Hip Friendly

I'm a firm believer that, in this world, there are stress starvers and stress eaters.

I, my friends, am a stress eater.

I also happen to be the daughter of a woman who is both a stress starver and a stress baker, so guess who always had a lot to eat during those stressful times?

I wish I could say that I'd outgrown it. But if that would work, I'd just wish for Carmen Diaz's body and cut out the middle-man.

Thus the profession that's heavy on the pajamma wearing. But sadly that isn't exactly the impression I want to make at the Southern Festival of Books this Friday and Saturday.

That is how I came to find myself in a dressing room at Dillard's Monday night, feeling very much like Julia James in the following scene from Learning to Play Gin (in stores November 7th!!)

I hope you don't like it. I hope you don't get it at all. I hope you have never, ever, ever, ever felt this way.

But I bet some of you have.

So I wrote it.


--Ally




ps....this scene is dedicated to whatever idiot had the bright idea that the "skinny pant" deserved a second chance.

From LEARNING TO PLAY GIN

Julia had always been of the opinion that a pair of black pants and an Ann Taylor sweater set could get a girl through ninety percent of the social engagements of her life, with the other ten percent being made up of things like tractor pulls and state dinners. It didn’t take long for Amanda to inform her she was mistaken.

That’s how she came to be squeezed inside a small shop on Rodeo Drive, and a small dressing room, and an even smaller pair of pants.

“So,” Amanda said from the other side of the dressing room door. “Do you have any people?”

Three days before Julia wouldn’t have had a clue how to answer that question. Nina was her best friend. Caroline was her sister. Madelyn and Bill were her parents, so she had people enough in her opinion but not the kind Amanda was asking about. She thought back on that morning—the crowd that followed Lance’s every step and realized that there was absolutely no one in Julia’s life who she paid to have around on a full-time basis.

“No,” Julia said as she tugged on the pants, sucking her gut in and wishing the dressing room was large enough for her to lay down—something that she hadn’t done to get into a pair of pants since high school, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

She jumped up and down, hoping gravity would do a lot of the work.

“So how do you, like, do it?” Amanda asked as Julia threw open the dressing room door.

“Well for one thing I don’t buy pants that it takes two people to zip.”

Amanda took a step back, cocked her head to one side and said, “Um, maybe not.”

“Ya think?” Julia snapped, feeling like a marshmallow, and not the little put in your hot chocolate kind—the big, whopping, skew them with a stick and hold them over an open flame kind.

“Amanda,” Julia said, trying to hide the disgust in her voice which was easier than she’d thought since her current pants situation didn’t exactly allow for a lot of air to enter her diaphragm, “I thought you said this store was hip-friendly.”

“It is,” Amanda said, eyes wide. “This place is totally hip.”

Impatience boiled inside of Julia. “Not hip—as in cool, as in with-it, as in last seen on the cover of Teen Vogue. I mean hip--” she pointed dramatically at the monstrosities the women in her family wore like a curse “--friendly.”

“Oh,” Amanda said, and a look filled her face as if she’d never really given any thoughts to what those curves were or why some women have them.

“Ta da!” Nina cried as she threw open the door to the neighboring stall and struck a pose. “What do you think of this?”

Only in Hollywood could Nina find clothes that were too small on her, but she’d done it. She walked to the mirror and stood on imaginary high heels as her own reflection stared back in triplicate.

“Um, Neen, don’t you think it’s a little…” Julia struggled for words. “Tight?”

“What?” Nina asked. “No. No way.” She was sizing herself up, examining all the angles.

“I think it’s too tight,” Julia said simply. “You won’t be able to sit down.”

“I won’t sit.”

“Your stomach’s going to get all pinchy.”

“I won’t eat.”

“Your underwear will ride up your crotch.”

Nina opened her mouth to retort, but Julia instantly cut her off. “Don’t say it—I don’t want to hear the words come out of your mouth.”

