Unbearable Lightness Part 4

So I stopped eating in front of her. In front of her, I'd eat steamed vegetables. In the back alleys of restaurants, sitting in between two Dumpsters, I'd eat anything I liked. If my mother wasn't home and lack of pocket money forced me to make do with the food that was in the kitchen pantry, I'd keep one eye on my grandmother as she sat in the living room and hastily get to work on half a loaf of bread and b.u.t.ter with apricot jam. I'd then walk to the supermarket with a b.u.t.ter knife, buy bread, b.u.t.ter, and apricot jam, throw away the few slices of bread to make it look like the untouched original loaf, then use the knife to remove the portions of the b.u.t.ter and jam to make it look like everything was just how I found them. Or I should say, just as she left them.

My mother thought there might be a medical solution to the weight problem in the form of a prescribed appet.i.te suppressant. A drug called Duromine was well known in Australia. It is phentermine, the phen phen in Fen-phen, and was similarly heralded for its effectiveness in weight control. I was prescribed Duromine after a physical examination by a doctor and started taking the drug. in Fen-phen, and was similarly heralded for its effectiveness in weight control. I was prescribed Duromine after a physical examination by a doctor and started taking the drug.

I lost weight. I lost weight and was thin-bony, even. I was ready for any modeling job without concern and was the envy of my school peers. The only problem with the drug was that I couldn't sleep. If I took it every morning with a cup of tea, I felt jittery all day long, speedy almost, and that feeling of restlessness and anxiety stayed with me throughout the day and continued into the night. I could take it daily for only a couple of weeks before I felt like I needed a break from it. Instead of being the answer to helping me with consistent, steady dieting, the Duromine became like a yo-yo in itself. It became another wagon to fall off. It was yet another way to disappoint myself with my lack of willpower, of toughing it out. I just couldn't hack it, just like I couldn't hack dieting. I'd stop taking it, claiming that it affected my studies and my overall health, but secretly I missed eating. I missed the comfort that tasting and chewing and swallowing gave me. I missed the warmth in my belly and the feeling of wholeness; I was incomplete on Duromine, and on food, I was whole.

I realized during the sessions with Suzanne that it almost didn't matter who I was talking to, it was good to talk. And while I talked, she listened. She gave me my program for the week, gave me some helpful tips for the upcoming holidays, and sent me back into the world with my homework.

13.

I SURVIVED SEASON TWO OF ALLY MCBEAL! ALLY MCBEAL!.

THAT WAS the slogan on a T-shirt that was given out to the cast and crew by a cast member. I survived season two-but barely. Since beginning the show I had felt a constant indescribable pressure, a lurking threat of being fired, even though there was no evidence to suggest that I was displeasing the executive producer. While it was a good place to work and people were generally respectful, there was an eerie stillness and a certain kind of silence to the set that felt like a breezeless summer day, and while there were no insects, there were no birds chirping either. During the last four weeks of the season, every night after wrap, I would get into my car, smile and wave good night to hair and makeup, and like clockwork, I would burst into tears once I made the right turn from Manhattan Beach Studios onto Rosecrans Boulevard. And I would sob, not just cry. I made loud wailing noises that sounded more like "ahhhhhh" than the kind of crying I'd done over other things. In fact, I sounded like Lucille Ball as Lucy Ricardo when she would cry loudly, embarra.s.sing Ricky to the point where he'd do anything she wanted just to shut her up. No one could hear my wailing, however. I wasn't doing it for effect. I was doing it to soothe myself, to comfort myself. And I didn't know why I was crying either. I would cry just as loudly if I'd spent the day performing a wordy two-page closing argument to a jury as if I'd been propped up on a chair in the background of the law office with no dialogue at all. the slogan on a T-shirt that was given out to the cast and crew by a cast member. I survived season two-but barely. Since beginning the show I had felt a constant indescribable pressure, a lurking threat of being fired, even though there was no evidence to suggest that I was displeasing the executive producer. While it was a good place to work and people were generally respectful, there was an eerie stillness and a certain kind of silence to the set that felt like a breezeless summer day, and while there were no insects, there were no birds chirping either. During the last four weeks of the season, every night after wrap, I would get into my car, smile and wave good night to hair and makeup, and like clockwork, I would burst into tears once I made the right turn from Manhattan Beach Studios onto Rosecrans Boulevard. And I would sob, not just cry. I made loud wailing noises that sounded more like "ahhhhhh" than the kind of crying I'd done over other things. In fact, I sounded like Lucille Ball as Lucy Ricardo when she would cry loudly, embarra.s.sing Ricky to the point where he'd do anything she wanted just to shut her up. No one could hear my wailing, however. I wasn't doing it for effect. I was doing it to soothe myself, to comfort myself. And I didn't know why I was crying either. I would cry just as loudly if I'd spent the day performing a wordy two-page closing argument to a jury as if I'd been propped up on a chair in the background of the law office with no dialogue at all.

With the end of the season came the holidays. I had booked the trip with Sacha to St. Barths. While I was excited to realize my dreams of being with her, there was no doubt that I was nervous to see it through. I was worried that by embarking on a romantic journey with Sacha, the journey could come to an end, taking my romantic fantasies with it; the daydreams that lulled me to sleep smiling, the fantasies that filled otherwise empty hours, and the soothing thoughts that took pain and loneliness away would all go with it. These thoughts gave me both anxiety and hope toward the end of the season. Finally, for better or worse, our romance would become a reality.

