No, it’s not an ABBA‘s song, it’s my sad, sad reality…
10 AM
Miss Squiggles has a date.
For various reasons that I am not going to share, she has been going through a couple of not very easy months and now she doesn’t really feel like going to the date; quite the opposite actually. She feels irritable and somewhat unattractive. Let me tell you something: milk and biscuits are not the best allies when you feel quite blue; they were so sneaky to take full ownership of Miss Squiggles’ ‘cuddly’ hips and now, my dears, let’s just say that she has found out why Shakira made a song about “hips” not lying.
But now with the date coming closer and closer (and with the summer being already here or almost) how can she break the walls of chocolate and bagels that held her body hostage?
How can I? (Shall we stop using the third person for a while?) How can I open my ‘good’ wardrobe? What’s a good wardrobe, you ask me? Oh please, don’t lie. Everyone has a drawer, a box or a whole, secret wardrobe that it gets opened only in cases of extremity necessities; the one with impossibly high heels shoes and the one with slits so dangerous that would put Angelina to deep, deep shame.
I look at such a closet with pure terror. Actually, I have been looking at it for days now. I can’t open it. I just can’t. And, despite trying not to think about it, I can’t help but think that this date is going to be awful if I go out in a bin bag.
It all started from a bizarre dream I had, months and months ago, before Miss Squiggles, even before the blog.
In the dream, I was in a cafe. I was trying to give a bite to a delicious apple pie when I saw a “frenemy”: a friend, an enemy, and a genuinely horrible person. She was with a lovely guy, a friend of hers and a teacher, a lovely, lovely guy. Even when I woke up I couldn’t really accept the reality so I started my mission. Maybe I was just curious, maybe I was just a little bit crazy but I invited my frenemy over for dinner and we have been BFF since then. Maybe it’s destiny, I thought. Maybe it’s her who will introduce me to my future husband. Maybe she is not that bad, maybe she will be a bridesmaid at my wedding. Maybe not.
(I apologise for the following paragraph where I will use the third person again; but sometimes my idiocy is too much for one single individual and needs to be shared between two; sometimes even three)
But when Miss Squiggles has a goal in mind, she rarely loses sight; so no matter how insanely terrible this person was, Miss Squiggles did the best she could to get to know her better in order to understand if she had any links with the teacher of her dreams. They went out together, they brushed each other’s hair (figuratively, god that would be weird) and talked about frizzy hair and bad relationships (Miss Squiggles’) and shining, L’Oreal hair and passionate romances (Miss Squiggles’ frenemy’s).
And then, after months and months of forced Saturday nights watching the frenemy’s wedding photo album, I found myself receiving the phone call: “Come to my house, Squiggles,” she said. “You have to meet this friend of mine, he is gorgeous.”
Mr. Sunshine, the only non gay, male individual, I know, (99% of my male friends are gays), thinks that I am an idiot: “Silly Squiggles,” he says. “You had a dream, dreams are not real.”
“I understand, it’s foolish,” I say. “But wasn’t Stephenie Meyer, the one who had a dream about vampires before getting to publish Twilight? Look at where she is now,” I try to get a grip worsening my position. The things my brain learns…
Mr. Sunshine looks at me shocked. “Don’t ever mention Twilight, if you want to stay friends, ever again,” he warns me.
“Are we friends now?” I joke.
“I can’t be friend with someone who has sex dreams about Robert Pattinson,” he says with a little smile in his eyes.
“That happened just once,” I throw my empty Evian at him, and miss my target.
Sometimes I wonder when I became so desperate. Was that before or after the blind, blind date? (Dinner was served in total darkness and we had to get to know each other by trusting only the other four senses…that didn’t exactly work out well but that’s another story).
13 pm…
There isn’t much I can do now. But maybe if I wear something nice, maybe everything will be better, much better actually.
I open my closet.. It almost explodes in my face; there’s that skirt, the one that I bought on sale and that has never fitted me; there’s the “I’ll buy it because tomorrow I’ll start dieting” dress; there’s that obscene shirt, the one I got in TKMaxx and is from a famous designer whose name I can’t recall; and then there is a tower of skinny, skinny pairs of jeans; the ones I can only wear after three weeks of high fever and vomit.
I examine one dark pair; sexy; sexy and tight. They will never fit me. Never.
OK, now, let’s not panic. I will try them slowly, one leg, and then the other. I wear one leg and then the other and everything goes well. I would love to scream or cry. They fit me. They do fit me, I say incredulously. A dog barks somewhere outside.
Now, that’s the hardest part: my hips and my bum. Damn. OK, I must relax. I lay in bed, calm and serene. I breathe slowly and I button my jeans. Oh, thank god, I won’t ever get a bagel, ever again.
Now I just have to learn how not to breathe and I will be fine. And everything will be fine. I try to get up. It’s difficult but I can do it. Once on my own unstable legs I admire myself in the mirror.
Gosh, I am beautiful. My legs are thinner, my bum is smaller…I need to see myself with high heels now. “If I can only reach for my heels…”
Keeping an uncertained balance, I try to reach for the heels on the floor, silently cursing myself for being so terribly untidy, I grasp them with one hand and carefully slip into their soft soles while risking to fall on the floor any moment.
Now with both shoes and tight jeans, I beam at my reflection … beautiful jeans, they are perfect, they are…
“AHHH.”
The dog barks again.
I fall in slow motion.
The jeans are really tight.
16.00 pm
Sprawled on the floor, I unbutton my jeans and I note with horror the red-button tattoo. With some Circus-like-stretching, I grab the phone and I type the only seven digits I managed to learn so far.
“You. Me. shopping. NO you cannot refuse. NO I cannot wait until tomorrow. I need a male opinion. Why? ”
“Why? Because I had a dream, that’s why!”
Miss Squiggles