Then Julia looked around the store, and finally she couldn’t hold the frustration in. The ticking of the clock on the wall seemed to echo off the hardwood floors and sparsely-stocked racks as she looked at mannequin after mannequin and yelled, “Is nothing in this town A-lined?”

Nina pried herself away from the mirror and looked at her best friend.

“It’s okay, Jules. We’re going to find you something. Here,” Nina said, holding out the first pair of pants she came to. “These are cute.”

Julia snatched them and snapped, “Yes! They are cute, and I’m sure they’d look great on someone with the body of a twelve-year-old boy, but,” she stretched the pants across her body, “I’m not straight up and down. The pants are!”

Nina’s eyes were wide. Amanda stared, mouth-gaping. They shared a look that signaled to Julia that they might have to join forces, call for backup, calm her down, but the panic in their eyes didn’t ease Julia, it infuriated her to see them and their alliance. The skinny girls. The models and hipless wonders who could walk into any store at any time and find something—just pull it off the rack. So long as they had something smaller than a four.

Nina and Amanda didn’t grow up terrified of pool parties. They’d never worn control top pantyhose under jeans. They didn’t understand—no way, no how. They couldn’t comprehend that there was a Hell and, right then, Julia was in it.

“Tonight is a very big thing for Lance,” Julia tried to explain. “And I have to be there for him. I have to be his girlfriend. And evidently the girlfriend has to wear these pants. But I don’t fit inside these pants. See.” She held the pants against her one more time. “They don’t fit. They just don’t…” Her voice faded with her fury. She felt it slip away as she put the hanger back on the rack, heard the quick, cool click of metal against metal. “I guess I just don’t fit.”

There, Julia thought, I’ve said it, and just being free of the words made her breathe easier—the pants fit a little better.

Meanwhile, Nina was rushing toward her as fast as her skin-tight pants would allow. “Julia, don’t say that!” she cried. “It’ll be okay. You’re good at everything! You’re…you!” Nina sounded sweet. Julia realized that she might just be her best friend’s hero.

“It’s okay,” Amanda said. “It’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna…” she struggled for words “…fix it.”

“Yeah,” Nina said.

They were nearing tears, both of them, and Julia remembered that it wasn’t their fault they’d never been held hostage by fabric and thread.

“I’m sorry,” Julia said, shaking her head as if to toss everything aside and start fresh—an Etch A Sketch that has been made blank and new. “Maybe we should just—"

Just then, Julia heard a mysterious “Psst” coming from somewhere.

“Psst!” She heard it again.

Amanda opened her mouth to say something, but Julia silenced her with a look. “Do you hear…” Julia started but then a woman’s face appeared in the crack of a dressing room door.

“Excuse me,” she whispered. “I heard you.” The woman peering out of the dressing room was tall and thin, and Julia couldn’t imagine how that woman was going to help her. Then as if reading her mind, the woman said, “I’m a stylist for…well…let’s just say people you would have heard of. They’re like you,” the woman whispered as if she was describing Julia’s long-lost magical ancestors, trying to make her understand that she was actually a member of a hip-wielding, paparazzi-mesmerizing, designer-defying sisterhood of women with curves.

“I have a small waist,” Julia said as if that stall was a confessional and she’d finally found someone who could absolve her of her sins. “Men are supposed to love curves. I have a waist. I have hips. My waist is smaller than my hips!” Julia said again as if announcing it to the world.

“I know,” the woman said in hushed reverence. “Jennifer Lopez doesn’t buy off the rack—couldn’t if she wanted to.”

“I knew it!” Julia cried.

“There are lots of you out there. I can help.”

“But I have a thing tonight,” Julia said, losing momentum, but the woman waved away her fears.

“Go to this address.” She placed a small slip of paper on Julia’s palm then folded her fingers protectively over it. “We stylists call it…” She trailed off then looked around as if terrified she’d be caught breaking starlet-stylist confidentiality “…the hip strip. Just go.” She pushed Julia toward the door. “Hurry. Tell them Angela sent you.”

LEARNING TO PLAY GIN--available November 7!