Introductions and such

I am going to be four feet tall.

Not now. For now, I’m holding at 4’11”. But already, I’m a half-inch off my peak. I topped out in 6th grade, when I also got my period and C-cup boobs. It’s gravity, mostly, that’s knocking me back down, year after year. It doesn’t help that I have bad posture and scoliosis, or that from 6th grade on, when I might have fortified the smurf-sized bones I’d been given with calcium-rich foods like milk and broccoli, my diet became two parts gin to one part lime and one part whatever prescription was left after someone’s knee surgery or wisdom-tooth extraction. Also the occasional bean burrito from Taco Bell (because vegetarian, yo! because meat didn’t go with my goth attire, yo!), which back then was 59 cents and could be paid for entirely with change from the ashtray in my car that I was careful not to use so my parents wouldn’t know I smoked. The smoking probably didn’t help either, but it was basically just the high school through grad school years, and even the worst of those surgeon general warnings with the lady who talked out of a hole between her collarbones didn’t suggest I could shrink instantaneously. Sometimes you gotta roll the dice, live a little. Because at 85, my grandmother’s about 4’6” now and she used to be taller than me. She never smoked and doesn’t have scoliosis, so you do the math. It’s not in my favor.

It’s a good thing all my dishes and pans fit on shelves beneath the kitchen island. That wasn’t smart planning on my part. It was just the gay designer’s aversion to eye-level clutter. His eye-level of course, not mine. He didn’t want to see anything across the loft that would block his view of the cityscape or the bare-chested neighbors. I live in the heart of boystown, where all the men want other men and not me, and here’s where maybe I should blame my stunted growth on the smoking. Something must be the cause of my inertia, right? You’ll never get what you want if you don’t put yourself out there, and such. It’s the kind of fortune-cookie saying I’d entertain only to get to that stupidly bland wonton with sugar, but it’s also kinda sorta true, and here I am at 37, friend to the prettiest boys in town and girlfriend to none, 4’11” and holding but not for long.

Someone said take pilates, stretch yourself, but she lives on the westside, so I said fuck yourself and changed my diet to three parts gin to one part lime. I tried to lay off the neighbors’ prescriptions though. I went that far in the right direction. I also stopped biting my nails and tried to remember to put on sunblock every day, but I didn’t get any taller. I’m resigned to the petites section at the three or four national brands that bother to downsize. Even there, I come up short. They advertise clothing designed for women up to 5’4” and I just laugh at the salesgirl and say, Lady, if I was anywhere near 5’4”, I wouldn’t be shopping here. I’d be normal. I’d have my pick of pants and every blouse that wasn’t in three-quarter sleeves.

But I have to have something to wear to the office (I’m a lawyer, the bar is set—and you can see this one coming, I know—super low), so I eat shit and apologize and plaster on the kind of smile that will hurt my black heart for days, and I say, Do you have this in ankle length?