Essays and Stories by Marian Keyes Read online

  And that 's just from the neck up. Don't get me started on the rest. My body is a battleground and there are a couple of "friends" that I'm trying to avoid seeing because the first thing they always do is "weigh" me, with a scathing, gimlet-eyed once-over. Bad enough for me to judge myself, but I'm not going to take it from someone else. (I've a feeling this is a good thing, a sign of maturity.) Believe me, I know when I'm putting on weight—it usually coincides with me breathing. The thing is I'm in a double bind because I eat sweets when I'm anxious and unhappy but when I'm at peace I don't go to the gym. The result? Ever increasing girth so that shopping for clothes becomes a torment. I love clothes, especially the ones the unformed sixteen-year-olds try to flog me, but I return from shopping trips in a blind fury, shamed and embarrassed at how strange I look in the merchandise. The only time I come home happy is when I've inadvertently tried on things in shops with mirrors that lean forward and knock ten pounds off my silhouette. Idiot that I am, I believe what I see—until I try the stuff on in front of my own unforgivably upright mirror. (For some time now I've wanted to start a name-and-shame campaign of those swizz-merchant shops. Is anybody with me? Let 's storm the changing rooms!)

  Misery with how I look is a bit like a flu. I can carry on happily for quite a while without feeling any symptoms, then it can hit like a ton of bricks. A couple of years ago I was suddenly assailed with my old trouble and a friend suggested I try hypnotism; she herself had gone and emerged one blissful hour later, floating with confidence, self-regard and inner peace. I couldn't make an appointment fast enough. But mine was a different therapist and when I arrived at her office, instead of lying me on a couch and telling me I felt sleepy, she sat me on a chair and asked me about my relationship with my father. Anxiously I told her I was here about the hypnotism, the instant fix, not another bout of therapy. Whereupon she told me there was no instant fix and that until she knew all about me, she couldn't help me. At that point I almost wept, then got up to leave, so sulkily she agreed to try a bit of hypnotism. Still sitting in the chair, I closed my eyes, while she intoned, "You are going down, down, deeper and down. Down, down, deeper and down. Downdowndeeperanddown." At that point, I snapped my eyes open and it took everything in my power not to leap to my feet, playing my air guitar, singing that Status Quo song. ("Down, down, deeper'n'down. Ner-ner-ner-ner!" Shake those shaggy dos, baby!)

  Anyway, the hypnotism didn't work, and paradoxically, this whole business has got easier as I've got older. And not just because I feel that once I'm old people won't care what I look like, that they'll be far more interested in my personality. (Mind you, I'm sometimes tempted to lie about my age—and say that I'm older than I am. If I tell people I'm fifty-two instead of thirty-nine, they'll think I look great. They might even say "You know, her figure isn't bad for a woman in her fifties." See, context is everything.)

  The stuffing has definitely been knocked out of my inner demons; maybe it 's all the therapy I did or perhaps I'm finally growing up. After all, obsession with one 's appearance is embarrassingly adolescent, and actually gets quite boring after a while. Not to mention time-consuming; frankly, these days I'm too busy to free up the time to hate myself.

  Constant exposure to my limitations has brought me to the point where I can see photos of myself, observe idly, "Christ, I look horrific" and move on. Instead I've got quite adept at focusing on the good in me. (Examples thereof: I often buy The Big Issue; I am kind to animals even though I'm afraid of them; I have never hit a photographer; and I wish Cindy Crawford well.)

  Most important, though, is a point my mother once made to me when I'd subjected her to a mad, energetic rant about my hairy legs. She listened patiently, nodded sympathetically, then answered, "At least you have legs." She 's right, of course.

  First published in Woman and Home, May 2003

  Faking It

  The nicest bit of news I got in recent years was that we 're not allowed to sunbathe anymore. I never enjoyed it; the boredom of lying there with sweat running into my hair, and I couldn't even talk to the people I was with because they were devoted sun lovers who believed that conversation cancels out the action of the sun's rays. Anyway, sunbathing never worked for me. I seem to be the only person in the world who has different types of skin on different parts of my body, and this is how I took the sun. Feet—golden. Stomach— mahogany. Shins—Germoline pink. Face—bluey-white with an overlay of freckles. The cherry on the cake—my Red Nose Day nose. At the end of two weeks in the sun I looked like a patchwork quilt.

