(1979)
Fade in to my life, flashing back to ten, which means I’m into my eleventh year (when we turn a number, we’re not just beginning to be that age, we’ve completed it), and I’m still in Montana on Gramma and Grampa McGlynn’s Peaceful Bay Quarter Horse ranch, where I and my mother were born. I don’t want to draw attention by enlisting Gramma McGlynn, and my big sister Aggie (who was born in L.A.) is flat-chested, so I go straight past needing a training bra to stealing a 34C from Mom’s dresser drawer, unwilling to risk walking through the embarrassment of Mom saying I’m “sexy” in the aisles or in dressing rooms, sobbing, “Rose, you’re becoming a woman,” like she did in our bathroom when Aggie started her period. If Mom had lived long enough to see me turn twelve, let alone top-off at a 37D, I wonder if eventually I would have let her take me bra shopping.
Flash forward a couple years, 1973, at the Pacific Palisades apartment towers that Dad, Aggie, and I first moved to after Mom died of breast cancer and Gramma and Grampa McGlynn left Montana for Florida. Dad’s hometown is L.A., where Gramma and Grampa Singer (originally New Yorkers) raised him, and where he met Mom, where Aggie was born. I’m tanning on a lounge by the pool, facing the ocean, in my first custom-made bikini (my top and bottom sizes no longer come in a set), and somebody’s shadow falls over me. It’s Dad, who does an utterly-disgusted W.C. Fields—arms, elbows, and all—then turns and stalks away. He won’t come back. I can’t figure it, so upstairs I noodge him until he tells me that from his home-office window, he spotted a knock-out broad he’d never seen before, and when he went down to meet her, she was me.
Cut to: Eighteen. I have re-learned roller skating—it has been since Montana, in an indoor, wooden rink—and I pass my boyfriend Efrem’s lessons in the smooth and ramped underground security garage below his Santa Monica apartment. We agree I’m ready to graduate to the Venice Boardwalk, so when we’re at Pico and Lincoln returning the rentals, Efrem buys me a pair of white-boot Chicago’s—white toe-brakes, red wheels and laces. Sometimes I skate with Efrem in Santa Monica, but I meet Aggie at the Boardwalk every Sunday, sun or fog, where we roll in shorts and legwarmers, T-shirts and disco sweatshirts, knee pads and wrist guards, onto café patios for brunch, bricks under wheels gritty with sand, before skating north on the Speedway then Ocean Front bike path to the Santa Monica Pier and back. And, every time we skate by this one pavilion, this same bum in the shadows off the Speedway—hat brim angled down over his eyes, bottle-shaped brown paper bag on his lap—in a flat, resonant baritone says, “Jugs.”
Here’s what I’m getting at: Dr. Berger, out of the clear blue, asks me to consider having a “breast reduction.” Have I heard of this before? No.
Dr. Berger makes me an appointment to see a plastic surgeon in his building, Dr. Zeitman, who examines me and tells me about the procedure, then shows me his catalogue of photographs, before-and-afters. He doesn’t pressure, but how unnerving. Scars shaped like anchors.
Dr. Berger—who’s kind of like an uncle (he went to U.C.L.A. with Mom and Dad)—has been trying to get me to see “realities,” in relation to my breasts: “In order to do the pencil test on you, we’d have to use the whole box” (ha ha). He tells me that, at eighteen, I shouldn’t jog, shouldn’t play tennis, shouldn’t ride horses, or I’ll give myself a black eye (very funny). Swimming’s okay. Roller skating and cycling are semi-okay, with a Jogbra. “If you don’t have this surgery done, you’ll be tucking them in your belt by the time you’re thirty” (thanks, Uncle Bob).
*
My brain is still trying to wrap itself around the idea of the possibility of this (plus, Efrem doesn’t want it and won’t say—plus, I think I’m finally beginning to mean something at the production office), and now I’m supposed to make up my mind already because Dad’s Writers Guild insurance won’t cover me once I’m finished being eighteen (which really means they’ll cover me through my nineteenth year).
If I do it, I’ll explain my absence for this at work how? I’ll have to talk about my boobs in the office?
Doctors Berger and Zeitman and my gynecologist Dr. David don’t classify the reduction as cosmetic surgery. It involves cosmetic surgery—lots—but they’re recommending it as preventative. Cancer runs not only on Mom’s side, but on Dad’s, too. If I’m back down to a B- or a C-cup—Doctors Berger and Zeitman and David predict—lumps could be more easily detected. Right now, breast exams consist of wading around in so much fibrous tissue fingertips disappear at first knuckles. Mammograms hurt—I don’t care what anyone says—each pendulum vised between cold, hard plates.