In St. Barths, however, reality was shocking. It ruined romance like an annoying little brother. It was a pestering ever-present element in our conversations, especially as the conversations featured her boyfriend, Matt, to whom she was considering getting married. Our precious time alone in that tropical paradise was not filled with longing glances and pa.s.sionate lovemaking, but rather it was spent with our heads stuck in our respective books and in arguments. A conversation about the book I was reading, in fact, ended all arguing, as reality punched me in the face and knocked illusion out cold.

"What's that book you're reading?"

"Ellen DeGeneres's mother, Betty, wrote it. She tells her story about what it's like to have a gay daughter."

"Who's Ellen DeGeneres?"

Her having a fiance in Australia didn't deter my quest to make Sacha my girlfriend, but not knowing who Ellen was two years after she made international headlines for coming out on her show suggested to me that being gay wasn't even on Sacha's radar, despite her willingness to make out with me on a dance floor from time to time. From that moment on, I knew that I was alone without my imaginary life to keep me company. So I swallowed my disillusionment in the form of cream sauces, pina coladas, and pastries, served up to me by the private chef I'd hired to help me seduce Sacha into a life of lesbianism. Now the chef's role was to reward me for my hard work on Ally Ally for the season. I ate my way into relaxation in St. Barths. And I got really fat. for the season. I ate my way into relaxation in St. Barths. And I got really fat.

The fact that I got fat was unfortunate as I was scheduled to shoot the cover of Rolling Stone Australia Rolling Stone Australia two weeks after my vacation ended. I went back home to Melbourne to my mother feeling more like a deserter than the war hero I had dreamed of. I thought I'd be paraded around Camberwell, the town where my mother lived, as the American TV star triumphantly returning. To be honest, there was still some parading, some walking up to the Camberwell shops with my mother to talk to the shopkeepers about my adventures overseas, but it felt wrong. The pounds were evidence of the pressure. Heaviness overshadowed the levity of talking about what I wore to the Emmys or what Calista was like as a person. People could sense my depression and discomfort, and that really ruined the fun for everyone. So my mother dutifully hid her chocolate-covered cookies, and I starved and cried and went back and forth to the gym I used to go to for aerobics cla.s.ses back in the eighties. two weeks after my vacation ended. I went back home to Melbourne to my mother feeling more like a deserter than the war hero I had dreamed of. I thought I'd be paraded around Camberwell, the town where my mother lived, as the American TV star triumphantly returning. To be honest, there was still some parading, some walking up to the Camberwell shops with my mother to talk to the shopkeepers about my adventures overseas, but it felt wrong. The pounds were evidence of the pressure. Heaviness overshadowed the levity of talking about what I wore to the Emmys or what Calista was like as a person. People could sense my depression and discomfort, and that really ruined the fun for everyone. So my mother dutifully hid her chocolate-covered cookies, and I starved and cried and went back and forth to the gym I used to go to for aerobics cla.s.ses back in the eighties.

ROLLING STONE AUSTRALIA. ISSUE 566, OCTOBER 1999There are two rumours about Portia de Rossi . . . So which rumour would she like to address first?"Oooh, I love this," the 26-year-old says in her peculiar LA via Melbourne accent. "It's just like truth or dare!"OK, the first rumour is about the hair. We know it's real. We know she's a natural blonde because her mum has shown us the baby photos. Even as a four-year-old her white-blond hair was worn long and girly. So that's that out of the way . . . The second rumour is that De Rossi was spotted in clubs around Melbourne recently cosying up to other girls. So does that mean she's bis.e.xual? A lesbian? A long, delighted squeal comes down the telephone line. "Ooooh, how fun! I love that question!" she says, shouting now . . ."Let's just say every celebrity gets that rumour and now I feel like I've joined the club. Hooray!"

Hooray indeed. Not only were they "on to me," a phrase that my mother would use when my secrets were being pried out of their vault and into pop culture, but the photo shoot exposed another terrible secret, possibly worse than being gay. It told the world, or at least the people of Australia, that I was fat. I tried as hard as I could to get the weight off, but whittling down from 140 pounds in two weeks proved to be too much of a feat even for this crash dieter. If only Sacha had fallen in love with me, none of this would've happened. Now I was on the cover of a magazine, fat and looking like a hooker in a chainmail b.o.o.b tube and leather hot pants. Over the previous six months, I was told that I had ranked highly in the polls featured in men's magazines as being "hot," mainly because of the icy, untouchable nature of my character. Nothing was more of a foil for my real, gay self than to appear on the cover of men's magazines as a s.e.xy, man-eating young actress. Another difficult role to play, I was discovering who I was while desperately trying to convey the image of the woman I wasn't.

When Portia de Rossi looked at the clothes we'd chosen for this month's cover shoot-leather hot pants, chainmail b.o.o.b-tube, handcuffs, G-string, she only had one thing to say: "Oh f.u.c.k!" Several cigarettes later and a few soothing words from her mum and her aunt Gwen (also at the shoot), she was happily admiring herself in the s.e.xy clobber. "Mama, do you think it's too kinky?" she asked. "No," her mum replied. "You look very pretty."

