I’d done my sweating, I’d done my pumping and, as a result, gravity was yet to become my sworn enemy. Okay, so maybe I hadn’t earned my face, but I’d earned my body.
Time to cut to the chase.
(Besides, we can talk about my breasts later.)
In short, then, while the only runways I’d ever been on had all involved planes, no one on the beach had ever begged me to put more clothes on. Objectively speaking, on bad days, I was acceptable; on good days, I was substantially more than.
The basic building blocks for Exhibit A and Exhibit B, with the exception of the color-enhanced roots and the weights-at-the-gym flab-free upper arms, were what God had started me out with in life. Just like the spectacular breasts, I hadn’t earned those building blocks; they were with me when I arrived. Exhibit A and Exhibit B had been with me my whole life so far.
Exhibit A and Exhibit B were what the world first saw whenever they saw me. (Untrue, that nasty little voice in my head, the one I heard upon occasion, niggled. What the world sees first about you are your breasts. You remember, don’t you? Exhibit C?)
Exhibit A and Exhibit B were the face and body I took to work with me every single day.
2
If you ever feel the need to hide in plain sight, you can do it by becoming a librarian.
I swear to God, sometimes I feel as though I’m some sort of nonwoman forty hours a week. Which is a good thing, in a way, since it gives me a nice bumper of time not to contend with my breasts and how the world sees them. Oh, sure, I still see people registering them first thing when they walk up to the reference desk, but it’s a passing registration, more fleeting than if, say, I were a nurse (people always check out nurses’ breasts) or a go-go dancer (ditto) or a guest star on the Bay-watch reunion movie (no parenthetical aside necessary). Since the public pretty much views librarians as some sort of asexual alien life force, and since the wearing to work of braless tanks is kind of frowned upon by the city that employs us, it’s a pretty safe place for a spectacularly-breasted woman to hide.
Not that hiding my breasts was the original impetus for my career choice, a choice that had ultimately landed me at Danbury Public Library. No, the real reason I had originally gone after my Master in Library Science was that I love books. Duh. And librarians make much more money than bookstore clerks. It just never occurred to me that instead of recommending great books to read, which was the chief joy in working in a bookstore, I’d spend my days called upon to answer questions ranging from, “Where can I find information on the economy of the Galapagos?” to “Why can I never find the books on the shelves where they’re supposed to be?” to “Why can’t I download porno from the Internet on your computers?”
But the pay was good, thepaywasgood, thepaywasgood. (If that sounds like a mantra, it’s because it is, itis, itis.)
Plus, the way I figured it, someone had to be an under-achiever so that all of those overachievers out there could feel superior about what they’d achieved. In a way, I was performing a social function here.
When I had originally declared my intention of becoming a librarian, I got this from my mother: “A librarian?” Like I wanted to be a welder or something. “I sent you to the best schools so you could become a librarian?”
“It’s not like I’m going to be selling crack. I will get to use my mind there.”
“I didn’t name you Scarlett so that you could grow up to be a librarian.”
“Oh, yeah, right. And I’m sure if I became a lawyer named Scarlett, I’d just get a ton of respect.”
“Maybe not.” She’d shrugged. “But the pay is good.”
Seven years into what was now my twelve-year stint at the library (four weeks vacation a year! The pay is good, thepayisgood, thepayisgood!), I’d run into an old high-school boyfriend at a party at Pam’s.
“So what do you do?” He’d leered at me over the vodka punch.
“I’m a librarian.”
“A librarian?” He’d gaped at me as if I’d just sprouted a bun or something.
“Why? What’d you think I’d grow up to be—a welder? a nurse? a stripper?”
“I don’t know,” he’d confessed, looking slightly sheepish. “It’s just hard to picture you behind the reference desk.” His gaze settled on my chest. “It just seems…I don’t know…wrong somehow.”
“Call me when you grow up,” I’d said, walking away.
“He always was a dick,” Pam had said when I found her in the kitchen.
“Yeah,” I’d sighed, “but he was always such a good-looking dick. Too bad he’s so narrow-minded.”
Pam, of course, had never been narrow-minded about my career choice. No, in Pam’s case—Pam, who really was a lawyer—it was downright hostility.
“You have a great brain, Scarlett. So what if your breasts get in the way a little bit? You could do what I do.”
Duh.
(Sometimes, I can’t believe I’m thirty-nine and still saying “duh.”) “Okay, so maybe you couldn’t do exactly what I do— I mean, with those breasts, you could hardly be in litigation—but you could certainly be a tax attorney. Hell, if you became an entertainment lawyer, you’d probably clean up!”
I didn’t even want to know what she meant by that.
“Really, Scarlett, I’m sure that if you just put your mind to it, you could become one of us.” The “us” referring to Pam herself and T.B. and Delta, the two other women that made up our quadrangular friendship.
“I suppose I could,” I conceded, “except for one small fact.”
“That being?”
“I’m not one of an ‘us.’ I’m one of a ‘me.’”
“So you say. I just think it’s a shame that you feel the need to waste this brain that God gave you.”
I tried the same not-a-crack-dealer line I’d used on my mother, but Pam wasn’t having any.
“It’s a waste, Scarlett, I don’t care what you say, it’s a waste. Locking that mind of yours away in a library is like winning the lottery and then just putting it all in the bank for the rest of your life, it’s like some kind of brain-cell chastity or something.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Don’t get defensive. But, I mean, come on. Wouldn’t you like to find out what you could really become in life, if you weren’t so downright weird about the career world taking you at breast-face value?” Then she’d given a heavy sigh. “You’ve always been so pretty, though, with everything handed to you because of it—why would you ever have to know what it’s like to have to maintain the drive to go after something in life and earn it on sheer merit alone?”
You’re probably wondering right around now just exactly why this woman, this woman who could be considerably more
