Pongo #34

Miffy

So this is what tits feel like to wear. Week X and the realization that these jellyballs are what hypnotises so many people makes me laugh, which makes me cough up a back catalogue of black phlegm. I consider quitting and the thought makes me so nervous I light a cigarette.

And who'd have thought I was meant to have such ridiculously sized ones? It may just be that my body, skinny and still only three quarter sized like a learner guitar, looks disproportionately small placed next to them, but they're still pretty hefty. Remind me very much of Goka Pitrell's norks. We worked together a couple times and I was nearly smothered, flailing around in breast. Of course, hers were a lot firmer than these. I think the implants she said were sugar-water must have caramelized against her heart.

Fuck, and the weight of them! Not wanting to spend any more of the money I have left on new bras (and hardly wanting to be felt up and questioned by a measuring assistant) I wrap duct tape underneath and over them until they cannot bounce, jiggle or bob one more pyoing.

I realized the other day that I actually have no idea where this will stop, what I was ever meant to look like at 38. All I do know is that my knees ache, I have Bop-The-Rat popup acne and my lungs feel like the exhaust of a battered Fiesta.

I was going to make those fragments of dresses into something useful and less nonce-baiting, but after I had taken them all apart I found I couldn't do it. I have a rubbish knowledge of sewing techniques, it's true, but it wasn't that so much as the same nostalgia that stopped me selling them in the first place. And because they're part-destroyed, part-components of something that could still be saved, thanks to my careful unpicking, I just don't know what to do with them. I've put them in the box my sewing machine came in, and I think I'll sell the machine itself. They can sit in there until I decide one way or the other: archive or bin bag.

Meanwhile, I've bought myself a loose robe and some highly elasticated tops and trousers. I've not worn trousers since God knows when, if ever, and it's nice not to clutch automatically at your groin when the wind springs up, to be able to run and not fear tripping up and flashing bystanders. I like that feeling.

Today I left my hair uncurled, unkempt even, fuzzed about my head like random stormclouds. I went out to buy a pack of twenty (I'm getting served these days ' just) and without the clamp of the hairspray to keep it immaculate, my hair blew in the wind. I had forgotten what that was like, to feel the slim threads of breeze separating the strands into bunches, the way the grocer down the road tallies and bands okra and mint.

I'm seeing everything differently now, which is odd, being as how my eyesight is getting progressively worse. Judging from recent reactions, other people see me differently too. It's just about acceptable now for me to be openly wolf-whistled, which means my chronological age must be an average of at least sixteen, with some parts thirty-eight and some still eight. That works out ok, so hoot away, the lot of you. The twin pods on my chest may as well be flashing and covered in mirrors.

I try to stay upbeat, but I can't help but think that I would give an awful lot to get back on board. I'm not used to this body and I haven't had the luxury of a puberty spread over years to help with that. In a matter of weeks, I have had to learn how to plug myself up, tape myself down and cover up all manner of unfathomable additions.

Still no sign of sagging beneath that other eye. It's like waiting for God, this waiting for the plump blush skin to sink into grayish folds. Like standing about for a bus when you're already late, but can't call in sick and stay at home. You just sort of shuffle about there, trying for all the world not to look like you came to wait at a bad time, despite the lying bastard display board above your head reading blank, blank. Next one? Sometime. Soon, I promise, don't go. Oh, you can't anyway. Then not for a while. Take a seat.

I have stacked up the various devices and ladders I used before to access higher planes in my kitchen and bathroom neatly in the hallway. Tomorrow the dustman will come and another part of my junk heap home life will fold to the winds. I play the answer machine. One blank breath and click number, one from Marty spouting some guff about ding dong, the witch is dead and can I come over?

I am about to press delete on both and call our director friend when a knock comes at the door, and as I go to answer it, my mismatched legs forcing me into a lollop, I get this feeling, like just before a ghost or a nervous participant pushes a ouija glass to YES.