After the photo shoot, I went to the airport. I had to fly back to Los Angeles to meet with executives from L'Oreal to discuss being their new spokesperson for a hair product. I knew that people thought I had nice hair. I knew it was special because I was often told that it was the reason for my success. The fact that I played the t.i.tle role in the Geelong Grammar School production of Alice in Wonderland, Alice in Wonderland, for example, was because of my hair, according to all the girls at school. Occasionally, on modeling jobs I was singled out to be featured in a campaign because of my hair, and on for example, was because of my hair, according to all the girls at school. Occasionally, on modeling jobs I was singled out to be featured in a campaign because of my hair, and on Ally McBeal Ally McBeal toward the end of my first season, my hair acted out more drama than my character did. It went to court to showcase how women use s.e.xuality to get ahead in the workplace, it indicated when my character's walls were up, and it even performed a few stunts, notably when John Cage "wired" my hair to remotely shake loose from its restrictive bun when he wanted me to "let my hair down." So the fact that my hair had garnered some attention from people who sell hair products wasn't surprising to me. In fact, it was the only thing that had made sense for quite a while. The fact that I didn't like my thick, unmanageable hair was irrelevant. toward the end of my first season, my hair acted out more drama than my character did. It went to court to showcase how women use s.e.xuality to get ahead in the workplace, it indicated when my character's walls were up, and it even performed a few stunts, notably when John Cage "wired" my hair to remotely shake loose from its restrictive bun when he wanted me to "let my hair down." So the fact that my hair had garnered some attention from people who sell hair products wasn't surprising to me. In fact, it was the only thing that had made sense for quite a while. The fact that I didn't like my thick, unmanageable hair was irrelevant.

I didn't write letters to Sacha in the airport terminal. I ate. There was nothing left to say, no fantasies I could act out on paper of how we would be happy together in a tropical paradise, so I ate. I ate English m.u.f.fins with b.u.t.ter and jam. I ate potato chips and cookies and gulped down c.o.ke. I threw up. I left the first-cla.s.s lounge to shop for food in the terminal. I ate McDonald's burgers, vanilla milk shakes, and fries. I threw up again. Then I got on the plane.

"Can I get you a drink, Ms. de Rossi?" The American stewardess had a lipsticky mouth and overp.r.o.nounced the syllables, as Americans tended to do. It was strange to hear the American accent after being in Australia. It reminded me that I had an accent, too. It reminded me that Australian-born Amanda Rogers was now American-seeming Portia de Rossi. If magazines didn't say otherwise, I could definitely pa.s.s as a Yank. My dad had called Americans Yanks. I thought it was funny when I was a little kid. He'd also sung me to sleep with a pa.s.sionate, out-of-tune rendition of "The House of the Rising Sun."

"Baileys Irish Cream, if you have it." Of course I knew they had it, it just sounded more polite, more whimsical. I was aware that the stewardess would think that an after-dinner cream liqueur would be a ridiculous drink to order before dinner, and I needed her to know that I knew it was ridiculous, too, so I said: "I've been looking forward to some Baileys. I always have it on planes." That made it better.

When I refused dinner and asked for my sixth Baileys, the stewardess got weird again. Of course, she served it to me; I was a first-cla.s.s pa.s.senger after all, but I could detect concern in her pour, more than just the concern that comes with pouring liquid into a narrow-rimmed gla.s.s on a moving vehicle that is subject to bouts of turbulence. She was judging me. She looked disgusted. She was worried for me. She had reason to be worried, I guess. I had spent a lot of the plane ride quietly crying, as I often do because I hate hovering between one place and another. "Neither here nor there" was an expression my grandmother would use to describe confusion and displacement, and it is a disturbing place to be. This state of hovering during the fourteen-hour journey was once filled with fantasy scenarios of being Sacha's obsession or having a beautiful body on the cover of a major magazine. Now I had no choice but to fill the time by bringing a gla.s.s of thick, creamy liquid back and forth to my lips. I was neither in LA nor in Melbourne, neither straight nor gay, neither famous nor unknown, neither fat nor thin, neither a success nor a failure. My Discman played the soundtrack for my inner dialogue-rare recordings of Nirvana and so here we were, Kurt Cobain and I, displaced, misunderstood, unloved, and "neither here nor there"-he being neither dead nor alive, both in his life and in his death. It occurred to me as I listened to lyrics like "and if you killed yourself, it would make you happy" that if I were at the end of my life, I wouldn't have to keep running the race. If I were really old and close to dying, I wouldn't have to do another season, another magazine cover. I could be remembered as a successful working actor, a celebrity, even. I had been given the challenge of life and beaten it. The pressure I had put on myself to excel in everything I did made life look like a never-ending steeplechase. The thought that I had fifty more years of striving and jumping over hurdles and being the one to beat in the race was enough to make me order another drink.

After my seventh Baileys I threw up. I made myself throw up, but it took a long time to do it, and because I was drunk, it was sloppy. I've never liked airplane toilets. They've always disgusted me, so the unclean, smelly toilet made me nauseous and the nausea made me think there was more food and liquid in my gut to get rid of. A lot of dry heaving and coughing followed. My fingernails had cut the back of my throat where my gag reflex was and I was throwing up saliva, maybe bile, and a trace of blood. Several times, I heard knocking on the door. I ignored it. It didn't bother me at all, actually. I deserved to be on this plane and in this bathroom just like they did. By the time I had unlocked the door, there was a guy in a uniform waiting for me. He looked officious and slightly angry, which made me angry. There are other toilets on the plane, for G.o.d's sake.

"There's some concern that you're not feeling well. Is there anything I can do to help you, Ms. de Rossi?"

"No. I'm fine." The purging session had given me a colossal headache. So I added, "Maybe some aspirin."

