The Many Madonnas of Me

By Juli

I just poured myself a glass of wine. Okay, my second glass.

Fuck, my third.

Somebody, probably someone famous I’ll feel stupid for forgetting to credit (blame the wine), once called a women’s menses “a time that cannot lie” or tell lies. Or something. Basically, you can’t lie when you’re on your rag. You’re all Id. Like my cat. (Who is, right now, by the way, sitting on the chair next to me alternating between yell/meowing at me and purring. . . trying to get dinner early. To bad Id, go deal. I’m writing. Elbow to the chin.)

Well, without divulging where I am in my cycle. Cough, cough. I think the third glass of wine is also one of those “times that cannot lie.” I get confessional. So here I go.

I live in daily fear of something.

It’s not falling. It’s not spiders. It’s not coming home from Target and finding my husband doing the nasty with the nanny on the matrimonial bed (we don’t have a nanny, btw).

It’s someone posting an old picture of me on Facebook.

Seriously, no shit. It freaks me out. This is why.

I was skinny until exactly second grade. And then I got fat. And I stayed fat through college. Okay, a few years after college. While all of my other friends have cute pictures of them half-smashed on various beaches for spring break, I have nothing. Because I threw them all away. What I DID have was five thousand doughy pictures of me with bad hair. So, that’s a session for a would-be therapist someday (or for my fourth glass of wine), but somewhere in my mid to late twenties I shed the fat suit and started running. Thank sweet Jehovah I have nice oily skin that bounced back. Anyway, I still battle 10 pounds or so when I get caught up in deadlines and random life drama, but whatevs. Right? That kinda fat builds character. My old kinda fat built neurosis.

The kind I’m trying to tell you about right now. Shut up and listen.

So, a friend I went to college with just posted a picture of a bunch of her friends in college sunning themselves on Tar Beach. She didn’t mention “Tar Beach” but I know where it was. Why? Because that FAT GIRL in the corner of the pic, the one with her head turned, with the one-piece and the shorts on? Yeah, that was me.

I’m on the offense. Anyone posts a fat pic of me, and they’re smoked. Yes, the little itty bitty dash of Italian in me is going to rush to call Cousin Guido, and then you’ll be sorry. I swear to God, it will be UGLY.

Anyway, and not to get too deep here, but I have to make a point or Catherine will be annoyed I’m just writing a typical confessional blog entry. . .and this IS a good point. It used to be you could just reinvent yourself and say “bye, bye” to those old friends and move on. Your husband didn't have to know you were chubalicious, your new friends never got enlightened you used to date girls (omigod, did I just say that??), the people who knew you as flakey in high school and college never mingled with the people who know you as flakey now, whatever. But here’s the deal. Now with things like Facebook (eeeevvvil Facebook), it’s all mishmash. You have a whole meetinghouse of people who really know different versions of YOU. Big you, small you, nice you, bitchy you.

Maybe they’ll all take it with me like we do with Madonna. When my Material Girl world collides with the chick who ran off to Africa and adopted an orphan, maybe it will all be okay. They’ll see my ability to work with the clay that is me, and they’ll nod and smile and say “Good for her. She evolves."

Or, if they’re not a fan, they’ll go off in separate corners and giggle and make fun.

Well, screw them.