Monroelogue.

Marilyn Monroe Monologue. Monroelogue.

Some days, it takes me longer to get out of bed than others. Some days, I have to get up ridiculously early, because they want me at the studio for makeup, sometimes before dawn. It depends where we’re shooting. I prefer the days when we’re shooting on the lot, because I get to sleep in my own bed and not some crummy hotel room bed. They’re all crummy, it doesn’t matter how much they cost, because they’re rooms without love. Nobody has spent enough time in them to instil the room with their presence. There’s no fixed smell; they just smell loveless. Nobody’s sat at the dressing table on many successive mornings, doing their makeup, if they’re female, and whatever men do, wax their hair or something, I guess.

My room smells of me. I love it. Or rather, I love in it. Or better yet, I am loved in it. I am made love to in it. I am screwed in it. But at least it’s a gesture of love. The act if not the emotion itself. The expression of love. There is no love; there is only the proof of it.

I shall take it all back. If not love, my room smells of me. Or rather, the beauty products I buy that make me smell like me. That make me smell the way I want to smell, or be smelt. Chanel No. 5 and Nivea Cream. Sometimes, I enjoy the smell for itself. I close my eyes as I rub the cold, white cream into my hands and inhale the scent of womanhood. The woman I am, and the girl I used to be. The girl I am, and the woman I once wished to be. I couldn’t afford Chanel, back when I was Norma Jeane, but I’ve always used Nivea Cream. To preserve the complexion, to prevent the ageing of the hands, to keep my body as supple as I remember it. As others recall it. They all comment on the softness of my skin, the smoothness of my breasts. Perhaps if I stopped using Nivea Cream, the compliments would cease as well. Would the men cease coming if the compliments dried up? Who knows.

So here I am. First thing in the morning, before I put on my face. Sitting in front of my own mirror, as if for a change. Location shooting tired me out. Constant moving, hotel to caravan, caravan to hotel, and the marquees and the cars and the uncomfortable director’s chairs, their canvas backs flapping uninvitingly in the breeze and I have to sit on one, the one that has my name on it, because it has my name on it. I wonder who would be insulted if I sat somewhere else. I wonder whose job it is to print my name on the back of a chair as if I owned it, when the reality is that when the shoot ends my possession of the chair ends.

The first thing I do when I wake up is sit in front of the mirror at the dressing table. If there is no dressing table, I will stand in front of the bathroom mirror instead, but I prefer to sit. I study my face. The way it really is, the way that I am only comfortable with if I am alone. If I am not alone, I sit and stare anyway, but I’m not comfortable doing it. It’s a strange feeling, watching yourself when someone else is also watching you. It’s as if there is too much observation going on in the room for my face to handle, and I feel the need to hurry to cover it.

If I have slept in my makeup, which I often do when shooting because I am so tired at the end of the day, I always regret it in the morning. Some days I simply fall into bed, without undressing. Sometimes, if I do that, I wake up in pain because my bra is digging into me, and I have to get up, undress, and remove the offending item. Sometimes I like to sleep naked. There us something comforting about the cool, white softness of sheets with no man to sweat on them, or to generate excess heat.

If I have slept in my makeup, I look like a panda in the mirror, mascara and eyeliner blurred around my eyes, attempting its escape undercover of darkness, while my eyes are shut and I can’t see it. I mock Panda Girl in the mirror, as if she is not me, as if I am sat here, my face devoid of adulteration. I laugh at her, because she does not take care of herself the way she used to, cleaning her teeth religiously before bed, taking off her makeup with cold cream as if the removal of it were a kind of prayer. A prayer for the preservation of youth and beauty.

If I have remembered to remove my makeup before going to bed, which is more usual at home because on location there is always a party to go to at the end of the day, I also mock her, the girl in the mirror, because without the aid of it, her face looks pale and old, and the flaws are on display. I mock the Old Lady for still caring enough to think to remove it. And because, however dishevelled she looks, however large the smudged circles, however run the mascara, Panda Girl always looks faintly glamorous still, the way that the Old Lady never will. A debauched beauty still lingers in Panda Girl’s face, and I can imagine that underneath the makeup the skin is still as soft and fresh and sweet as Norma Jeane’s.

After I am tired of looking at the Old Lady, or at Panda Girl, I might take a shower, or just wash my face. And then, I will sit down at the mirror again, or stand if I have to, and start the whole process over again. Start re-painting. There is something very satisfying about the applying of make-up. It’s a soothing process, covering up the flaws, winding back the years, only marred slightly by the over-riding knowledge that with each day that passes you have to work harder to disguise who you really are. And as I paint away, I wonder why I care. Am I hiding my true face from the world, putting on a mask to protect myself, or am I doing it for their benefit. Who is more afraid of my growing old, them or me?

If I’m shooting, I will still put on my make-up. They might take it all off again at the studio, or on location, or they might just add to it. In fact, I’ve become such an expert that sometimes the make-up girl just smiles and does my hair and leaves my face alone, the way I drew it. But I will not leave the house without it, because underneath it all, I am aware that I do not look like me. I am afraid that the world will not recognise me if they see me without the face they know, and so I wear it, every day, religiously, like a prayer for the preservation of youth and beauty.

But I can hear, at the back of my mind, in the depths of my heart, the three of them, the Old Lady, Panda Girl and dear old Norma Jeane. They are sitting at the mirror of the world, looking at the reflection of my life, and mocking me.