As I walked down the aisle, I noticed a contraption in the way. It was in the aisle blocking access to my seat. It was silver, and looked like a cylinder on poles with wheels attached. The stewardess stood next to it and as if reading my mind she replied, "Oxygen. I think it'll make you feel better."

Something shifted. As I looked into the face of the stewardess, I no longer saw expressions of judgment and disgust. I saw concern. The once angry, officious-looking man in the uniform returned from getting aspirin for my headache and gave it to me with a smile. I looked at my two uniformed nurses, and their caring, nurturing expressions, and quietly sat in my seat and attached the oxygen mask to my face.

When I woke up to the plane preparing for landing in Los Angeles, the silver contraption, and my headache, were gone. I was in Los Angeles.

My name is Portia de Rossi. I'm an American actress about to embark on my second season of a hit TV show. I am here and not there. I am here.

14.

THERE ARE a few places in Los Angeles where art meets up with commerce for a drink and the Four Seasons bar is one of them. a few places in Los Angeles where art meets up with commerce for a drink and the Four Seasons bar is one of them.

As I walked in from the lobby, I saw little plays being acted out at nearly all the tables-the actor, writer, or director presenting himself as something to invest in, the producer or executive sizing them up before deciding to purchase or pa.s.s. Sometimes, like a chaperone, the manager or agent will be present at one of these sales meetings. The manager tends to lubricate things with friendly, ice-breaking conversation. Also, the manager orders lunch or drinks for the table and plugs the awkward silences by asking after the producer's kids. Most times, their kids play soccer together. Or attend the same school. Hollywood is a club. And with the help of a couple of referrals, I got to fill out my application.

I walked through the bar to the a.s.sortment of floral lounge chairs that would serve as the site for my success or failure. I was meeting with the L'Oreal executives. I was a potential new product. I approached them in the dress and heels I'd agonized over wearing for a week. Did the dress convey respect and excitement and downplay desperation? Or did it somehow expose the truth: that my self-esteem hinged on their decision? Was it too low-cut or too high-cut? Was it too tight? Did it display my wares in an attempt to arouse interest in a cheap, throw-in-everything-you've-got way? I led with my hair by running my hand across the nape of my neck to scoop up the thick blond "product" and dumped it over one shoulder for inspection: cheap, but effective.

"Hi. I'm Portia."

Handshakes all round. They looked interested. They looked like they liked what they saw. I prayed that it would go well. I prayed they would pick me.

I really needed that campaign. My ego needed it. During the course of my first season on the show, I felt like I was blending into the background. The initial thrill of writing for the new character, Nelle Porter, had given way to the thrill of writing for an even newer new character, Ling Woo. I really couldn't believe what happened. Instead of introducing one cold, calculating woman, David Kelley had split one character and given it to two people. He'd given us half a character each. If Nelle was given one cutting comment, Ling would take the other. Nelle would romance one boss at the law firm of Cage and Fish, Ling would sleep with the other. As always I had to wonder if it was something I had done wrong. Maybe I wasn't vicious enough? Maybe my vulnerability shone through the austere exterior? Maybe I wasn't s.e.xy enough for the kind of nasty-in-a-good-way attorney he had in mind? Maybe I was just nasty in the bad way because no matter how hard I tried I didn't give off a flirty, s.e.xual vibe. I'd signed up to play an intelligent professional, not a s.e.x kitten. And when I'd tried to break through the icy veneer to find the s.e.x kitten, I tended to just look like a kitten: vulnerable, fragile, in fear of abandonment, and needing to be held.

Maybe I looked too fat in my underwear.

The L'Oreal campaign would fix all this. A beauty campaign would be an opportunity for me to restore my dignity, my uniqueness. Apart from gracing the cover of Vogue Vogue, I couldn't imagine anything in the world more glamorous than a beauty campaign. A beauty campaign had the power to validate. Like becoming a model, it was a way to convince people beyond a doubt that you were, in fact, attractive. Selling shampoo serves up an answer to a question that's vague and subjective. It tells you what beauty is, that the face selling this product is a beautiful face.

There's nothing like external validation. I craved it. It's why I went to law school. The theory of objectivism claims that there are certain things that most people in society can agree upon. A model is pretty. A lawyer is smart. Our society is based upon objectivism. It's how we make rules and why we obey them. That was perhaps the only thing I learned in law school. I was too busy modeling to go to cla.s.s.

The L'Oreal bigwig was a pleasant, smiling man and he ordered a Heineken from the server. I could tell he was the bigwig, because no one else who sat in a floral lounge chair would have had the gall to order alcohol in a meeting. It bothered me slightly that he did that. It seemed like meeting with me wasn't terribly important. That he didn't need to impress me, win me away from Garnier or any other compet.i.tive hair care brands that might be offering me a similar deal. But what bothered me most about the Heineken was the thing he said as he picked up the icy green bottle and pointed to it with the index finger from his other hand.

"No more of this for you, Portia."

Now, I liked beer. I especially liked Heineken, and I didn't like that anyone would say something like that to me. If he'd been a doctor who was explaining my impending liver failure while demonstrating what caused it at a bar, or if I was that Olympic gymnast I'd pretended to be in summer as a kid, who was celebrating her last night before going to a foreign country to compete for gold, I might have been okay with such a statement. At least, I would've understood it. But why did he not want me to drink beer? Could it be because alcohol is fattening? Aging? Makes you stupid if you get drunk? I didn't understand. But what I did understand from that comment was that I had just been offered the job of being the new face of L'Oreal.