  But now, courtesy of the hole in the ozone layer, I'm off the hook. (You see, it 's not all bad news, this ecological disaster stuff.) And this is where fake tans come in. (Except we 're not really allowed to call it "fake" any more. "Self " tanning or "sunless" tanning is what it 's about.) However, it 's not always plain sailing. Let 's consider the following.

  What do you hate the most?

  a) the horrific smell

  b) the curse of the orange paw

  c) the tie-dyed effect on your heels

  d) the hour of Riverdancing in your pelt, as you wait to dry

  e) the indelible brown stains on your clothes and sheets

  f) all of the above

  If I may come back to the horrific smell. The first time I ever "did" myself, I went to bed, only to wake in terror in the middle of the night, wondering what the unspeakable stink was. Could it be the devil? Wasn't he supposed to be preceded by dreadful, poo-type smells? Quaking with fear, I peeped over the covers, expecting to see coal-red eyes and a thick, forked tail, only to discover that the choking stench was none other than my freshly tanned self. In recent years, the cosmetic companies been working hard on diluting the ferocious pong and now some brands even claim to have "a pleasant fragrance." Yes, indeed they do have a pleasant fragrance. But mark me well here, that 's as well as, that 's in addition to, the extremely unpleasant fragrance that is the hallmark of all self-tanners.

  I have made every fake-tan mistake in the book.

  Elementary mistake number one: I was in a mad hurry for a color and decided that one thick layer would do just as well as several thin layers. Forty shades of orange ensued and I couldn't leave the house for a week.

  Elementary mistake number two: believing the claims of swizzy salespeople who only care about their commission and don't give a damn about your tan. I won't shame them by naming them, but I was persuaded by a flamboyant queen in Los Angeles to shell out plenty on his brand. He used it himself, he told me, for "baking and browning." (Himself, that is.) Convinced by his Tangoesque visage, I duly coughed up, but all I got was a mild dose of the streaks and the orangest palms I've ever seen; if I'd held them upwards, they could have been seen from outer space. I learned two important lessons from this tragic encounter. One, I discovered surgical gloves. Not only will they save you from the curse of the orange paw, but you can have an ER moment when you snap them on. Two, the same brand doesn't work the same way for everyone.

  Elementary mistake number three: I decided to do it properly. I'd do wafer-thin layers and leave plenty of time to dry between applications. The only thing is, I got a little obsessive about it and it kind of took over my life. I'd apply a layer, then do some freestyle dancing in my pelt waiting for it to dry, then I'd apply another layer and do some more dancing around my room, and when the color still hadn't come yet, I'd apply another layer. At some point, the end product of a tan no longer seemed to matter so much, it was simply the doing it that became important (which is how self-help gurus are always telling us to live our lives).

  So there I was, having a lovely time dancing and humming and thinking lovely thoughts; I'd even enlisted a floaty red scarf to waft about over my head, when Himself walked into the room and yelped, "Jesus Christ!" I thought it was the freestyle dancing and stopped abruptly, a little mortified by the scarf. "Look at yourself," he urged. "Look!"

  So I looked and instead of the radiant golden hue I'd been expecting, I was a nasty Eurotrash mahogany, which I
was prepared to bet went all the way down to my internal organs. Again I couldn't leave the house for a week. I mean, no one wants to be humiliated in the street by strangers shouting, "Who's been drinking the fake tan, then?"

  Elementary mistake number four: the mud and how it works.

  In the deliriously happy days of doing my makeup column, I got invited to have the mud done. So I showed up at a hotel room, stripped off and hopped up on to the table, where a lovely girl smeared me with smelly mud, then got a big loofah and rubbed some of the mud off, then told me to get up and get dressed.

