Notes From the Underwire: Adventures From My Awkward and Lovely Life Read online

  Notes from the Underwire

  Adventures from My Awkward and Lovely Life

  Quinn Cummings

  To Consort, for getting on the plane

  Contents

  My Original Nose

  If It Weren’t for the Vegetables

  Like Nature Intended

  The Next Dolph Lundgren

  Something Inappropriate About Canada

  A Nice Big Fat One

  In the Criminal Justice System

  And the Livin’ Is Easy

  Kraftwerk

  Lift. Twist. Pull.

  Ye Olde Los Angeles

  In Less Than Glowing Terms

  Like a Tattoo on Your Butt

  Ask for Flaco

  A Big Mean Pair of Scissors

  Crunch

  Modern Love

  Sharp Left Turn

  The Spirit of ’76

  Carson Has Two Mommies

  Poetry in Motion

  The Good Soap

  Through the Great Room, Past the Gym

  Al Dente

  Dog Days

  It’s the Pictures That Got Small

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  My Original Nose

  THIS WASN’T IN MY PLANS FOR THE DAY.

  Alice and I attended a parent-and-child art class. While Alice mused over a composition that would be listed in future catalogs of her work as Meditations on Pink Tissue, Elmer’s Glue, and Glitter, #186, I had taken a moment to run to the bathroom. Racing back so I could be the restraining force between Alice and a Big Gulp–sized container of glitter, I dashed up the stairs and bounded through the doorway into the classroom. Only, to keep things lively, I didn’t pass through the open door but slammed into its adjacent plate-glass window instead. The flat light shining through from the classroom had rendered it invisible. Now it was abundantly visible thanks to the smeary marks made by my nose, lips, and cheek crashing into its surface at full trot.

  This won’t come as a shock to anyone who knows me. I started walking at nine months. I started walking into things at nine months and one hour. My everyday walk resembles the frantic dart of a small, excitable lizard, and I seem to be unable to grasp the notion that inanimate objects don’t know how to get out of my way. Smashing into a window was a new trick altogether. I had mutated from lizard to sparrow.

  The door opened—the real door, not the portal of shame—and several parents and the art instructor looked at me with concern. The sound of my face slamming against the thick glass must have been somewhat alarming. One of the parents, a casually well-dressed dad in his forties, came to where I was sitting on the linoleum and asked, “Are you all right?”

  I thought about this question. Noses were not designed to absorb the impact from a head-to-wall collision at any speed above a crawl so the odds of my being fully all right weren’t good. I thought about this for some time. Perhaps too much time. I wondered if I had a concussion. Surreptitiously, I held out two fingers and counted them. This cheered me up until I realized someone else was supposed to run that test. If I’m holding up two fingers there’s a pretty high likelihood I’ll know I’m holding up two fingers. Unless, of course, the concussion is affecting my memory, in which case I might be able to recognize two fingers but wonder whose nail-nibbled fingers they are, which would be another problem. Since the recollection of smooshing my face into plate glass was excruciatingly vivid, I had every reason to suspect my memory was unaffected. None of these thoughts helped answer the immediate question regarding my health, however, so I went with the always classic, “Yes, I’m fine.”

  As the concerned father stared deeply into my eyes, I worried for a moment that he found idiots who think they can pass through solid objects desirable and was about to hit on me. Then I noticed his gaze had a certain professional quality.

  “Are you a doctor?” I asked, discreetly dabbing under my eyes to see if my brain was leaking out.

  “I was a cardiac surgeon. Now I run a medical-research hedge fund.”

  Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the most intimidating father in this area code, talking to the woman who had just seen fit to emulate a windshield gnat. I dabbed. I smiled. I assured everyone that I was fine. Really. Fine! Eventually, we all returned to our art making.

  Dr. Hedge-Fund and his son went back to creating Michelangelo’s David out of cotton balls and paste while they parried some sort of word game in Mandarin. I slid into the seat next to Alice where her work surface, her lap, and her hair led me to understand she had moved into the glitter phase of her creation without my counsel. She looked up. “Weren’t you going to the bathroom?” When a small girl is struck by glitter-lust, her mother can leave the room, fling herself loudly against a solid object, and rest easy in the knowledge she wasn’t missed.

  I spent the better part of that night in front of the bathroom mirror poking at my nose, flinching, and poking it some more. Under the best of circumstances I am no great fan of my nose. For one thing, its bridge is too flat. For another, it’s too short, and the combination of wide and short means my nose looks square, an adjective never associated with the great beauties of any era. It’s a tolerable nose in person but it never photographs well. From certain angles it looks like I have a potato taped to my face. After the window incident, I appeared to have sprung a butcher-block workbench between my eyes. I was starting to miss the familiar square.

  To add further insult to my injury, my nose was no longer drawing in the usual amounts of air. My left nostril had closed up shop and taken to its bed. I wanted to whine and I needed to find someone obligated to feign interest in all this. So, of course, I buttonholed Consort.

  “Why did every self-defense course I’ve ever taken tell me how easy it is to break a person’s nose?” I asked him.

  Consort stared at me expectantly. I sighed, and a few moments passed.

  He said, “That was rhetorical, right?”

