciting energy. It was the beginning of the weekend, and the restaurant workers were placing candles on the outdoor tables, setting a welcoming scene for their patrons to drink, talk, and unwind from the week of work. As I drove down the boulevard, past the lesbian coffee shop I’d gone to the day I got Ally McBeal, hoping no one could see me through my tinted car window, I was once again aware of the emptiness. Losing weight was no longer exciting to me, and maintaining it was hard. I was exhausted most of the time and the ante on exercise seemed to keep going up. Unexpectedly, a voice would sound in my head at the point of my workout where I would usually have quit, telling me to march on, to keep going, that it wasn’t enough. It told me I wasn’t good enough, I didn’t do it long enough, that there was still a long way to go before I could rest.

  The drill sergeant voice accompanied me everywhere, recorded all the missed moments when I was sitting but should’ve been standing, moving around, doing something. It was hard for me to drive anywhere, even to the Pilates studio. I had figured out several different blocks in LA where I could get out of my car and stretch my legs. I wouldn’t always run around the block, sometimes I would just walk with a deliberate stride. Sometimes I didn’t have the energy to run. I had the urge to get up from being immobile, but I didn’t have the energy to make it a useful excursion. The voice that made me get out of my car, that called me a lazy pig for walking instead of running around the block, would get back in the car with me and accompany me all the way to the studio, where it laughed at me for being late to work with no burned calories to show for it.

  I pulled into the valet parking lot of the Pilates studio. The parking lot was shared with a restaurant and if you liked to work out when other people were going to dinner, then a valet would take your car. The voice told me to get out of the car as fast as I could and go burn calories. I got out of the car in a hurry and left my keys in the ignition for the valet.

  How are you going to pull it off? How could you ever be pretty enough to be a leading lady? You’re not even thin. You don’t have long, lean limbs. You have ordinary looks and an ordinary body. You can’t play a leading lady in a movie. You’re gay. What a joke! What happens when people find out you’re gay and you’ve fooled them into thinking you were Christian Slater’s love interest? How is that going to work? Give it up, you stupid dyke. How long are you going to pretend you’re something you’re not? How long do you think people are going to fall for it?

  As I reached the top stair and looked down at where I’d left my car, I saw it moving. My car was moving!

  “Help!” I screamed. “Somebody’s stealing my car!”

  I ran down the stairs, my heart beating in my throat. Jesus! Where’s my dog? Is she in the car?

  “Help! Help me! Somebody’s stealing my car!” I got to the bottom step, flung my body around the railing, and ran to my car feeling like there were weights tied to my ankles, like I was running with someone holding me back. Evil was holding me back, allowing my car to be stolen in front of my eyes. And my dog! Oh my God! Bean! I screamed out her name, “BEAN!!!”

  The car stopped and a man got out. He was wearing black pants and a blue vest. He held the keys up to me, silently. He looked frightened. We stood there, facing each other, him in his blue vest and me in my platform off-camera shoes and spandex shorts with the elastic waistband that was too loose for my hips. We stared at each other, and now it was my turn to be frightened. I gently took the keys from him and quietly sat down on the warm leather seat. I checked for Bean and she wasn’t there. I drove away in silence. No metronome. No marching orders. I drove back down Santa Monica Boulevard and past the lesbian café. Staring into the café, I drove through a red light. I knew that because a man crossing the street at the crosswalk slapped the hood of my car as he narrowly avoided getting hit and then by the time the noise registered, I saw that I was in the middle of an intersection, all alone except for a car rushing at my side. I drove home to my cold, empty apartment and vowed never to go out again.