Aggie, who’s barely a B-cup, says—“You do this, tell them to save some for me, okay?”
What, in a jar?
Efrem listens and winces. He’s as mature about this as he can be, considering it’s the future of my breasts we’re talking about. I don’t think he’s named them or anything, but I sense he wants to stomp his feet and pout.
Excuse me for being intrigued. I can make them smaller? Who knew? I’m thinking, my boobs may be a turn-on, a comfort, and beauties—somehow—to Efrem, but he doesn’t have to carry them around with him. My stretch marks begin on my shoulders. It’s a nightmare buying off-the-rack, because I’m so tall and skinny, almost everything’s got to be too tight or too loose somewhere, or too old-ladyish. I’m thinking, Mom died of breast cancer. I’m thinking, this is preventative.
*
When I go to bed, now I notice pretty consciously, when I lie on my side, say my left side, my left boob gets cradled in, overflows, the crook of my left elbow and biceps, separating boob from mattress, while my right arm nestles vertically up the center of my chest, hand below chin, the arm’s inside (upside) cradling the right boob, separating it from flubbing over and sticking to the left one.
Whenever I sleep next to Efrem, I’m ready to shield them from being rolled on, pinched together, pinned to the mattress, or to him.
I’ve been moving in a constant, unconscious dance of self-protection.
*
Giving blood at Cedars-Sinai, scheduled twice, for my self. If I need a transfusion (infusion?) during surgery, I get my own.
I made up my mind in time to safely bank my own blood, replenish it, recover, and have the operation before my nineteenth birthday (the nineteenth anniversary of my birthday). I know, it’s fast. But this kind of surgery isn’t cheap. It’s major. It’s now-or-never, while I can still benefit from Dad’s Writer’s Guild insurance, while I’m still under his roof.
I will walk into my twenties, into the ‘80s, a Renaissance Woman. Will scars be faded by the time ‘80 is out, before I hit twenty-one? Scars I saw in photos were still dark, pink at best. This surgery is still so innovative, still so new, the after-photos are pretty new too. Scars like anchors.
*
I’m warning you, this isn’t pretty.
Dr. Zeitman tells me he’s literally going to be removing my nipples and areolas and setting them aside, nerves and lifelines intact, so he can slice down the front and center of each breast and, below each, make a horseshoe-like incision from one side to the other, where eventually bra underwires will ride. Extracted tissue will be discarded, unless my sister wants to make arrangements on her own (leave me out of it), and what’s left, once inspected, will be pushed higher and reshaped into C’s. My nipples won’t be put back, per se, but positioned where they ought to be on the new breasts, hopefully still in working order.
Doctors Zeitman and Berger warn me the worse that could happen is nip-numbness. Though, I might regain all sensitivity, and then some.
Doctors say I might one day even be able to breast feed.
*
Aggie straightens then re-cascades the coffee table magazines in Dr. Zeitman’s Cedars-Sinai waiting room. Dad glares at the No-Smoking signs. He can’t sit anywhere in this room and claim not to see one.
In an exam room, Dr. Zeitman marks up my boobs with black ink and blue.
Later, in my Cedars-Sinai hospital room, Dr. Zeitman’s team goes over the drawn map of my surgery—standing around my bed, where I sit, topless—pointing pens at me—at my enormous bottom-heavy, stretch-marked, lop-sided tits—adding little touches to existing Dr. Frankenzeitman’s diagrams. I wonder: If these guys about to reduce me to C-cups had seen me—encountered these boobs—in their outside worlds, say in their bedrooms, would they, do they, find them perfectly desirable right now? As guys—not as doctors—do they feel something like Efrem does?
Scars like anchors.
*
I think I was in surgery more than five hours. Did somebody say eight hours between the time the anaesthesiologist asked me to begin counting backwards from one hundred and I rolled my eyes at him but couldn’t get past ninety-nine and the time that I woke up in post-op to my nurse Wingate sans bow-tie, in a gown the same print as mine? I gave him a hard time about stealing my thunder, or at least my ability to make an individual fashion statement on such an important day.
I feel wicked—I love everyone—like a benevolent, mischievous drunk being wheeled away from the bar.