A fitting followed a week after the meeting, and with it all the excitement and beer drinking that came with celebrating my new, prestigious job. The fitting for the commercial took place at the Four Seasons again, and I figured the hotel served as a kind of L'Oreal office base away from the home office in New York. The executives took their meetings in the bar, conferred in a conference room, slept in their individual suites, and lavished their new star with a room full of beautiful clothes to try in the presidential suite. My manager came with me to the fitting and both of us were excited.

After the initial meetings and greetings of the stylist and her a.s.sistants and tailors, I wandered into the main room of the presidential suite wide-eyed and my mouth agape. All the furniture had been removed and the walls were lined with racks and racks of clothing. Hundreds of suits hung on the racks and on every rack, on the north, south, and west walls, was the same gray suit.

"Great. I was just looking for a gray suit! Now I know where they all are."

The mood in the room was quiet and not jovial, so I put my smart-a.s.s personality to rest and took out the pleasant, compliant, easygoing one I've been using at work since the day I started. I knew this kind of client, the kind where every little detail mattered; I'd modeled for them for years. I'd just never worked for this giant of a company at this level. My experience with clients who tested every little detail in a think tank of consumers who'd been randomly collected from shopping malls was limited to the smaller companies in Australia. And nothing says, "You're in the big leagues" like two hundred near-identical suits in the presidential suite of the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills.

I looked at a gray suit with a short jacket and a pencil skirt with a side slit. Then I looked at a gray suit with a pencil skirt and a short jacket with a slightly different lapel than the one I'd looked at five minutes prior that had a pointier, larger lapel and a skirt that was slit on the opposite side. Some of the fabrics were a different weight than others with a different ratio of cotton to wool. It was clear to me that my opinion or preference of suits didn't matter at all, and so I went into the dressing room and tried on jackets and skirts as they were handed to me.

Undressing in front of my manager was embarra.s.sing. I didn't feel quite thin enough to be standing around barefoot in my G-string, but I didn't want to tell her to leave the room. After all, the only reason for her to be here was to help me navigate through the sea of suits, and I knew she'd have much preferred to be somewhere else with another of her bigger, more famous clients. She was a busy woman whose time was important, so I couldn't have her wait in the living room. Besides, there was no furniture anywhere else in the hotel suite. Comfort had been cleared away for productivity. And the skirts that were pa.s.sed in and out of that dressing room from the stylist's a.s.sistant to the stylist to the tailor and then back to the stylist's a.s.sistant to be hung back up on the rack of suits that didn't fit looked like a production line in a factory-an unproductive factory. So far, not one of the suits had fit. The skirts either didn't zip up in the back, or if they had Lycra or another synthetic fabric helping them to stretch, the skirt did that telltale bunching that looks like ripples on a lakesh.o.r.e between two gently rolling hills that were my thighs. They didn't fit. None of them. I tried on suit after suit until it was obvious to the stylist and the tailor that the fitting should take place skirt by skirt. It was pointless to try the jacket if the skirt was so small it couldn't be zipped up in the back.

They were all a size 4. My modeling card measurements-34, 24, 35-had put me at a size 4. And it seemed like the more expensive the suit, the tighter it was. A size 4 in Prada was a size 2 in the type of clothes I'd wear for Ally Ally. I could've argued that the European sizing was different. I could've made a case for myself, but none of that was important when I couldn't zip up the fifteenth skirt in a row. None of what I could've said would be important.

You can put on a brave face for only so long. I put one on for about three hours before it cracked. After three hours I fell silent. There was nothing to say. We all knew what was going on. I was unprofessional. I didn't deserve the campaign. My manager had slid down into her chair with her hand on the side of her face, exhausted, no longer willing to go to battle for me. The stylist, who had lacked a personality in the beginning, found one toward the fourth hour of the fitting, and it wasn't pleasant to be around. She'd stopped addressing me directly. Everything she said in front of me was to her a.s.sistant or tailor: "Go get the Dolce skirt. Let's see if she can fit into that." Or "What if you let the skirt out as much as you can. She might be able to get away with it."

She stopped cold as the door of the suite was knocked upon and opened simultaneously. It was the L'Oreal executives come to see what was taking so long. They had been in the conference room taking meetings but had been expecting to see some pictures of Portia de Rossi in several gray suits. We were supposed to have given them Polaroids of all the options by now. We had given them none.

"Hi."

I didn't bother to smile or go to them in the hallway. My manager didn't even get up.

"What's going on in here?" The female executive had a smiley yet accusatory voice. The kind of p.i.s.sed-off yet polite voice one would expect from Hillary Clinton if she had the sneaking suspicion that someone was trying to pull the wool over her eyes.

There was an awful silence. It was a silence full of thwarted hopes, a stale-air kind of silence.

The explanation they were seeking was summed up with a simple statement from the stylist that everyone seemed to understand.

"n.o.body told me she was a size eight."

