Didn't I Feed You Yesterday__ A Mother's Guide to Sanity in Stilettos - Laura Bennett [22]
When it was my turn, the producers switched on my mic and told me to enter the room with my dresses and portfolio and stand on the X on the floor. I was specifically told not to try to shake anyone’s hand, which I found disappointing as by now I had a major crush on Tim Gunn and very much wanted a chance to touch him. It wasn’t a physical thing at all, really. I had just gained so much respect for his design aesthetic that I needed to make sure he was real. The more I thought about my infatuation, the more sense the no-handshaking rule made.
Once in the room, everything went by in a blur. I was operating on the adrenaline high of my life. Tim thumbed through my book and asked if I had made the dresses myself. I nodded meekly, or maybe I spoke a few words in the affirmative. I was so stunned to be standing there with the cameras rolling that I lost all sense of this being a competition—I really felt as though I had somehow already won just by getting in the door. I half expected to be thanked and sent on my way, and was already concocting the dinner-party small talk this episode of my life would soon be reduced to. It was then that I noticed people off to one side of the room—likely network executives or the big producers of the show—waving their arms at the judges and mouthing “Take the crazy lady in the cocktail dress.” Yes, I thought, you should take the crazy lady in the cocktail dress. Tim seemed less interested in my dramatic potential than in my garments—were they up to snuff? The next thing I knew, they told me I had made it to round two. I’d like to think it was my cleavage that got me the gig, but there’s not really enough of it. It’s much more likely that bedazzling oneself for an eight A.M. audition was exactly the kind of nutty behavior that reality television thrives on. At least for a couple of episodes.
I arrived home a mere hour after I had left, frozen and gleeful. I announced to the gathered sleepy faces that I had made it through to the next round. My next task was to make a three-minute bio video to send to Los Angeles. I had exactly one day to figure out how the hell I was going to make it on the show. Peter was thrilled by the whole prospect, and immediately took charge.
“If we shoot footage today,” he said, “we can edit it tomorrow and get it to FedEx by nine P.M. That should get it to L.A. in time.”
Since the odds were good that the producers wanted me because I stood out, we decided that the video should be about my personality and not about fashion. We began constructing our theme: older glamorous urban woman with a scary number of children. We did our best to set me apart from all the young gay designers fresh out of fashion school. Peter shot me in the center of a dizzying, death-defying, highs peed video of our loft, complete with four boys running around, a swinging skeleton chandelier above, my pet tortoise, a massive cage full of birds, and of course the dress forms and sewing machines behind me, a subtle homage to the requisite “interview shot” from the show itself. I meanwhile stood placidly in the center of this storm and confidently claimed that the breakneck speed of PR would be like a vacation for me.
It was a mad dash to FedEx but the video went off in time, and at that point. I waited eagerly to hear back from the producers whether or not I had been chosen. No word came. Weeks passed. Hamsters were born and died. The seasons changed. There was nothing to do, and no one to call. The wait was excruciating. Then one May evening my cell phone rang. The screen read “unlisted number.”
“Laura, this is Tim Gunn,” the unmistakable voice said.
“Tim Gunn?” I practically screamed. He gave me the good news and asked me to keep it a secret—apart from my neighbors, who must have heard my shout. Filming would start in two weeks. I began to prepare for what would be the most unreal reality of my life.
After I hung up and the initial shock wore off, I realized I had two problems: my daughter, Cleo, was