Imperfections (19 page)

“Get this,” she continued. “I'm going to be in a fucking prehysteric huntress get-up. Chester told me five minutes ago and now I have this fucking shoulder-gash I have to somehow make look sexy. And how exactly can I make a shoulder-gash sexy? Do I look like one of those cave women who hunt dinosaurs? The ones I've seen in pictures were all hideous, with bones in their hair and…”

“Give me a martini. Vodka, olives, straight up,” I said when the bartender pointed a gun-finger at me.

Vermouth, Vodka, chilled martini glass, olives.

“Reverend Mordant Toehold,” Donna barked.

Lemon vodka, rye, melon liqueur, Chambord, orange juice, pineapple juice, dash of sweet and sour, splash of grenadine, egg whites, ice, blend, fishbowl glass, pink umbrella, melon ball and a curly straw.

“Mint julep.” Chester sidled up to the bar next to Donna.

Bruised mint sprigs, bourbon, sugar syrup, water, Collins glass.

“Karkadé,” came a deeper and wholly intriguing voice from the woman beside Chester.

Sudanese hibiscus tea. Dried hibiscus sabdariffa flower, boiling water, ceramic cup.
 

Believed to normalize blood sugar, uric acid and cholesterol.
 

Believed to reduce food cravings, wrinkles and even out skin tone.
 

Believed to be a folk remedy for cancer.

This tall, regal and vaguely familiar woman gave us a sidelong glance.

“Donna,” Chester said with a sly grin. “Dewar's looking for his Wilma Flintstone. They need you backstage for fitting.”

Donna gave Chester a black stare until the bartender placed the fishbowl glass on the counter. Donna took a long pull from her Toehold, the fishbowl glass looking ridiculously large in her dainty hands, before storming off.

“Thanks, Chester,” I said around a sip of martini. “She's a handful, a bundle of foul words and poison.” I paused for a thought. “In fact, I have never met anyone so disagreeable. Truly, I can't stand her.”

Chester had become a father to me. At the age of nineteen, I finally found a mature male relationship from which I could glean a much-needed passive guidance. Chester wasn't critical. He didn't judge. He didn't lecture or chide, he quietly guided. He wanted the best for me.

“She is a repugnant little vixen but one heck of a model. That fiery hellcat attitude comes through in every shoot and every show she's in. She exudes ‘man-eating harpy' which is the edge a lot of designers want.” Chester chuckled and looked into his julep to find what to say next. “How's that whole relationship thing going between you two? How long have you been together? A year now?”

“It's okay, I guess. I can't help but feel that something's missing though, some kind… any kind of depth or connection,” I said.

The sex was amazing though. The kind that's in porno movies.

Chester nodded and smiled as if reading my thoughts. “Well, you'll know what to do. You have so much going for you. You're a good kid and you'll sort it out.”

The tall, regal, slightly familiar woman with the Sudanese hibiscus tea had been watching us. She cleared her throat.

Chester raised an eyebrow and looked over his shoulder.

“Apologies, my dear,” he said. “Richard, I have the distinct pleasure of introducing you to one of the most amazing women I have ever met. I'm sure, with time, you'll be liable to agree. This is Stella Supernova.”

That was where I knew her from, the picture hanging on Chester's wall back at the Agency's offices. She was the legend he told me about. I had been modelling for two years and hadn't gone a week without hearing some mention of Ms. Supernova. In an industry with a standard for badmouthing and backstabbing, the references were always positive.

There she was, offering me a hand and a smile. She was amazing. Her face was not classically, or modernly, beautiful, but there was such character and otherworldly grace in her features. Physically, she was equally impressive, a relative giant compared to most of the models I had worked with, full in stature and voluptuous in form where the others were skin-draped skeletons. She stood a head taller than Chester and me, broad-shouldered with well-toned arms, one of which, I was reminded, was held out to me in greeting.
 

“Stop staring and say hello, Richard,” Chester said.

I stuttered out a greeting that didn't contain words, only sounds.

“Charmed.” Her voice was as rare as her look. “Chester has told me so much.”

“Now, Richard,” Chester said with a glance at the stage. “I have to go make sure this show doesn't have any hiccups. Can I trust you to keep Stella company, as a gentleman would?” He emphasized the last four words to impress upon me that Stella was higher up our cladogram. Although Stella boasted no pretense, it was obvious to me that she shared most of the genetic makeup as the rest of the people in the Grand Garden Arena in the same manner that humans and chimpanzees share most of their genes.

Chester was off. Moments later, the speakers blared. Stella took a sip of tea and watched the first models strut down the catwalk over the rim of the teacup. I popped an olive in my mouth as an excuse not to say anything, anything stupid at any rate. Stella watched the lingerie, the bodies. I chewed olive pulp very slowly, turning tapenade into paste and paste into consommé.

Finally, Stella spoke, shouted really, over the beat. “This doesn't hold much interest for me anymore. It makes me sad and a little disappointed.”

I swallowed and nodded.

“Come.” She smiled and linked her arm through mine with effortless grace. She guided me from the arena, very unlike the way Donna had dragged me through the lobby earlier.
 

“There's a display I want to see,” she told me once we reached the relative silence of the Studio Walkway outside the arena. “It's part of the fundraiser and I'm sure it's lamentably under-attended in lieu of that spectacle.” She gestured over her shoulder with a gentle roll of her head.

A short saunter found us at the Studio Ballroom. At the entrance, on a golden easel like the one in the lobby, was a dusty rose-coloured placard with gold letters spelling
Milestones in Making Women Whole: A Recent History of Breasts
.

We stepped past the sign, through the door and the last remaining vestige of noise disappeared. The room was coloured a deep tint of indigo. It was like suddenly being plunged into a vast, quiet ocean.

