Eat the Damn Cake

How do you feel about being naked?

Do you walk around naked? Do you sit naked? Do you ever stand naked in front of the mirror?

I was in love with my naked body. At fourteen, I sat on the floor with my biggest sketchbook, back straight, legs in what my ballet teacher had called “the butterfly.” I was naked in front of a full-length mirror. I was going to capture myself.

(well, i can’t exactly post a naked picture here, can i? source)

Virginia, of Beauty Schooled (who I finally met in person last week! She is as awesome as she sounds!),  wrote about being naked here. She made me think, as she always does. (And then, as I always do, I copied her idea for my own post.)

I’m sitting here, wearing a lot of clothes, trying to organize my thoughts about this. I think, “Powerful,” and then, “vulnerable.” I think of myself with boys. I think of myself alone. Nakedness sounds sexual, automatically, but every day we stand in the shower, even on the days we don’t have sex or even find someone to flirt with. We change our clothes. I take off most of my clothes every time I come home. I take off my earrings,  my socks. I put on pajama pants and a tank top. Most clothes are a part of my outside world self. Especially a bra. Why wear a bra when no one is around to notice your nipples?* Continue Reading »

I am, in many ways, a failure. For example, I am bad at getting a lot done in a day. If I do one big thing, I feel like I’m completely done. I can’t focus on anything else. I can’t seem to figure out when the chicken is cooked through to the inside. Which is why there are those chicken thermometers, I guess, but I don’t have one, and you can’t exactly go around sticking it into every piece of chicken you cook. Isn’t it only for whole chickens? Which leads me to my next item on the list: I don’t know basic stuff. I feel like I have to think twice all the time, because there’s always, always, always a chance I’ll say something completely embarrassing if I don’t.

In many ways, I’m a success. I usually do something I’m proud of every day. I remember to pick up the dry cleaning. I am always friendly, unless someone’s really rude to me. Sometimes I write a beautiful song. My abstract paintings are getting better. They no longer look quite as much like I was saying to myself, “Just put the splotch of red there! It’s daring! That’s what abstract art is! You have to take a risk!”

(image source here) Continue Reading »

(click here for image source)

Once I took a class on Buddhism, and the professor asked everyone who considered themselves happy to raise their hands. There were about 150 people in the class. I was one of only four who raised a hand. I’ve thought about that a lot since. I mean, I’m at Carnegie Hall, about to hit the last notes on the Rachmaninoff concerto that concludes my program—I can feel the audience tense, ready to fly to their feet in wild applause—and suddenly I’m right back there, sophomore year of college, sitting in that class, and I’m about to lift my hand…No, not really. But from time to time I remember it, like now, and I wonder if I was happy then. And if I’m happy now. And what happiness means. Stuff like that.

I’m one of those annoying people who can get upset about little things constantly. I annoy myself a lot with this tendency. I feel myself getting upset, and it’s like a wave sweeping over me. People describe me as passionate and complicated and other things that sound exciting. When they say those things, for just a moment I imagine myself as the heroine of a romance novel, my ebony curls windswept, standing alone on a balcony under a roiling, stormy sky, letting the rain lash against my upturned, perfectly sculpted pale face. I’d have gem green eyes, heart shaped lips, I’d have—Anyway. The thing is, that’s a romance novel. And the three times I’ve actually read them, I’ve laughed aloud at the language. It’s not really romantic to sulk because you stain your shirt, or want to hide somewhere because you used the wrong word at some point in a conversation. It’s easier to be a perfectionist when you’re closer to perfect. I mess up constantly. I’m awkward. Continue Reading »

(click here for source of photo)

I have always been absolutely terrible at math. OK, maybe not when I was seven or something, and numbers were a puzzle. People are always saying that. “It’s like a puzzle! It’s fun!” My fiancé thinks like this. He sometimes solves math problems for fun. That’s a little like…walking on spikes for fun. Giving yourself paper cuts for fun. Alphabetizing all of your books for fun. Scrubbing the bathroom floor for fun. Other terrible, painful, horrifyingly boring and tedious things for fun. You get the idea.

Maybe there was a time when I added two numbers and got another number and my little face lit up and I burbled, “It’s like magic!” But I learned very quickly that it was most certainly NOT like magic. Magic had more to do with fairy dolls and stories about bold, fearless princesses who ran away into the enchanted forest, and colorful silk scarves. Math was more about suffering. I wrote a lot of poems about how much I hated math, and the monumental unfairness of the world’s tendency to evaluate me based on skills I found no reason to value in the slightest bit. Continue Reading »

As I write this, I’m having a little bit of trouble breathing. It’s like I have a perpetual cold. I’m completely used to it, but when I think about it, I realize that it wasn’t always like this. In fact, the reason it’s like this now is that I feel bad about my face.

My college boyfriend talked me out of getting a nose job. He was appalled by the idea, perhaps to his credit. But I couldn’t talk myself out of it.

When I finally went to the cosmetic surgeon he took one look at my nose and said, “Oh yeah. Could definitely use some work done.” He was a very blunt guy, and I appreciated that about him. I appreciate him a little less after two surgeries and a nose that doesn’t look significantly different but doesn’t function quite as well. Continue Reading »

Maggie: What makes you mad?

Kate: A lot of things. Dropping things. Those commercials for tomato sauce where the voiceover tells the general public that eating Ragu guarantees the same health benefits as eating steamed vegetables. That’s just LYING. Receipts (they’re everywhere! There are always like ten of them in my purse). Plastic toys that talk. Missing the train by a minute. I get angry just thinking about that. But also–

I am angry that I ever feel bad about the way I look. It’s stupid. It’s pointless. It accomplishes nothing.

I can’t decide who I want to yell at more about this; myself, or the world. I think I may choose the world, since it’d be a lot more epic if it yelled back. Continue Reading »

Kate: Do you think something triggered your eating disorder?

Maggie: I always wonder why *I* was the one to develop an eating disorder. I always had friends that were crazier than I was; I was solid as a rock. I gained weight when I went to college, but I wasn’t the only one. I struggled while figuring out how to lose it. That seemed fairly standard for most girls I knew. Continue Reading »