ReadBecca Loves Formalwear.

Yippee, ReadBecca's going to the ball! The annual Margarita Society Ball is this weekend. ReadBecca rarely attends formal events now that she's out of high school. She had tons of formals then, between homecoming, prom and cotillion events. Yes, ReadBecca was in cotillion. But she was not a debutante. Shocker!

ReadBecca went to one college formal. She wasn't in a sorority. She just slept with their boyfriends. No, I'm kidding. Wait, did I? I'm pretty sure I slept with somebody's boyfriend at some point. I went to rehab for that.

Anyway, ReadBecca is getting tarted up like trash and going to the ball. Her dress has slight petticoat action. However, I've had to give up on the whole garters-and-bustier underpinnings in favor of the more practical Spanx. But man, when I wore garters, I wore the HELL out of them. Somewhere, I have photographic evidence...

I'm surprisingly comfortable in the uncomfortable floor length gown. When everyone else went to change for the after-party, I remained in my elaborate eveningwear. I can't see shelling out all that dough, spending hours getting buffed, polished and up-do'd, only to take it all off as soon as the photo was taken. It took 50 hairpins to accomplish my senior prom hairdo. I go balls out for balls. And after all that, I caught my date kissing Laurel L. Bastard.

I think the real attraction is I get to go nuts on makeup. Bring on the purple glitter eyeshadow and matching cat-eye liner! I used to wear blue AND green eye liner AND blue AND green mascara all at once in the 80s. Blue on the top, green on the bottom. I also wore pink Chuck Taylors. I rocked.

I get to rock again this weekend. I'll be easy to pick out of the crowd. Trust me. If there's one thing ReadBecca knows how to do, it's definitely not blending in.

Whoa! What The Hell Was That?

ReadBecca got a phone call at HQ from a regular reader recently concerning the psychological 180 of the last two posts. In explanation, ReadBecca offers this:

Just like The Force, ReadBecca has two sides.

Actually, ReadBecca has at least 144 sides, but she’s on her meds, so let’s not get into all of that.

ReadBecca is a bitch, a lover, a child, a mother, a sinner, a saint. She doesn’t feel ashamed. She’s your hell, your dream. ReadBecca is nothing in between. She’s a tease, a goddess on her knees; when you’re hurt, when you suffer, she’s an angel undercover. She’s been numb, but she’s recently been revived, so now you know she’s still alive.

You wouldn’t want ReadBecca any other way.

I Saw These Girls.

Saturday morning at IHOP, I saw these girls. Eleven or twelve years old. They were so young and happy, truly in-between. Not children, not women. Just girls. Independent enough for their own table, but moms not far away. I saw these girls fresh from a volleyball victory, celebrating their win with chocolate chip pancakes. They were still young and it was still o.k. to eat what they wanted. For that I was glad. More because their mothers didn't think to tell them no, they couldn't, because chocolate chip pancakes make you fat. My mother started telling me to hold in my stomach at that age. As if I had a stomach. And even if I did, what did it matter? It matters now.

So I watched the girls and thought how wonderful it was to be a girl, how wonderful those girls are. They have never been disappointed. I thought about it and the women they would become.

The world is a hard, cruel place and the great tragedy of my life is that, although I suspected as much, no one who loved me confirmed my reports. I was a naive girl. I wasn't ready. I didn't know.

My mother's mother was married at 15 to my 21-year-old grandfather. That's shocking even today. She was a child, totally unprepared to be a wife or mother. My grandmother was left alone a lot as a child. She never really grew up. She stopped. She was only 15. I know my grandmother was a romantic. She loved the story of the real-life king who gave up his crown for a woman. I'm not sure if she imagined her absent father as a king or that a king would love her enough to save her. I just know she dreamed of a king. Her tragic flaw was dreaming instead of living.

My mother didn't have a bad start, she married at 18, but she had expectations. My mother learned about the king from her mother and I suspect she was dismayed that her father wasn't him. He wasn't a bad man, but he wasn't a very good one either. She chose a good man for a husband, but he wasn't a king, not even a prince. Chronically disappointed, my mother expected more than any good man could give, kingly or otherwise. My mother's tragic flaw is that she expects to see kings around every corner.

My mother. If people are born with internal compasses, hers is either cracked or de-magnetized. She's lost out there. She can't see. I used to think it was because I was invisible. That she made me invisible. That she was blinded at birth. But that's not true. I think you choose when to be born.

I don't believe in kings. I'm not sure if that's always been true, or is now or was. Or will be. It may be just something I say. I don't know.

I saw these girls in all their beauty and innocence. They were too old for crayons really, but just the same, they didn't want to let the crayons go. They were wild, scribbling so quickly and hard they spilled a drink. They immediately looked to their mothers to clean it up, sure the help would come. They were right.

The mothers were harder for me to ignore. I wanted to tell them, to warn them. To explain what is coming and to tell them to prepare their daughters. To teach them to fight before the world swallows them whole, or in bits. I can't decide which way is worse. I don't think I could watch a daughter lose without breaking my own heart. It would be unbearable. Raising a boy to be a king would be easy in comparison.

The mothers looked about my age and I wanted to ask them how they knew they could be mothers. How had the confidence stayed after girlhood had gone? And I wanted to tell them what I know, in case they didn't. They needed to tell their girls, to warn them what is coming. To arm them for battle. Because the world is a hard, cruel place and girls shouldn't go out alone. There are no kings.

Ode to Fluff: Movies That Made Me What I Am

Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Cinderella
Gone With the Wind
Porky's
National Lampoon's Vacation
National Lampoon's European Vacation
National Lampoon's Animal House
Say Anything
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Pippi Longstocking
Catholic school film strips (Bing!)
ViewMaster slides
Rocky
Rocky IV
Alien
Aliens
Rosemary's Baby
The Breakfast Club
Pretty in Pink
Cool Hand Luke (I saw this in fifth grade. Man, I was ahead of my time.)
The Shawshank Redemption
The Aristocats (This isn't a typo. There is no "r" missing.)
The Rescuers
Jaws
King Kong (Jessica Lange version)
Hot Stuff
9 1/2 Weeks
Body Heat (but I've never actually seen it)
Wolfen (same here)
Cat People
Mommie Dearest
Top Gun
Risky Business
Angel
The Highlander
The Highlander II (Because it taught me it's ok to demand your money back.)
Threesome
The Saint
The Boondock Saints
Any Which Way But Loose
Cannonball Run
Convoy
The Parent Trap (Hayley Mills version)
The Shootist
Flash Gordon
Urban Cowboy
A Fish Called Wanda
The Little Mermaid
Rebecca
Psycho
The Professional
An American Werewolf in London
The Crying Game
Gorillas in the Mist
All of Me
Silkwood
Lady and the Tramp
Sleeping Beauty
Snow White
Bambi
Hamburger Hill
Platoon
Tigerland
Two for the Road
Little Darlings
Smile
The Prince of Tides
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Seven (Because there is such a thing as going too far.)
Escape from Witch Mountain
Victor/Victoria
Tootsie
Mystic Pizza
The Omen
Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!

Dude, I Am Working On It.

Do you want a bit of piffling fluff or do you want profoundly deep? I got both.

I Have Not Been In Rehab.

I have not been at fat camp or Betty Ford, Hazleden or Promises. I am not a friend of Mel. I've just been in a valley. A pretty deep one. But a few days ago, I woke up and guess who appeared in my bed. Yep. Normal. I totally remember him.