It Looked Different on the Model - Laurie Notaro [4]
I decided that since both of my arms were stuck and pulling from behind me wasn’t working, I should try a different position, so I bent over and tried to grab the back of the shirt to pull it from that angle. I tried to grab it several times, but it was too tight across my shoulders to fall into my grasp, and I had been bent over so long that when I stood up I didn’t see just stars but a meteor shower. “You’d better not do that again,” I warned myself. “One more tip of the teapot and you’ll come up with one side of your mouth lower than the other.” I tugged again from the front, but the sleeves were decidedly not budging.
“How can you be trapped in a goddamned shirt?” I asked myself. “It’s not a coal mine. It’s not an elevator. It’s cotton. The fabric of our lives!” I had no idea that a steel trap would have ruffles on it when I brought it into the dressing room and it sprang on both my arms.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, then took a minute to refocus and pulled again.
Not. An. Inch.
“This is ridiculous,” I said to myself. “I am just not pulling hard enough. Try pulling one arm at a time, focus all of your strength into one arm. Focusing. Focusing. Now pull!”
Something moved. But as my stomach flipped like a fish, I realized it was simply that the nail on my middle finger had bent backward.
If I get this shirt off, I thought, I swear I will never try on a non-“L” shirt again. Never. Never will I try to tempt sizes. Never will I think that sizes don’t know what they’re talking about. The sizes are gods. They know all. They know all. I know nothing. I’ll stay in my size herd from now on and will never stray. There is safety in the herd.
I thought I could not only get an “M” on but that I could button it. I have learned my lesson. I have. I have. I promise I have. I’ll only try things on with Lycra in them from now on. Never take on cotton straight. Never! You always need a mixer!
Now go in there and get that damned shirt off!
I grabbed each side of the shirt with opposite hands, rolled my shoulders like I was Beyoncé, and pulled as very hard as I could. And I did it again, and again and again. I jumped up and down, trying to jar the shirt loose, I leaned down to the left and then down to the right, I wiggled, I shook, I shimmied, I even bent my knees and squatted for some unknown reason, all trying to pull that thing off. After several minutes, with a beet-red face and a mustache of sweat bubbles, I stopped and had to take a break and plopped down in the antique chair.
“I can’t believe this,” I whispered, my eyes closed. I was exhausted. Komodo dragons don’t lock on to prey this hard.
“Honestly, why are you so fat?” even the nice voice inside my head asked me. To which I shook my head.
I don’t know. I didn’t know. I just am.
“Those arms are like tractor tires,” the nice voice informed me. “They are so large they almost have their own gravitational pull! And you lied about being strong. That’s not the reason they’re so big. You just eat too many pretzels.”
I totally deserved this, I realized. I deserved to get captured in this shirt. I was roped in like a calf. Stupid. So stupid. Just because it was on sale, I had to try on a baby shirt. This was so completely my fault. Maybe I should go to Baby Gap tomorrow and try to get into some Onesies or a romper. What was I thinking? Really? You know what’s going to happen now? Firemen are going to have to come and cut me out of it, that’s what. I hate this shirt, I don’t like this shirt, and I don’t want it anymore. It’s not even a shirt, it’s a straitjacket. A straitjacket with preposterous puff sleeves that just make my arms look fatter surrounded by fat clouds.
I looked so stupid. Sitting there. Sweating. Out of breath. Shirt hanging open like a domestic abuser’s after a NASCAR race. I just wanted to go home and eat pretzels and Google “Why do intestines gurgle?” I prayed there were no security cameras in here, because I knew if there were, the video—twenty minutes straight of a topless fat lady looking like she was fighting