  When I pointed out that I was still covered in smelly mud, she said, yes of course I was, that was how it worked, everyone knew that, but I'd be able to wash it off in the morning.

  "Obviously you're going to look manky for the evening," she said, "but tomorrow morning, after your shower you'll have a fabulous tan."

  "Grand, grand," I said.

  She seemed to pick up on a little anxiety from me. "You hadn't planned to go out tonight, had you?"

  "No, not really." Just for my mother's birthday.

  "Probably best if you leave off your boots and tights. They'll only interfere with the tan. You can drive in your bare feet."

  I looked out into the March night; it was pelting rain and freezing cold. "Okay."

  So off I went. And as luck would have it, the police were doing random checks on the Booterstown road. I rolled down my window and watched the copper's face recoil as the smell hit him.

  "License please."

  I handed it over, but the smell was clearly alarming him, so he had a low muttered consultation with his colleague, and the net re sult was that they asked me to get out of the car. In my bare feet. I tried to explain about the fake tan, but they just ordered me to open my boot—presumably to show them that I had no smelly dead bodies in there.

  They kept me for ages, searching in their rule book to see if they could bring me in on anything. I wasn't obviously breaking any laws, but they were very suspicious.

  In the end they let me go and when I arrived at the restaurant to celebrate my mammy's birthday, I caused a bit of a stir. As if the smell wasn't making me unpopular enough, bits of the mud were going black and green and falling off my face into my dinner. I looked like a burns victim.

  Mind you, it 's important to say that the following morning when I'd washed off the muck, I had a rich, deep, smooth beautiful tan. And isn't that what it 's all about?

  First published in Marie Claire, May 2005

  Once Were Worriers

  Iworry, therefore I am, and in my ongoing quest to bring it to heel, I have given many things a go: reiki, cranio sacral therapy, hypnotherapy, yoga and angel channeling. (This is not something I'm proud of, I'm only saying.)

  None of them really helped, certainly not for any length of time, although, mind you, the reiki did generate a response. As I left the clinic, I felt a surge of rage that nearly knocked me into the street and into the path of a passing Saab. Perhaps an unlocking of decades-old rage had occurred? Or was I just feeling super-swizzed at having handed over eighty nicker for someone to lie me on a table in the dark and mutter at my head and feet? Who can tell?

  Anyway, recently three separate people suggested I try meditation.

  One of them was a feathery-strokery, away-with-the-fairies reflexologist who told me I should think of myself as a golden egg (er, why?), so naturally I immediately discounted his advice. But one of the others was one of the most beautiful human beings I know—we'll call her Judy. (It 's her name.) She 's been meditating for years.

  And the third was a specialist who was treating me for TMJ— some jaw condition that I'd brought about by constantly clenching my jaw, because of anxiety.

  Being advised by three such disparate people gave me pause for thought; suddenly I began to like the idea of me being someone who meditated and instantly started trying out different versions of myself where I would be asked, "Marian, how come you're so calm?" And I'd say, "Oh, well, I meditate, see? Meditation is part of my life. But not in a beardy, sandal-wearing weird way, as you can see."

  I would smile in a wry, knowing way, I would be invited to lots of charity lunches, I would still wear very high shoes and lip gloss.

  Then I discovered that the recommended amount of time to meditate was twenty minutes, twice a day, and I reacted with outrage. Twenty minutes!? Twice a day? Where would I get twenty minutes twice a day? I'm really busy!

  And never mind the fact that I can quite happily while away twenty minutes studying my shin, poised with a tweezer, on the search for ingrowing hairs. (TMI?) (Too much information?) If not, let me continue. Those smooth limbed women (lucky cahs) who've never had their legs waxed won't know what I mean but the sourcing and extraction of ingrowing hairs is life 's consolation prize for the hairy-legged woman. The sense of satisfaction is incomparable.

  Anyway, I compromised by agreeing to try one lot of meditation a day. Commiting to two daily sessions would be akin to buying a full set of golf clubs before I'd had my first golf lesson. (Or so I told myself.)

