Dressed

The things that keep me up at night…

Tonight I am up because I have a party to attend on Sunday, and I have no idea what to wear. I am trying to convince myself that going upstairs and trying on every dress in my closet is a bad idea. Myself is not listening. Myself is also unconvinced that I do not need to buy a new dress for this event.

“But everything you have is either out of season, or dour.”

No, self, the LBD isn’t dour.

“You could wear it to a funeral. It is dour. The dress is dour and your situation is dire. Buy that dress you just saw online.”

I am not buying a dress I haven’t tried on. At least not a formal dress. Besides, I’ll end up having to have it hemmed four inches and that’s an arm and a leg.

“New shoes. Just buy some new shoes and be taller.”

Sadly for Myself, I’m just not interested in spending money right now. That’s the honest truth. I have had two days of free time at lunch and have not been even the tiniest bit interested in shopping, even though I am minutes away from two great malls, and loads of boutiques. Just not interested. I have too much junk as it is.

I did buy some new books, all either autobiographies or memoirs. I bought Jenna Jameson’s book. It’s a good read, but I am uncomfortable with some of the photographs. It’s hard to focus on someone’s meth addiction when there are gigantic breasts staring at you from the facing page.

Oh, but here’s a funny story.

So you have to understand that I was a very, very sheltered girl and, unlike Ms. Jameson, kept all my clothes on for a very, very long time. I didn’t know much about anything, and less about anything naked, but a boy I was dating my freshman year of college convinced me to watch a porno with him. “It’s Andrew Blake,” he promised, “it’s very artsy and elegant.”

I was skeptical. The only other porn I had seen was less than two minutes of a group scene, a teenage girl from my philosophy class had turned on while I was visiting the apartment she shared with her 40 something year old boyfriend, who managed the Walgreens pharmacy where she worked. I was equal parts confused, fascinated, and worried about germs, and when my nose wrinkled back far enough in my head that I looked like Lord Voldemort, she turned it off, angry that I wasn’t turned on. Then I realized I had bigger issues than wondering whether or not it was actually possible for a normal person to get their leg that far behind their own head, and I motored.

Anyway, the Andrew Blake film opened with a naked woman with Olivia Newton-John’s hairstyle from Physical straddling a fluorescent light bulb most amorously. I felt my nose wrinkling back up into my forehead again. She really, really liked that lightbulb.

I recall turning to the boy and asking if that was really what did it for him. He assented. I asked if it was supposed to do something for me, other than make me worry about the woman burning her ladybits off on a light bulb. He was unhappy with my reaction and shut it off. I think we ended up watching Star Trek instead, me shrugging, still worried about that woman’s inner thighs and making mental comparisons between the two of us. (This is why I cannot watch porn. I have no suspension of belief and I have nipple placement envy.) But he was mad, or frustrated, or whatever, and I was embittered against poor Andrew Blake, who had ruined my idea of a good date (dinner, movie, being told how fabulous I was, without other naked women encroaching) just as much as I had ruined the boy’s.

This was all I knew of the adult entertainment industry. Period.

Same year, I was out to dinner with my mother and my agent. We were used to waiters and waitresses announcing themselves as actors whenever they saw TJ’s business credit card. She was always fantastic about it, and always asked them about their plans and was willing to share information to help them.

We were at a Steak and Ale, and had a waiter who was just beautiful. This man was drop dead, Julian Sands kind of lovely, and had amazing dexterity. I mean that with no double meaning at all. At one point he was balancing a tray with one hand, setting utensils with the other, then used that same free hand to deftly open a bottle of steak sauce and lay the cap aside so neatly that I marveled at how great he was with his hands. Because I say stupid things like that. “Wow! He is great with his hands!”

TJ and my mother fell to laughter, and teased me for the next ten minutes.

FauxJulian returned with the check and saw TJ’s card and exclaimed, “You’re an agent! Oh, I’m in the business!”

“Yes,” TJ smiled, patiently. “Are you? What do you do?”

“I’m an actor,” he said.

She smiled patiently again. I was embarrassed because she was kicking me under the table, and so afraid she was going to mention his hands. “What have you done?” She asked.

He demurred, his cheeks actually turning pink. “Well,” he said, “It’s a highly specialized, very specific part of the industry.”

Before she could ask more, I snorted and threw out the only name I knew, “What? Like Andrew Blake films?”

And the clouds parted, and angels sang, and FauxJulian’s blue eyes lit up as though recognizing his long lost sister. “You’re familiar?!”

My mother’s face fell into a little O of confusion and TJ blinked at me like I’d just grown another head.

Have I blogged this here before? Seems like it. Whatever.

I was reading along in Jenna Jameson’s book and she mentioned that her first adult film was shot by…Andrew Blake. I had a good laugh.

Man, that guy was pretty.

I’m going to go try on dresses now. Wish me luck.