Like a dead man to the galley, I walked with my manager to the Four Seasons parking garage. When I'd driven in that morning, I'd been given the option to self-park or to valet park and, quite honestly, I didn't know which one was the cool thing to do. I thought maybe it said more about the type of person I was if I did away with all the ceremony of a valet. It said that I was self-sufficient, that I could see through artifice, that I wasn't falling for it. I was happy about that now because the vast gray parking structure was empty of people, except for my manager and me, the emptiness echoing the clicking of our heels as we walked through it. It occurred to me as I was walking miles to my car (valet parkers got all the good s.p.a.ces) that the parking garage held up the rest of the building and was its true nature, that all the floral lounge chairs and Hollywood dealings were like costumes and a character to an actor; another kind of empty sh.e.l.l that needed a good stylist and a purpose. I'd been given another fitting two days from now, a time and address scratched on a piece of paper. That would give the stylist time to find bigger sizes. The second fitting would take place in the rented s.p.a.ce of the stylist in a not-so-good part of Hollywood. That's what you get for drinking beer.

My manager walked me as far as the elevators, but that was as far as she'd go. We'd come down the stairs, tried to find my car around that area, and then started walking because I thought that maybe my car was at the other end. I have no sense of direction. If I haven't been to a place before, I'll get lost. In the car, if I haven't traveled the exact route, I'll get lost and almost force myself to go the wrong way to prove that I knew it was the wrong way. I deliberately go the wrong way so I can predict the outcome with confidence.

At the elevators, as she was trying to leave me and get back to her pretty Jaguar and her pretty office with the ocean breeze, I showed her the big gray empty s.p.a.ce inside me. I didn't mean to; it's just what happens if I disappoint someone I'm trying to impress. The crying seemed to come abruptly and from my stomach and as I cried, it folded in half and bent over and couldn't be straightened back up. My head was somewhere past my knees and my heels could no longer balance the weight of my head and torso-all of it making heaving, sobbing motions and so I sank to the cold gray concrete. I was on the ground. It was a brief moment, but for that moment I was on the floor of the bottom floor of the Four Seasons: from the presidential suite to the floor of the bottom floor in four hours. My manager yanked me up by the arm with the super-human strength that comes with embarra.s.sment, the way a mother yanks up a child who's thrown a tantrum in a department store.

"I can't do this, Joan. I'm too fat. They don't want me. They want someone else. I think we should get out of it. I don't want to do this anymore. Joan, I'm too fat. They told me that Heather Locklear was a size zero and Andie MacDowell was a two!"

She looked around to make sure no one could see us. She made sure none of her producer friends whose kids play soccer were anywhere around to see this spectacle and then she said: "Honey. You have big legs."

I stopped crying. I was shocked into stopping. I'd never heard that before in all my years of modeling. I was hoping for some bulls.h.i.t rea.s.surance about how the stylist should have had more sizes and how women my height shouldn't be a size 2. Instead I was told the truth.

Yes. Of course, I have big legs. I have big thighs that make all the skirts tight no matter how much I weigh. Everything makes sense now. In fact, Anthony Nankervis, the boy who told me I had slitty, lizard eyes also told me I had footballer's legs. I don't know how I could've forgotten that.

With a dismissive hand gesture to punctuate her point, she said it again. She announced it with certainty, the way that any fact would be stated, requiring no qualification and inviting no reb.u.t.tal.

"Just face it, honey. You have big legs."

"What part of your body do you like?"The Jenny Craig counselor is talking to a jovial woman at the two o'clock spot in the group circle. She is a very fat woman with dull brown hair."My hair?" Laughter all round."Well, that's not exactly a body part, now is it, Jan."The circle has about twelve people in it, and I am at six o'clock. While Jan consults her list of several of her body parts that she likes, I look at the blank sheet in front of me and try to think of one of my own. Hands? No. I hate my hands."I like my hands," says Jan, looking down at her fatty, pasty hands. I wonder how she can like her hands because even if she thought that her right hand was graceful and slender, her wedding band on her left hand, barely visible through the mounds of flesh suffocating it, tells the story of the big fat body attached to it. As she waves them around to help her mouth make a point, I wonder who put that band on her finger with a promise of being true to her through thick and thin. I wonder if that promise is diminished now, relative to the sliver of band now visible: a once-thick gold band now seemingly thin: a seemingly happy bride now thick with disappointment. But I guess if you only looked at her right hand and heard her laughter, you might still think she was happy. And maybe her husband's fat, too.Three o'clock likes her eyes. That would've been an obvious one for me because my eyes can't gain weight, but I don't like my eyes. They're too small and close together. Four o'clock likes her calves. They're strong and lean apparently, although I can't see them through her pant leg so I'll have to take her word for it. My calves are my least favorite part of my body because after years of treating my local ballet cla.s.s like it was the Australian Ballet Company, they are enormous. You can't see them, so you'll have to take my word for it. Five o'clock likes her arms. Really?"Portia?""Has everyone met Portia? She's a newcomer to the group and is the youngest Jenny Craig member we've ever had. Tell us your favorite body part, Portia."My workbook is blank. My mind is blank and yet racing through thoughts. I am fifteen years old and 130 pounds in a room filled with people twice my weight and age and yet I can't think of a thing. My feet have crooked toes, my ankles are too thin, my calves are too thick, my knees are dimply, my thighs are too big, my a.s.s is droopy, my hips are too wide, my stomach is round and has rolls, my rib cage . . . ? No. My ribs stick too far out at the bottom and that makes my whole torso look wide. My b.r.e.a.s.t.s are tiny and disproportionate to the rest of my body . . ."Portia?""Umm. I don't know."What about my arms? My back? My shoulders? My wrists? Wrists. No, my wrists are too small for my forearms and my hands, and so because of my wrists, my hands and arms look bigger."There's nothing I like."The room falls silent. We were all laughing a second ago and complimenting three o'clock on her mauve eyes that looked like Elizabeth Taylor's and now we're all silent, all around the clock. All the fat people sitting from twelve right back around to eleven are looking at me at six o'clock. I know that look. It's the look of the thoughts that run through your mind when you're looking at a smart-a.s.s. I was the joke to them-the kind that makes you not want to laugh."Come on, dear. There must be something that you like?"There was an ounce of anger to her tone. My lack of an answer probably looked like unwillingness to play along, but in truth I was still running through all my parts trying to find something to say."Well, if you don't think you have any good body parts, then I guess we're all in trouble!"That was the kind of joke that makes people laugh.