  So how did I go about it? Firstly, I needed something to tell me when my twenty minutes were up, so my Shaunie the Sheep kitchen timer was called into active service. Then, apparently, you have to say a mantra. The most famous is "Om." But how do you say it? Like, "Om, om, om, om, om, om, om, om, om, om . . ."? ad infinitum. Like the sound of soldiers' feet marching across a parade ground. Or would it be more like an "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmm"? Which made me feel very anxious, as if I was having to hold my breath under water. How long did I have to say one "Om" for? When would I be allowed to stop and start the next one?

  I consulted the lovely Judy who told me you needn't bother with "Om" if it 's not working out for you. If you prefer you can simply meditate in time with your breathing. Or count to four, then start back at one again. Or there are several Aramaic and Sanskrit mantras doing the rounds.

  I selected a four-syllable Aramaic word and every day I say to Himself, "I won't be available for the next twenty minutes. I'll be meditating." And I think I'm it.

  Off I go and I sit on my special chair in my special room (spare bedroom) and light my special candle (Jo Malone Lime) and twist Shaunie 's head round to twenty minutes—it feels like wringing a turkey's neck—and think, God, I'm great! Right then, now for a bit of meditating! Okay, off we go. Okay, meditate, meditate, meditate . . . oh Christ! I never rang that woman back about the insoles. I'll do it as soon as I finish this. Although, what did her message say? That she 'd be out of the office this morning? Right, I'll try her this afternoon, if I remember. Oh God, I'm meant to be meditating. Concentrate, concentrate. Okay, I'm concentrating. What are we getting for dinner tonight? That salad can't be in the full of its health, we bought it on Monday . . .

  And if I go more than three seconds without thinking of some thing I have to do (or eat), I suddenly think, "Look! Look at me. I'm meditating! I'm actually meditating." And then of course, I'm not.

  It might look easy, you might think that all you have to do is sit in a chair and close your eyes for twenty minutes, but this meditation is actually very hard. And long! As Shaunie 's poor gormless face clicks his way back to health, every meditation minute is like a Northern Line minute.

  Nevertheless, three months down the line, I am still doing it. I think I might actually be a small bit calmer. It 's all a little alarming— if I stop being anxious, who will I be?

  First published in Marie Claire, February 2005

  OH, THE GLAMOUR

  Fabulous, Darling

  Marian visits The Shows for Marie Claire

  11:15 A.M. Horticultural Hall, Victoria: Paul Smith

  A mere half hour late and we 're off ! Foghorns blare, lighthouse bells ring, the walls look like a starry night at sea—very atmospheric and exciting. Almost as exciting as my front row seat— friends had made a special visit to my flat to admire my Row A tickets. Also to help with my wardrobe angst. Dreading gimleteyed fa
shion scorn, I finally decided on my look: "inconspicuous but with a Marc Jacobs bag." It seems to be working. Well, at least, I haven't noticed anyone mocking openly.

  "Paul's" collection (those in the know never say designers' surnames, I'm told, and I'm keen to fit in) is Nautical but Nice and there are sailor stripes, anchor motifs and double-breasted Captain Birdseye jackets. Beautiful clothes—but the models are doing the most ridiculous walks: lifting their knees high like dressage ponies or horses who are made to dance in circuses.

  The catwalk is so low and close that I could reach out and touch them—in fact, reach out and trip them up, and suddenly I'm terrified that, with one flick of my leg, I might just do that. (The same kind of irresistible impulse I sometimes get on high buildings to fling myself off.) Luckily I'm distracted by a girl clopping lopsidedly down the catwalk in one red stocking and one shoe—a style statement? It 's then I notice the single shoe at my feet, smiling up sheepishly at me. Clearly it 's fallen off, but professional that she is, the model has carried on. A dilemma ensues—should I replace the shoe on the catwalk for her to reclaim on her return, or am I running the risk of causing a dressage-pony-style pile-up? Leave well alone, I decide. And then, surprisingly quickly—only fifteen minutes—it 's over and I go for lunch with Marie and Liz, Marie Claire's editor and fashion editor, respectively.