  “It seems so unfair,” I continued, ignoring his question. “I was always told the nose breaks easily. I should be in pre-op for a nose job right now.”

  He stared at me in wonder and confusion. “I’m sorry, am I hearing you say you want a nose job?”

  “Of course, I want a nose job. I hate my nose. It should be cuter. Or it should at least deliver oxygen to my brain. A nose job might accomplish one of those requirements.”

  “Then…” he said softly, tiptoeing through the minefield that is my belief system, “you should get a nose job…”

  “You silly. I can’t do that,” I said patiently. “That would be cheating.”

  I will explain. When you live in Los Angeles your entire life, it’s drummed into you how nothing is permanent. Don’t like your name? Change it. “Tawnee” is nice, and isn’t in high rotation this season. Breasts can expand and contract with the style of the moment. A chin-length bob can become tumbling locks in an afternoon and pixie-short by nightfall. The official motto of Los Angeles is “Semper Pulcher et Connubialis.” Loosely translated, this means: “You are entitled by sheer virtue of being born to remain ever young and sexually desirable. You also get to possess any object that delights you.”

  Since every person in Los Angeles with a working credit card and a phone is currently interviewing plastic surgeons to redo their liposuction or freshen up their labia, I must—as the most contrary person in the world—get nothing changed. I must live with the nonphotogenic, nonfunctional nose I was given because living with the nose I was given at birth is making a point, even if I no longer recall what that point is.

  My at
titude might have had something to do with being honest. Or seeking a stoic calm. Or not wanting a nose that screams “Dr. Feingold’s Spring 2008 collection.” Still, as I explained to Consort, even the best laws have loopholes. I can get a face-lift when I’m older because a face-lift wouldn’t actually change anything, it would just restore me to a previous condition—a condition I might have kept had I been more vigilant about sunblock, eaten nothing but cruciferous vegetables, and lived in a gravity-free environment. A face-lift isn’t cheating; it doesn’t change what I was given by nature. A face-lift is just a horrendously expensive do-over, with Vicodin.

  Consort, as he often does after I explain how things work, attempted to present a neutral expression. But he just looked alarmed.

  The next morning, my nose was blue. Not navy blue, more of an aquamarine. Certainly nothing I couldn’t hide with a little makeup, but since touching my nose sent waves of pain down to my floating ribs, I was just going to have to dress around it. For entertainment value, I called my ear-nose-and-throat doctor. It was before 9:00 a.m. so his service asked if I wanted to leave a message.

  “Yeah, just let him know that I ran into a plate-glass window yesterday and my nose didn’t bleed or anything but now it’s sort of aquamarine-blue and I can’t breathe through one nostril, and also, I don’t want to sound shallow, but I’m a little asymmetrical, I mean, we’re all asymmetrical, right, but this is…”

  “Please hold.”

  I assumed she had another call. I tried humming along to the hold music, but humming made my nose vibrate unpleasantly so I stopped. Within a minute, I heard my doctor’s voice.

  “Quinn,” he said jovially. “What did you do now?”

  I will never use my ENT doctor as a character witness; he knows too much. He always sees me at my worst, which frequently involves Q-tips and an eardrum. At least this was a new injury. I suspect he likes me in the same way police officers maintain an amicable rapport with certain neighborhood criminals. Everyone has their job, nothing personal. Three or four times a year I put my health at risk. Three or four times a year he comes along and saves me from myself, always taking care to laugh at my misadventures in the least derisive way possible. He’d see me that afternoon.

  I took my Easter egg–tinted nose to Beverly Hills, where all doctors in Los Angeles practice. To outsiders, Beverly Hills is where celebrities congregate on corners, comparing Bentleys. In reality, Beverly Hills is where celebrities wear paper kimonos, read last month’s Good Housekeeping, and urinate in a cup. The nurse called my name and pointed down the hallway. “You’re in room seven,” she said.

  This was only slightly helpful as none of the doors displayed any sort of number. I drifted toward the first room and the nurse called out, “Not six. Seven!” in a tone that indicated even coliform bacteria knew how to find room seven. Stung, I spun around and followed her finger toward the next door, moving quickly to get away from her judgment and my disgrace. As it turns out, this was room five. Rooms seven and five were identical except the door into room seven was open and the door into room five was closed. I had run into another closed door.

  It’s not that I never learn. I learn things all the time. The lesson I’m learning now is that learning things doesn’t change my behavior. When I was sixteen, I started saying “I don’t actually like acting…” but it took another eight years for me to finish the sentence, “and I’m not going to do it anymore.” Since I was eleven I’ve known I can’t wear yellow, but every three years I convince myself “butter” or “lemon drop” isn’t really yellow and I wear it until a close friend inquires if I might be experiencing liver failure. By the time I was twenty-four, I was already exquisitely aware that nothing good ever happened after the phrase, “Yes, let’s get another pitcher of margaritas,” but I continued that behavior for years. It’s like one part of my brain takes notes and learns but the rest of my brain shouts “LA LA LA. Can’t possibly hear you over this questionable activity.” I sometimes wonder if my last words on this earth will be something like, “Oh, I knew this wouldn’t work.”