&n
bsp; The number 82 on the scale should’ve meant something other than what it did to me. All it meant to me was that I was seven pounds lighter than the last time I weighed myself. The number 82 was the reward for my hard work, a nod to my dedication, a flashing red digital recognition of my self-control. It was a way to silence the drill sergeant in my head, and in this subjective world full of conflicting opinions, it was a way to objectively measure my success. Another way to measure my success was to use a tape measure. I had begun measuring the objects and the space surrounding the objects. Like a study of semiotics, I measured the white and black surrounding the white, the vacuous space that held its object and gave it substance. I measured my big legs with their thighs and the space between my thighs. I measured my footballer’s calves and watched as the chunky fat withered away to become a dancer’s calves and then a little child’s calves, too new and underdeveloped to be labeled anything other than just legs. I measured myself daily after weighing for a more accurate understanding of my progress. Occasionally, I would measure myself visually. I would stand naked in front of a mirror and look at myself. Sometimes I even loved what I saw. Sometimes I saw a boy, maybe twelve years of age, with a straight skinny body and no ugly penis that he would forever be measuring, wondering if he measured up. I sometimes saw a teenage girl with no breasts and no curves that would turn her into a woman with desires and complicate her perfect, sterile life. Sometimes I didn’t see a person at all, I just saw the inch of fat on a stomach and thighs that encouraged me to continue to lose weight. I knew I wasn’t attractive, and I was very happy about that. I didn’t want to be attractive. I didn’t want to attract. As long as no one wanted to be let in, I didn’t have to shut anyone out. If I could keep people from being interested enough to ask me questions, I didn’t have to lie. As long as I could be alone with my secrets, I didn’t have to worry about being found out.

  At 82 pounds, I wanted to photograph myself. I wanted to document my success. But first I had to silence the drill sergeant that reminded me of that extra inch of fat. First I had to get rid of that.

  27

  “CHECK THE gate.” There was a suspended moment as the cameraman shone a flashlight at the film in the camera.

  “Good gate.”

  “That’s lunch. One hour.” The scene of the crew and cast broke apart, first at its edges, with the actors strutting off the set and directly to their trailers, then the lights were shut down, the camera track taken apart, and finally the director on a chair on the far edge of the scene, with his script supervisor and ADs in tow, collected his notes and headed toward catering. It was my first day on the set of Cletis Tout. I hadn’t done any acting yet; my scene was coming up after lunch, but I had been at the set all morning. I had been asked to go to wardrobe for a final fitting and to work with the props guy as my character was a smart-ass, wisecracking potter who was tough on the outside, cold, hard, and glazed over yet fragile and needing to be handled delicately—like her pots.

  I went to wardrobe feeling a little insecure, as I had gained weight since my first fitting. I wasn’t sure how much weight I’d gained because I’d stopped weighing myself after seeing the number 82 on the scale. I’d given up on the idea of losing that stubborn inch of fat because of what happened to the rest of my body. At 82 pounds, the veins on my arms looked like thick strands of rope attaching my hands to my forearms and my elbows. The unsightliness of it forced me to put ice on my wrists to try to make them disappear, as the hotter it was, the more they protruded. I knew I couldn’t show up to a big-budget movie set needing to ice-down my veins in between takes, so I decided to slowly gain some weight. Although I knew I had to look better at a heavier weight, seeing the number on the scale climb back up through the nineties and head toward a hundred pounds was something I couldn’t bear.

  It was sheer agony, walking into a fitting, not knowing my weight. It was exactly this kind of anxiety—this fear of not knowing if I could fit into clothes—that I had tried to eradicate. I had told the costume designer that my measurements were thirty-four, twenty-four, thirty-five and, ironically, the ideal measurements as told to me by my modeling agency still didn’t apply to me. At the time the costumer asked for them, I was 29½, 22¾, 31⅜. And that was a lot more difficult to say over the phone. As I was playing a tough, bohemian artist, my wardrobe started out dark and layered, gradually shedding layers of clothes and softening the color palette as I gradually shed my tough exterior and dulled my witty barbs. It was a typical storyline for a “good” female leading lady character: she starts out hard and ends up soft and the metamorphosis from undesirable insect to awe-inspiring butterfly is reflected in the wardrobe.

  My insecurity about my weight gain was unnecessary, as both the black studded leather and the cream silk organza fit me perfectly. I had gained weight before my first fitting, but thankfully, I had maintained since then. I felt enormous relief. I was still in control after all. Standing in front of the mirror, a leading lady in a movie, I made the decision that when I returned to Ally for the next season, instead of trying to fit into the off-the-rack sizes, Vera would have to make the wardrobe to fit me. After all, it was actresses taking over the models’ jobs of posing on magazine covers that required that actresses fit into the sample size that designers made for models. I wasn’t a nameless model expected to fit into any dress. I was an actress. And because I was a very skinny one, like a model, I just happened to be able to fit into any dress.