PART TWO.

15.

I AWOKE TO AWOKE TO a strange silence and shafts of light stabbing into the room from the corners of the blinds. The light carried millions of tiny dust particles, which I guess were always there yet only now visible because of the soupy, thick air with its beams of light illuminating them. I was eerily calm when I awoke. I was aware that I had cried myself to sleep over the L'Oreal incident; my eye sockets felt misshapen and waterlogged, as though they could barely keep my sore, dry eyes in my head. But it felt like I had cried for the last time. That I was never going to cry myself to sleep like that again. Despite the heaviness of my head, with its headache and sinus pressure, there was a levity to it, a lightness to it, like everything inside of it that made the world I lived in a place of peace or a place of torture, was weightless-quiet, floating. I felt overtaken by a sense of peace, by the feeling that today was truly a new day. a strange silence and shafts of light stabbing into the room from the corners of the blinds. The light carried millions of tiny dust particles, which I guess were always there yet only now visible because of the soupy, thick air with its beams of light illuminating them. I was eerily calm when I awoke. I was aware that I had cried myself to sleep over the L'Oreal incident; my eye sockets felt misshapen and waterlogged, as though they could barely keep my sore, dry eyes in my head. But it felt like I had cried for the last time. That I was never going to cry myself to sleep like that again. Despite the heaviness of my head, with its headache and sinus pressure, there was a levity to it, a lightness to it, like everything inside of it that made the world I lived in a place of peace or a place of torture, was weightless-quiet, floating. I felt overtaken by a sense of peace, by the feeling that today was truly a new day.

I got out of bed and immediately started stretching. An odd thing for me to do, but I wanted to feel my body. I wanted to "check in" with it, acknowledge it. As I stretched, there was a certain love I gave to it, an appreciation for its muscles straining and contracting. I liked the way it felt as I touched my toes and straightened my back. I felt like I was suddenly self-contained. Like the answers lay within me. Like my life was about to be lived within the confines of my body and would answer only to it. I didn't give a s.h.i.t what anyone thought of me.

As I stretched my arms out to the sides, I ran my fingers through the beams of light, cloudy with the dust that swirled around my bedroom. I saw the beauty of my messy bedroom and inhaled the summer air. All the clothes I'd tried on and discarded on the floor before going to my L'Oreal fitting were looking up at me, wondering what they had done wrong. Despite the mess and the dust, it smelled sweet and I felt myself smiling as I inhaled. I liked that smell. It was the smell of the imported Italian talc in the yellow plastic bottle that I had bought to pamper myself but only now enjoyed as talc and not a status symbol. As I walked barefoot on the painted concrete floor of my bedroom toward the bathroom scale I felt confident that what I was about to see would make me happy for the rest of the day. I felt empty and light and I didn't care what number the scale told me I was, today I was not going to define myself by it. Today I knew that despite what it said, it was unimportant. Today I would start my new life.

I had the answer to my problems.

I would always be prepared.

I was about to make everything easier.

The scale confirmed what I'd suspected. It read 130. The weight I had always returned to no matter the effort to get beneath it. In the past, this number had invariably plummeted me into despair. It reminded me that no matter what I did, I could never win-that my body with its bones and its guts and its blood weighed in at what it felt comfortable being as a living organism with its own needs. It hated me and thought I was stupid for attempting to change it with my tortuous rituals of forcing regurgitation and starving it of food. It always had the upper hand, the last word. And the last word was 130.

Today being the first day of my brand-new life, with its sunshine and its soupy air, 130 was a beautiful weight. It was my weight. It was Portia, a straight-A student who earned a place at the most prestigious law school in Australia, who had an exciting modeling career and the courage to try her hand at acting in a foreign country. It was the weight of the girl who was a successful actress, who made money, who was independent. For the first time in my life, I didn't view my body as the enemy. Today it was my friend, my partner in all the success I'd accomplished. As it stepped off the scale and over the pile of discarded clothes, onto the wooden floorboards and toward the food journal on the coffee table, it expressed its strength and joy by lunging, deep and controlled, thighs burning, stomach taut. And with an outstretched arm the hand flicked through the pages of lists of food items and calories and wrote in big, curly pen strokes something the journal had never before seen: my weight.

130.