  I was sitting on the floor in front of the examining room. The nurse who had been directing me into room seven raced over to me, saying, “Oh my God, are you okay?” which would have sounded better had she not been giggling and I not flat on my ass on the linoleum. I dabbed at my nose with a professional air and said briskly, “Just getting my money’s worth out of today’s visit.” I stood up, looked around carefully, and determined the only other room with an open door must be room seven. I had every intention of walking in a steady and measured pace into the room. Instead, I darted across the hallway, hit my elbow on the counter, and flung myself into the chair in the examination room, prepared to be mocked yet again by my favorite doctor.

  It hurts when I bang into things…I thought to myself, rubbing the bruise forming on my leg. If there was a second part to that sentence, it didn’t come to me.

  If It Weren’t for the Vegetables

  I LOVE GOING TO THE LOCAL FARMERS’ MARKET; I’M SO much cooler there. For two hours a week I’m not the Quinn who would live on jelly beans if gum disease and diabetes didn’t exist. I’m not the Quinn who sneers at root vegetables, the Quinn who is frightened by leeks. Walking up and down the rows of stands, I become the Quinn who spontaneously whips up a spinach salad with homemade vinaigrette for lunch, the one who buys vegetables and not only eats them but makes stock from the remnants. I am sober and industrious and thrifty. I am Amish with the option of Velcro. That the farmers’ market Quinn doesn’t actually exist is a small irritant, sand on my psychic spinach.

  A while ago, I took Alice to the market. Along with the masses of vegetables and fruits, there were small restaurant booths and vendors selling premade goods. I was holding up a bunch of Swiss chard trying to make myself believe I would actually cook it before it became slime when Alice suddenly breathed, “Ooh, look.” I followed her gaze to where a local Indian restaurant was selling takeout from an ice chest. Since we both appreciate a well-seasoned lentil, we ambled over. The setup was clean. The samples were generous and tasty. Predictably, I bought cooked lentils. And then Alice pointed to a pint-size container of something white.

  “Yes! Raita!” she crowed, pleased at seeing her favorite exotic side dish. The owner gave her a small taste and she inhaled it. She turned to me, her eyes filling half her face.

  “May I please have raita?” she breathed in a voice traditionally used for negotiating items from the Frito-Lay group. I noted the sign that read “Raita: $6.00 a pint.” That seemed more like a fresh-raspberry price, not a food-typically-eaten-by-grad-students-because-it-is-filling-and-cheap price. So I questioned the owner, who gave me a spirited lecture about the cost of creating healthy, locally raised food while also paying workers a living wage. Cowed, I asked if there was a smaller size. But, no, apparently one can only appreciate yogurt with fair-trade things floating in it in pint-sized containers.

  I said to Alice, “If I get it…,” and she fist-pumped “Yes!” She assumed this was the “If” that meant I’m finding a way to give you what you want while still maintaining the illusion that I run the place. But when I spend six dollars on gelatinous yogurt, it will come with conditions, so I continued, “If I get it, you have to eat it. All of it.” On the off chance I wasn’t flogging the subject sufficiently, I added, “I don’t eat raita, so if I buy it, you are telling me you will eat it. It’s expensive.”

  “I will. I will. Thank you,” she chanted, eyes fixed on the ice chest holding the nectar. I handed over six dollars and got my pint of Indian white. The owner warned me that the food was freshly made without preservatives and as such needed to be eaten within two days, which certainly didn’t seem to be a problem, since Alice kept opening the bag and affectionately patting the container of raita as if it were a guinea pig.

  She ate the entire pint of lentils that night for dinner, which gave me the narcotic rush of Look at me, raising a child who enjoys healthy, vegetarian food. I don’t know
why people think this mothering business is so hard. Really, just a little care and attention, and children dance to your bidding.

  I had now set up all the pins. Karma picked up her bowling ball.

  The next night we ate dinner out. The following evening, as I pulled the raita from the fridge, its expiration date looming in my thoughts, I asked Alice, “Do you want your raita over lentils and rice?”

  “Yeah,” she replied. “I guess.” This wasn’t the same girl who had been liquid yogurt’s head cheerleader less than forty-eight hours earlier. No worries, I told myself. She’ll come around once she gazes upon its pearlescent splendor. I heated the lentils and rice and poured some of the cool raita on the side of the plate, which I placed in front of my daughter. She set upon the rice and lentils like some kind of botanic predator. I waited; the raita remained untouched. In fact, if I had to give a sworn deposition, I would have said the raita was being avoided.

  “Didn’t you notice? Raita. On your plate,” I said stupidly, as if the goop leaching into her rice was visible only to me. She moved a raita-dribbled grain of rice onto her fork and between her lips. She looked at me, her lip curled slightly. I barked, “What?” To which she said, “I’d like it if weren’t for the vegetables in it.”

  I exhaled slowly through my teeth and said in my dangerously even tone, “It had the same vegetables in it when you couldn’t live without it two days ago. Just. Eat. It.”

  She ate another grain of rice, which, possibly, had abutted a grain of rice that had touched the raita, and then she looked at me. “I’m full,” she announced. “You can have the rest.”