Stella and I stood, arm in arm, at the beginning of what would prove to be a winding corridor of displays. A spotlight flashed on, an amber tassel of light illuminating a series of grainy, sepia-toned photos. There was a static audio-pop, as if a needle hit a record. A series of ascending tones saturated the air before a soft voice played.

“Welcome to ‘Milestones in Making Women Whole,' a celebration of one hundred years of breast enhancement…”

“I don't like that,” Stella whispered.

“What?”

“
Enhancements
. It is the wrong word, has the wrong implications. They're implants.”

“…performed the first recorded enhancement procedure in 1895, a procedure that became all the rage for actresses and prostitutes of the time.” A series of happy tones sounded.

I looked at the archaic before-and-after photos and wondered if there would have been cosmetic surgery advertisements in supermarket checkout-line gossip magazines one hundred years ago. Would this new breast enhancement procedure be advertised in the lower right-hand corner of the article about Oscar Wilde's criminal libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry backfiring with a countersuit and Wilde getting sentenced to two years in prison for homosexual misconduct?

I wondered if there were celebrity gossip magazines one hundred years ago and, if not, what did people read?

Audio-pop.

“Immediate results were promising. Paraffin was injected into the chest cavity, which settled into a passable breast shape, though realism was lacking to touch. Unfortunately, a common side effect of this treatment was granulomas produced by prolonged exposure to the paraffin. These paraffinomas, along with high rates of infection, scarring and paraffin migration within the chest cavity, made this a limited and fleeting technology.”

There was another loud audio-pop and the light went off, leaving us in the deep violet silence. A moment later, another spotlight went on over a display table a short distance down the hallway.

Stella shook her head as we made our way to the second spotlight.

“Can you imagine?” she said. “Back then it was scandalous to get caught altering your body. Not only was it physically hazardous but socially as well. Can you imagine the psychological suffering to make a woman risk physical danger and social stigmatization, exposing one's self, though unknowingly at the time, to cancers and scarring…”

Audio-pop.

We stood at a table with breast-shaped glass objects, sponges, a vat of yellow-pink gelatinous material, and several other unidentifiable objects and substances.

“Breast enhancement technology had advanced by the 1920s with innovative procedures and new materials that improved the shape and feel of the breast. Early adipose tissue transplants, removing fatty material from the buttocks and injecting it into the breast, returned positive initial results. However, over time, the fat absorbed unevenly leaving unattractive scarring and malformations. Injections of silicone followed, leading to natural-looking enhancements though some believed the chronic inflammation, serious infections and organ damage caused by silicone migration to be an irritant. Later, implants of glass, ivory, wool and ox cartilage were used but all resulted in substandard breast shape and texture. Massive tissue infections also detracted from the look of the enhanced breasts.”

The light went off.

“All for breasts,” I said quietly as we moved in the dark. “All for bigger, rounder breasts.”

Audio-pop.

“As the world entered the space age, so did the breast. With a wealth of materials manufactured by the newly founded chemical industry, the breast moved ever closer toward its potential.”

Audio-pop.

1949. Ivalon sponges made from a polyvinylic alcohol-formaldehyde blend.

Tendency to be toxic to organs and blood.

Audio-pop.

1959. Polistan implants made from a polyethylene derivative.

Toxic to the body, massive scarring and infection.

Audio-pop.

1960. Polymethane breasts.

Audio-pop.

1961. Polyglycomethacrylate breasts.

“All of this research,” I marvelled, “in the quest for the most natural-looking, natural-feeling, artificial breast. All of that experimentation, all of those oozing infections, all of those poisoned organs to bring into the world the perfect breast, and it's fake.”

“I beg to differ, my dear,” Stella said. “The very presence of an implant is real and the fantasy of what a breast should look like, being made into reality by a physical implant makes it as real as any unaltered breast.”

“But people were mutilated,” I pleaded, thinking of the spectacle going on in the Garden Arena. “People died for this.” I pointed at a picture. “This, two half-grapefruits sitting high up on their chest.”

“They were people, nonetheless,” Stella countered. “People no more or less worthy than you or I to live the life they wanted to. People with desires every bit as real as yours and mine. Their needs, wants, insecurities, imperfections and potential were every bit as real. People don't get implants for a laugh, there's a reason for them. The tragic part is that many had to die in pursuit of their potential. These implants are real, on real people; these surgeries are real and make people real. Such body modification is not simple vanity-induced mutilation, it's a cure for a concrete, tangible unhappiness at the point where the body and mind meet.”

“I'm unconvinced.”

Audio-pop.

“The year 1961 was revolutionary for enhancements. The first encased silicone breast enhancement brought new, unparalleled realism to the look and feel of the breast.”

The year Stella and I stood at that display, Dow Corning collapsed under the weight of a lawsuit backed by half a million women unhappy with their breast implants. They weren't just unhappy—their silicone tits were poisoning them.

Audio-pop.

“In the 1990s, Mother Nature was recruited to fix persistent problems in her own design. Natural sources were tapped to enhance the breast. New implants utilized soybean oil as a medium. Though these became toxic as they degraded, they paved the way for the pinnacle of a century of breasts, the saline implant. Saline implants require minimal maintenance and have no known health effects.

“Thank you for visiting and celebrating ‘Milestones in Making Women Whole.'”

“Minimal maintenance?” I asked.

“They have to be reassessed every five to ten years,” Stella said sadly as we made our way back into the Studio Walkway. “They have to be monitored because they tend to wander in the chest wall. Scar tissue also builds up around them, constricting them. On the scale they use to measure, the hardest are Baker's Grade IV breasts, with so much scar tissue they are immobile, hard lumps, which is a constant source of pain and is in danger of rupturing.”