  The hotel where I was staying during filming in Toronto, the Windsor Arms, was a chic boutique hotel with tasteful decor. It was home to all the transients, the U.S. actors who blow through Canada to work a job. The suite was a little dark because there was only one window and that was in the bedroom of the one-bedroom suite. A wall with a door separated the bedroom from the rest of the suite with its dark carpet and mahogany walls, and its black desk, gray sofa, and mahogany coffee table. The bedroom was all white and light because of the window. The light in there compelled me to spend all my time in the bedroom, which really just consisted of a bed, so I spent all my time in bed. I brought my life in two suitcases from Los Angeles to make my long stay comfortable during the five-week movie schedule. In one suitcase was my kitchen scale, ten I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter sprays, a large box of Splenda sachets, twenty cans of tuna, forty packets of oatmeal, Mrs. Dash, Extra chewing gum, a carton of Parliament Lights, and my digital bathroom scale. Although I hadn’t weighed myself recently and it was very heavy, I had to bring it because if I had the urge to check in with my weight, I couldn’t trust that the hotel would have an accurate scale. I also brought chopsticks, a can opener for the tuna, and my blue Chinese footed bowl with the fake pottery rings. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to make my frozen yogurt, so I brought my white and green bowl with the hairline crack in case I had access to a freezer and could find the sugar-free, low-calorie yogurt I ate back home. In the other suitcase were my workout clothes, jeans, and T-shirts and a dress for the mandatory “above the line” dinner. I’d always hated the mandatory dinner for a film production, whose guests ran from the top down to where the line was drawn (from the executive producers to the lowest-paid core cast) even when I wasn’t watching my weight. I hated having to talk to the producers because, as I was nearly always on the line, I felt like I could lose the job if I wasn’t as funny as the other cast members or if the light at the restaurant showed all my imperfections. I hated having to make the attempt to impress just to keep them from changing their minds and sending me home, replacing me with the prettier actress/girlfriend of the leading man, whose relaxed confidence was appealing and whose torso looked great from across the table. On location, I hated ever having to leave the hotel room. Alone in my hotel room was the only place I could relax. And I somehow always felt less lonely when I was completely alone.

  I was scheduled to work only one day a week for five weeks, with the rest of my time for myself. So I decided to take up drinking. Apart from the glass of champagne on Christmas Day, I ha
dn’t drunk alcohol for a long time, and I missed it. Instead of eating dinner, I decided to use up my calories with a glass of wine. I felt like I deserved it. I earned it. I worked out hard and ate little, and so a glass of wine at night was a fitting reward. Apart from the wine, I really didn’t ingest calories. Because wine didn’t contain calorie information on the labels and not all wine had the same amount of calories, I limited myself to one glass a day. But because the calories were unquantifiable I didn’t really trust eating anything. Occasionally, if I were working that day, I would start my day with 30 calories of oatmeal with Splenda and butter spray, and maybe have a bite of tuna for lunch, but mostly, I would order pickles from the hotel kitchen and just have pickles and mustard for the day. It wasn’t terrific, but having wine was, so it was worth it just for the duration of filming.

  “Cut. Back to one.” I stood on top of a rooftop building in downtown Toronto gasping for air. “One,” my starting position, was all the way down at the other end of the rooftop, and “action” was the cue to sprint from the other end to the front of the building, dive down on my knees, whip out a machine gun, and start shooting. As it was a comedy, the kickback from the machine gun knocked me over onto my back, where I had to wait a beat as the realization that I was in trouble set in, then in a panic hurl myself and my heavy machine gun off my back using my stomach muscles and struggle back onto my feet to make my escape. The rain made it harder. A fine and constant drizzle, not heavy enough to read through a camera lens, made the rooftop slick and dangerous and froze my fingers, destroyed my makeup and hair, and saturated my wardrobe.