*
My nineteenth birthday, the day after surgery, and Wingate has stolen for me—“borrowed,” he says, over a red-and-blue herringbone bow-tie—a little fridge from “the Liz Taylor memorial suite” upstairs. Wingate says, “She has nothing scheduled.”
People bring champagne and wine, and three cakes: one from Dad, one from big sister Aggie (“Don’t they talk?” Gramma Singer wants to know); and one from my doppelganger, Margot, whose dad is also in T.V., whose mom also died of breast cancer in Montana, but whose own big boobs are so far hassle free and still buoy up like they’re floating on water. My doppelganger’s homestead was on Placid Bay, mirroring our place, around Arrow Point, on Peaceful Bay. Margot’s adoptive big sister April is one of Aggie’s oldest friends. But now, in the boob department, we doppelgangers are each being referred to as Before and After.
Dr. Zeitman hears the pop of a champagne cork and almost faints dead away when he walks in on me, in bed, opening a bottle of Cab. He says I should not be using my cork-pulling muscles. I ask if I can pour him a glass.
I think Efrem’s relieved I’m feeling no pain and have such round-the-clock attention, so he could duck out, back to the recording studio, far from the reality of what’s under my gown, under these bandages, with a clean conscience. Tubes are coming out of me—on both sides—drainage is dripping.
It’s a done deal.
*
I’m recuperating at home—rather than camping at Efrem’s while he needs to be in the studio; rather than shifting the balance at my sister and Teige’s by asking her to stay home with me, when Teige wants Aggs downtown at the factory or in the showroom. I’m at home, but I spend only overnight in my own room, when Dad’s bedroom is presentable, master-sized, and centrally located. Afternoons through primetime, I lie around in there popping pills, watching T.V., French doors open to the patio, hall door open to the pool room. Dad’s current project, the jazz movie, which he’s co-producing, is still in development, and he’s been working Peaceful Bay Productions from home. There’s always someone around to look in on me. There’s always something happening, someone coming and going. Personal visitors can play pool, swim, do a barbeque—become occupied with something, someone here, other than me—and I don’t feel so bored or so boring. I’m sure I can hear the ocean from Dad’s bed, but I’m told, I’m reminded, that’s impossible—we’re too far inland. The sound is the rush of cars down on Sunset.
Work has stopped calling me much anymore, asking how to crack my Rolodex codes—asking Where’s the grip-truck rental file?—asking Where are the extra storyboard easels—asking Where is the ground gourmet?—asking Where’s the typewriter ribbon? They’re in chaos—shooting one commercial and casting the next—and I’m falling asleep on the phone.
These drugs can’t numb me to the new reality under this dressing I’ve been changing myself. It’s hard to imagine I’ll ever look natural or show my naked body to anyone past those who did this to me (or for me—yet to be determined). I think of Mom, and how she must have felt when Dad looked at her; and how he must have felt, looking at her; half of her a scar.
I find the uglier I get in my own eyes—the Frankenzeitman stitches, and the bruises that turn not only blue-purple, but green and yellow—the more I’m reminded, after what I’ve been through—which looks like a fucking car wreck so it’s okay if I stand in front of the full-length and cry—I obviously have a lot of healing to do before I’ll begin to recognize (hopefully), when I look in the mirror, any resemblance to a woman’s real body.
*
My follow-up visits to Dr. Zeitman are on a schedule that looks like this: twice, then once, then again twice the same week, coinciding with each new event and stage and official transition of my planned recovery. Soon, these visits will taper off, and I’ll be licensed to operate the new boobs on my own for a lifetime. Meanwhile, Dr. Zeitman eagerly inspects me like I’m an important experiment. I watch his face, to see if I’m looking all right. Believe me, only he can tell.
I am wearing, doctor’s orders, soft, cotton Warner bras that hook in front. And now Dr. Zeitman measures me for a Pressure Bra, a massive, prescription, harness-like thing that will—once dressing is off for good—apply the right pressures to scars, to promote better healing—not very sexy.
I may not operate a vehicle for three weeks post surgery. I can’t get to Efrem’s place on my own, so he comes to me, plays laserdisc movies from his own collection on Dad’s identical first-one-on-the-block machine (they shopped together). Ef’s been picking me up in his old Bug, Lady—perfect, no shoulder belts—taking me to Westwood, to movies we’ve already seen—Louis Malle’s Pretty Baby (that little Brooke Shields), Gary Busey as Buddy Holly, Warren Beatty’s Heaven Can Wait—to check out again the scores of his competitors. Last Friday after the movie he took me to his apartment for the weekend. He played guitar. He sang to me. He let me draw him.