I was hungry and yet unusually unafraid of being hungry. I went to the fridge and then the pantry and proceeded to line up all the possible breakfast foods on the counter. Sitting on the counter in a row, equally s.p.a.ced and looking like The Price Is Right The Price Is Right game show items, were the foods Suzanne, my nutritionist, had given me to eat. The breakfast options of oatmeal, egg whites (you can buy them in a jar, you know), bran m.u.f.fins, wheat toast, and yogurt were all looking at me and available, but Suzanne had preferred me to eat oatmeal and egg whites because the combination of the two gave good amounts of carbohydrates and protein and because the two-part process of cooking and eating, she believed, made you feel as though you were eating a big, satisfying meal. I made the decision to eat egg whites and oatmeal. I read the calorie contents of the single-serving prepackaged oatmeal sachet: 100 calories. I wondered what 100 calories meant to my body, what it would do with it. Would it use it just to drive to work today or could it drive to work, sit through hair and makeup, and act out a scene all on 100 calories? Would it gently prompt my mind to produce feelings of hunger when it was done burning the calories or would it ask for more food before it was done using the energy from the food I'd given it? If the body was so clever and knew what it needed for health and survival, how come obese people got hungry? The body should use the stored fat to sustain itself to prevent diabetes or heart failure. If it was so clever, it should take over the mind of a self-destructive obese person and send out brain signals of nausea instead of hunger. I came to the conclusion that no matter what my body said it needed, I could no longer trust it. I couldn't rely on my body to tell me what I needed. From now on, I was in control. I was its captain and would make all the decisions. game show items, were the foods Suzanne, my nutritionist, had given me to eat. The breakfast options of oatmeal, egg whites (you can buy them in a jar, you know), bran m.u.f.fins, wheat toast, and yogurt were all looking at me and available, but Suzanne had preferred me to eat oatmeal and egg whites because the combination of the two gave good amounts of carbohydrates and protein and because the two-part process of cooking and eating, she believed, made you feel as though you were eating a big, satisfying meal. I made the decision to eat egg whites and oatmeal. I read the calorie contents of the single-serving prepackaged oatmeal sachet: 100 calories. I wondered what 100 calories meant to my body, what it would do with it. Would it use it just to drive to work today or could it drive to work, sit through hair and makeup, and act out a scene all on 100 calories? Would it gently prompt my mind to produce feelings of hunger when it was done burning the calories or would it ask for more food before it was done using the energy from the food I'd given it? If the body was so clever and knew what it needed for health and survival, how come obese people got hungry? The body should use the stored fat to sustain itself to prevent diabetes or heart failure. If it was so clever, it should take over the mind of a self-destructive obese person and send out brain signals of nausea instead of hunger. I came to the conclusion that no matter what my body said it needed, I could no longer trust it. I couldn't rely on my body to tell me what I needed. From now on, I was in control. I was its captain and would make all the decisions.

I decided that I didn't need the full 100-calorie oatmeal packet. It was clearly a common measurement for a normal common portion of food that ordinary people would eat. Obviously, it wasn't a portion that was meant for a person who was dieting. If the average person who wasn't going to lose weight ate a 100-calorie packet for breakfast, then I should eat less. I immediately felt so stupid that I hadn't seen that before. Of course you couldn't lose weight if you relied on Quaker to allot your portion; I had to take control of it. I calculated the grams of food that would deliver an 80-calorie serving on the kitchen scale, and after being careful to give myself the exact amount of oats, I poured it into a bowl. I added hot water and a sprinkling of Splenda. I ate it slowly, tasting every morsel of oatmeal and its claggy syrup. Then, instead of randomly pouring a generous dollop of egg whites from the jar into a hot pan coated in oil, I got out the measuring cup. I measured half a cup of egg whites and poured it into a pan coated with Pam-a no-calorie subst.i.tute for oil. I added a sprinkling of Mrs. Dash and salt. Next step was coffee. A mindless consumption of calories in the past would now be another thing ingested that needed measuring. How many additional calories I could spare in my coffee would be determined by the rest of my meal; if I was particularly hungry and needed a large portion of egg whites with my oatmeal, for example, I would take my coffee black, but if I came in under my allotted calorie consumption for the morning, I could measure out a tablespoon of Mocha Mix, a nondairy creamer, to add to it. In the past I would just randomly pour calories into a cup, not caring that a generous pouring of Mocha Mix could run 50 calories. Fifty calories. That was more than a third of my actual food for the morning. After drinking the coffee and eating the egg whites and the oatmeal, I had never felt more satisfied. I was full. I was clever. I had halved my morning calorie intake. I planned on readjusting my whole program. I would take my diary everywhere I went and record each calorie that went into my mouth. Suzanne had taught me to weigh, calculate, and doc.u.ment like a mathematician solving an equation, and with my new education I was ready to solve the weight problem.

Suzanne had set my calorie intake for optimum weight loss at 1,400 calories a day. I reset it to 1,000.

Problem solved.

16.

"WELL, h.e.l.lO there. I'm a big fan of your show. What a delight to meet you." there. I'm a big fan of your show. What a delight to meet you."

A middle-aged gray-haired man sat behind the desk of the Granville Towers lobby and practically sang his greeting to me in a gently lilting Southern accent. He seemed genuinely excited to meet me, and his happy demeanor was contagious. I shook his hand and smiled an involuntarily broad smile and I realized that I hadn't really smiled in awhile, that his sparkly nature was in stark contrast to my dullness. Everything about the Granville made me happy. Situated at Sunset and Crescent Heights, the location was perfect, and the building was historic and beautiful. A true example of 1920s architecture, the penthouse apartment that I was about to see had the potential to saddle me with a mortgage. It was time to buy a home, to invest in my life in Los Angeles. I needed a place of my own and a penthouse apartment in an Old Hollywood building on Sunset Boulevard sounded like a place an actress should live.

As I waited in the lobby for the real estate agent to arrive, the doorman, who introduced himself as Jeff, got up from his station and walked around the desk, talking excitedly as if I was the only visitor he'd had in months.