The Unveiling of Michelle Dubois

THE UNVEILING OF MICHELLE DUBOIS

Monologue written by Lara Taubman performed by Liane Balaban October 21, 2010 at the Royal Pagoda, Room 7, at 8 pm  in conjunction with the opening of the exhibit
"The Unveiling of Michelle Dubois" by artist Zoe Crosher at the Charlie James Gallery, curated and organized by Emma Gray of Emma Gray HQ.   

Chinatown, Los Angeles, California

            I never forgot taking my third grade yearbook picture when I had to wear an eye patch. I looked like every other kid from Oklahoma, milk-fed, pigtails, white skin, big eyes but with a big, black eye patch.

            Part of my childhood was spent at the optometrist’s office getting corrective eye therapy. I was born with crossed eyes. They pointed in every direction but straight ahead. Eye patch therapy began the day before the school yearbook picture. I begged the Doctor to wait a week. Mama smacked my face in front of the doctor and told me to be quiet.

            The next day I summoned my courage to approach the schoolroom where the photographer had set up his camera. My knees locked at the door. He walked over and gently guided me to the stool.  He tried to make me feel comfortable.

            “Say cheese please!”

             I slapped my hands over my face.

            The camera clicked.

            “Hey! What are you doing?” 

            “Don’t you think I look weird? I cried.

            “ Gosh no. You look really interesting to me…Well, I think you look like       

            Mae West as a girl pirate.”

            “ Really? Who is Mae West?”

            “Only the most beautiful woman in American history.”

            “Really?”

            He clicked.

             My face must have lit up because I look happy in that photograph.

            The rest of the day I walked on air.

                                   

            After school I asked Mama who Mae West was.

            “Who told you about Mae West?”

            She had the angry tone.

            “Nobody did, I just saw her name somewhere.”

            “Don’t you mention that name again, do you hear me?           

          It wasn’t until I was fourteen and could browse at the public library by myself that I found some old Hollywood movie magazines featuring Mae West.  I never forgot how that guy said I looked like her. I ran to the girl’s bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. Did I look more like Mae when I thought about her?   

            I got my first period on May 1, 1963. I was twelve. I remember because it was the first day after I started my paper route.  I watched my breasts grow every day in my bathroom mirror.  I would push them up high on my chest or press them down with my hands until they squished out the sides. I cocked my head and posed full front, or I would play coy and cover them with the palms of my hands, I turned my back to the mirror as I peered back over a shoulder catching my eye.

            They grew to full size in two years and I thought they were the best thing that ever happened to me. I could play with the nipples and they grew hard or leave them alone and they stayed soft and tender. It felt like I had given birth to two babies, suckling at my tits, maternal and hot, two permanent, portable friends. I named them the Twins.  I always ask my lovers to call them that too.

            My eyes were straight now but I felt the same inside. None of the guys at school ever noticed me so it was surprising to see the men in Main Street stare at me out of the corner of their eyes.

            One day on my paper route I stopped because my bike tire was going flat. I was fourteen and a half. It was Saturday so I didn’t have to go to school. I had a hard time pinning the awkward pump under my feet while pushing for air. Bent over facing the ground the huge feet of an adolescent boy came into view. I looked up to find Evans Mueller staring down my scoop neck shirt. I looked down it too to make sure he saw what I thought he saw. Sure enough, it was The  Twins. Mama still refused to get me a bra trying to ignore them, but there they were erect and swinging and admired exclusively by Evans. I realize now that I was supposed to feel ashamed but I didn’t. The Twins were as natural to me as my hands or feet. I straightened and looked up at him. Evans was the most popular guy in school. He was a JV quarterback so he was tall and strong, his muscles budding on his young body. He had never spoken to me before.

                        “Do you need a hand?” his large fingers splayed out in a fan on his              hips.

                        “Sure,” I said.

                        I tried to look up at him but the sun was glaring into my eyes. I     

                        held up my hand  to shield them but still couldn’t see.

                        “What would Mae West do?” I thought, stunned that he would                

                     speak to me.

                        Evans pumped up the tire with ease.

                        I thanked him. He didn’t say anything for a while. He just stared at                            me.

                        “Want to come in for a Coke?”

                        “Sure.” Mae would have.

               We went into his house. His family wasnt home.  We didn’t get a Coke but went to an office. It must have been his father’s office,  there were a lot of books and a couple of bottles of liquor set up at                     a bar. He shut the door behind us and locked it. I wondered why he didn’t give me a Coke.

              He tilted up a planter behind the desk and picked up a key that opened the closet. He went in and pulled out a stack of magazines.

                        “Here look at these,” he said.

                I walked over to the stack and the top one showed a woman in just  her underwear. No bra, nothing else. I never saw a woman  photographed this way. I daydreamed about it but didn’t think it                                  ever happened.  She looked sidelong into the camera right through me, through the camera man, through anyone looking. She didn’t look back to be pretty but to dominate anything in her gaze. I was                              excited. I could feel it all over my body. I got warm. Evans stared at  my chest.

                        “She kind of reminds me of you. ” he said.

                        “I know,” I said imagining my face in my bathroom mirror.

                 I wasn’t offended but I realized later that I should have been. I could only hear that in his voice he had the same curiosity as me. The only bizarre  thing that happened in the office that day was that me and that model really did look alike.  

                        Evans stepped closer to me. He placed his hand on my shoulder and pulled me 

around to face him. I looked up. He laid his big fingertips on The Twins, their first suitor. His touch

didn’t feel the same as when I touched them. It was heavier, he squeezed a little too hard. I 

remember us looking at each other straight in the eye. I didn’t know yet what I wanted to do or not. This

wasn’t Mae West, this was something else.  He told me to take off my jeans and he would too. 

I unbuttoned them and it just came out of my mouth -

            “I want a Coke.”

            He kept undressing. I pulled off my jeans.  I looked at my white cotton panties, thank 

goodness they were new.  Mama always cautioned that my underwear be clean and intact just in case I 

was found unconscious or dead and strangers had to undress me.

                        Evans pulled me to the floor onto the carpet. He didn’t have any underwear on. I couldn’t take my eyes off his penis, I had never seen one. We both stared down at it.

                        He pulled off my shirt. The one Grandma Akers gave me for my last birthday. 

Her intention was so safe, so easy. He threw it across the floor, Granma Akers’s shirt. He squeezed 

my boobs again and he sucked one. It hit me like a pony lash. I opened such with a force. I am sure

 he could hear my heart beating, I am sure of it. I started to feel the way I do when I touched

 myself in private but this was so much more powerful.

                        My whole body got hot, I was like boiling water. My eyes tearing, was I 

crying or sweating? It felt like there was a hot rock on my thigh and I looked down and it was his

 penis but it had changed! It looked different. 

                        “No!” I cried. It scared me  that I didn’t care that I didnt know Evans. He was a body, a part of my body for a few minutes. 

                He started pushing into me.  I will never forget how the jersey of his Fruit of the 

Loom t-shirt felt under my hands stretching and tearing at the material. I think he told me that he 

had never done it either.

                        He pushed. And pushed. And instead of flying off the mountain into the clouds 

and stars, I looked down and saw my feet had never left the ground.  He smelled different, his 

sweat smelled funny.

             Except for the pain in my vagina, I was happy. As I walked the bike for the 

rest of my paper route that afternoon I I wondered what Mae West wanted from guys. I felt special. I kept thinking of Mae, to be a star like her.