He’s squeamish about sleeping with me, body-to-body close, but he wants me there with him.
He doesn’t worry out loud about our age difference. I haven’t heard “When you’re twenty-one I’ll be thirty-one” in forever.
He doesn’t want to see me beyond the bras, but I find him staring, getting used to the new look, the new shape of me.
I don’t think he’ll be too squeamish too much longer.
I feel like I’m winning something over on my former boobs—my original equipment. What does that mean exactly?
*
Dr. Zeitman removed the visible stitches yesterday. Some sutures are left inside that will disintegrate, dissolve on their own, in time. Now I wear light tape to encourage stitchless seams growing together. My bruises have faded, and I can see: My boobs are now covered with the same skin that used to be above the level of my nipples. Before surgery, my bandeau-top tanline went across my chest above my nipples (of course). Now the same tanline is below the horse shoes, a narrow band of pale skin below my breasts. My boobs, around repositioned areolas and nipples, are completely suntanned.
*
Here’s how I got the black eye: I am finally allowed to full-on shower again—hot water pelting me all over—and at first I’m nervous, but it’s great. Standing there, like normal, soaping myself everywhere, makes me feel like one skin, one fluid body again, and showering goes back to routine. Part of the routine is that, in my corner of the house, the hot water goes fast. I guess I wasn’t aware of how, before, to economize, I’d rinse under each breast and corresponding armpit at the same time. Imagine a flamenco dancer. First I’d raise my right arm above my head, to offer that armpit to the water, simultaneously swinging my left hand over to lift my right boob and allow the spray access to its underside. Repeat the same motions to left. The dance began unconsciously. Where the back of my hand went to lift up my boob, there was air.
*
My sister and Teige are helping me clothe my new size—my new shape—in the latest, on the cheap, straight off factory and showroom floors. Aggs has more ins Downtown, in the Garment District, at the Mart, now that Teige is partnered with his friend Mick in their own unisex jeans company, designing and manufacturing, instead of Teige repping someone else’s line. I had no idea how fun it is to wear clothes! I can even dress sexy now and still look “innocent”—in tops that are gauzy, or knit—diaphanous to some extent—over nude bras or camisoles—or I can wear loud and tight—and still not draw the kind of attention I did when I was practically trying to hide in my clothes.
I notice—after my sister and Teige helpfully bring it to my attention—I must have been subconsciously letting my butt go in an attempt to balance myself out. But I don’t need this ballast anymore. Ef says he’ll get me started jogging around the Santa Monica highschool track a few blocks away from his place, soon as I’m permitted. He says to call it “SaMo.”
Maybe I’ll even quit smoking.
*
Dad is hosting the “annual” Emmy watching party he throws when he’s not nominated or serving on the Academy board of governors. The livingroom T.V. is on, and so are the ones in the kitchen, dining, and pool rooms.
Some of us are watching from or around Dad’s landing pad of a bed.
His agent Evelyn says, “Ol’ Red Hair is Back is a terrible title!”
Aggie says, “Her hair’s really red?”
Teige nods. “I’ve seen her pubic hair.”
My doppelganger, flaunting her cleavage, asks Teige, “When have you ever seen Bette Midler’s pubic hair?”
Teige tells Margot, “I have. In the showroom once.”
“And this from a man,” Aggie says, “who confuses Shirley Jones with Florence Henderson. God-knows whose pubic hair you’re actually remembering.”
“Bette Midler came into the showroom,” Teige says, “and Florence Henderson did not. She didn’t close the changing-room door. It was a red triangle.”
Ef says, “How can you mix up Mrs. Partridge and Mrs. Brady?”
“He gets Ed Asner and Carroll O’Connor confused too,” Aggie says.
Lou Grant and All in the Family are currently walking away with it.
Except for the blaring TV and my laughter, the room goes silent. All eyes are on me. “What?”
Aggie winces. “You’re on your belly.”
I have a pillow under me. But now I’m aware of the pressure, the unnatural pull. It doesn’t hurt. It’s not uncomfortable, until I think about it. The idea of lying chest-down without a pillow does make me cringe, though, like Aggs.
She begs, “Sit up. Turn over.”
Now my medium-size boobs feel like they’re part of me, but it’s not as if they’ve grown from me. It’s as if they’ve grown attached.
*
Efrem and I finally had sex, made love, fucked—the first time since surgery. I kept my bra on, for my protection and for his. “Training bra” finally makes sense to me, because Ef and I are re-learning things about ourselves and each other and about us two together, and no matter how hokey this sounds, it seems we’re both literally and figuratively in training to finally bare ourselves. Plus, my nipples aren’t numb—they’re more sensitive than ever. For now, it’s best to keep covered.
Ef wouldn’t do it unless we were in the exact center of the bed and I was on top, and oh god, it’s a whole other thing without those saggy, giant boobs swinging around between us.
It seems like I’m on one side of windows after curtains, old heavy drapes, have been taken down—and people on the other side can see me clearly now. And I can see them seeing me.
*
More amazing than the ease and rewards of buying off-the-rack: This eye-contact thing. My boss says to me, “You’re too pretty to wear so much makeup.” Like he’s never seen my face before. Like a film’s been stripped down between us.
I feel peeled.
I can’t make sense without clichés.
I feel freed.
I’m no longer using the tape, and—when I’m not home wearing the Pressure Bra—I can wear soft, form-fitting bras with no-guilt, no-fear-tight tops, like a regular person. Even braless in tubetops (a revelation).
Our assistant director Walt watches me walk across the set toward him, looks me square in the eyes when I reach him and says, “Great tits! Congratulations!”
This observation would not have been said aloud before, so openly, wouldn’t have seemed so friendly, would have been something I dreaded, a curse and a spell I had nothing to do with casting. Before, Walt would have blushed ten shades if I’d caught him even glancing at my “rack,” my “melons,” my “tah-tahs.” But now I have pert tits and eye contact, which I didn’t realize I was missing. Now looks aren’t done to me—aren’t at me—they’re shared.
*
Efrem says he’s afraid I’m going to leave him.
What a switch.
He says I’m different—that the change on my outside has brought a change to my inside—something has switched in me.
I tell him I’m still trying to grasp it myself—the actual switch. Have I changed, or has the world I’m walking around in changed?—into an alternate reality; or some kind of weird reflection-pool thing. A layer of gel or gauze, like the thinnest onion skin, has been lifted, and the world beneath looks the same but behaves differently, because I appear different.
For instance, here—now—in my C-cup reality—I’m suddenly taken seriously. I can feel it—even with Efrem. Like the eye-contact thing all over again—I only know I was missing it before because of its prevalence now. It’s refreshing to be taken as a balanced package, rather than for boobs with a big mouth and thank-god brains, which is what I guess was happening. Ef’s friend, Richard, who for some reason thinks in cartoons, said before, I was a cross between Little Annie Fanny and Charlotte Brontë (whatever that means or looks like). So what am I now?
I tell Efrem I feel like making some changes, but I don’t think he’s one of them. Now that he’s responding to me so openly, I wonder out loud what he sees in me. I’ve never completely supported myself. I’ve never been out on my own.
*
I’m not allowed to jog yet nor do sports nor ride horses, but I can skate wearing my Jogbra. I’m warned to be careful—not to make wild motions, to steer clear of the wild motions of others, and no falling, please. Aggie skates guard, says if I lose my balance to grab on to her instead of bracing a fall on my own. She’s acting more protective of me—says I’m beginning to seem like her little sister again, and she’s been missing that.
“Really?” I say. I tell her, “Me, too.”
We have picked back up meeting at the Boardwalk, rolling onto Sunday restaurant patios in shorts, in kneepads, in legwarmers, sparkly sweatshirts tied around our waists, for brunch while the coastal haze burns off, and we splurge on everything we know we’ll burn off skating. After brunch, we velcro on wrist-guards, and we skate up the Speedway and the Ocean Front bike path, to the Santa Monica Pier and back. Except now, when we roll past that one pavilion, the same brown-bag bum doesn’t say a thing.
This piece originally appeared in PANK 1 and has been reprinted here with permission of the author.
Pamela Balluck’s fiction has appeared in—among other publications—Western Humanities Review, The Southeast Review, Quarter After Eight, Night Train, Freight Stories, The Way We Sleep, Ocean State Review, Prompt, Drunken Boat, and a story is currently in Green Mountains Review 27.2 as a Neil Shepard Prize winner. “Jugs,” which initially appeared in the first issue of PANK, is part of the recently completed, Development Girls: Linked Fictions. Balluck teaches writing at the University of Utah and lives in Salt Lake City.
