Fatshionista (10 page)

Ryan headed over
to that side of the workroom, pulling his equipment trolley behind him. Daniel
still had not torn himself away from his conversation to in any way greet or
acknowledge us, but his discussion did give me the opportunity to study him. I
was almost afraid he would be in the kurta and pajama pants from my Marrakech
fantasy. It was strange to me how real those dreams felt. I knew it was
impossible for him to have any memory of my dream, but for just a second, I
wished he could. Maybe he could explain to me why he couldn’t ever seem to get
my clothes off, or why I kept fantasizing about having sex with a gay man.

Alas, today he
didn’t look nearly as exotic as he did in my dreams. Although I have to say the
man could fill out a pair of jeans. This was the second time I had seen him
casually dressed and in his element. His faded denims were paired with a pink button-down
dress shirt worn casually with an open collar and rolled-up sleeves. On some men,
pink could look effeminate, especially gay men. But on his caramel-colored skin,
it looked…delectable. I was mentally licking my lips at the sight of him. Maybe
it was true what they said about women who go too long without sex: They lose
all sense of social boundaries. I had learned long ago there was no such thing
as turning a gay man, but for some reason my head and my body were refusing to
get on the same page about this one man.

I realized that
at some point Daniel had finished and was now standing across the room staring
at me staring at him. Wow, professional and put-together woman 0, socially
inept stalker 1. I couldn’t imagine how I could possibly impress this man less,
or why impressing him seemed to be important to me at all. Obviously work; I
wanted him to be impressed with me professionally. Yep, that was the only
reason…

He smiled and
crossed the room toward me, his hands out in front, ready to pull me in for the
obligatory air kiss. “Millicent, I am sorry I didn’t see you come in. I see you
are sticking with your signature color?” He gently held my upper arms and air
kissed both my cheeks. As he pulled back to look me over, his eyebrow cocked up
and took in my red dress.

“Yes, well, I
thought you might not recognize me if I wasn’t covered in something red. I know
I left quite a mental impression the other day.” Why did he have to bring up
the tomato soup shirt? I was trying to recreate my image here, but his teasing
tone and smile were not helping me maintain my aura of professionalism.

“My dear Millie,
I would recognize you if you were wearing a paper sack. Although I sincerely
hope you won’t go that route, as paper bags are so last season.”

What was it about
gay men and their uncanny ability to flatter and make you smile all at once?
And why couldn’t they teach straight men how to do this? And while I was asking
questions here, could someone please tell all my buttons that this was most
assuredly not the man who would be pushing them?

“Well, flattery
will get you everywhere and all that.” I looked around the workroom, which had
cleared of all staff except Ryan, who was setting up in the corner. “This is a
great space you have here—lots of natural light, and it’s open and airy
but practical.”

“It is the
complete antithesis of my workspace in India. It was cramped and dark, the
power always going out and people running in and out all day. I was forever
misplacing things, could never find anything: fabric, trim, buttons, even my
scissors would somehow get lost in the chaos.”

Wow, that sounded
eerily familiar.

“I wanted
someplace here that was quiet, open, and calm, as I’m already a bundle of
nerves about this collection. May I show you around a bit, or are you pressed
for time and need to get started?”

Pressed…up
against him. How was it that almost every other word out of his mouth I could
apply to the deviant fantasy life I had playing out on one side of my brain
while the other was being polite and making small talk?

“Please, the more
I know about your process and your collection, the better show I can produce. I
was interested to see that you have what would be described as an unusually
large dress form. Are your sample sizes this large as well?”

He took my hand
and curved it into the crook of his arm as he led me across the workroom to the
nearest dress form. His scent enveloped me as we strolled leisurely toward the
dress form. Sandalwood, spice, soap, and something uniquely Daniel.

“Unfortunately
no, my sample sizes are more traditional fashion sizes. I wish I could send a
collection down with size-twelve models, but I think that might be something
that will come later in my career, maybe after I’m more established. I grew up
making clothes for my mother and my sisters who are—how shall I put this?
We are Punjabi, and Punjabi women tend to be more voluptuous, not unlike your
own figure.” His eyes slid over my curves for just a brief moment before he
smiled back at me.

“Well, I’m a little
more voluptuous than the twelve. So do you still design on that form and then
scale it down for the models?” Something was different about him…I couldn’t put
my finger on it, but there was something different about Daniel.

“Yes, it is quite
the opposite of a lot of designers, who create on a tiny form, then have to
adjust the dimensions to fit the size of normal women.”

I loved that he
referred to the curvy ones as normal and not the other way around. Everyone who
worked in fashion, even me as a plus-size woman, tended to forget that there were
more of us than there were of them. Every magazine had only images of the super-thin
in these gorgeous works of fashion art that sometimes we forgot the
overwhelming majority of women were closer to the twelve than the two. How
refreshing to work with an artist who saw the beauty in the hills and valleys
of the female figure. I felt very appreciated at that moment and couldn’t stop
the smile from taking over my face. Professional woman was slowly losing the
battle to adolescent teenage girl.

But the funny
part was that he was just staring right back, with the same goofyish grin on
his face. I would swear on Chanel that we were having a full-blown moment over
here. My deluded fantasies were infiltrating my real life. Except for the
undergarments. The Victoria’s Secret bra and Spanx I was currently sporting
were a nice change from the impenetrable undergarments in my dreams.

And on the
subject of dreams, there was something about his appearance today that reminded
me of my last dream. What was it? I kept stealing glances at him, trying to
casually examine him from head to toe and figure out what was different. At
some point in my sleuthing, he must have stopped talking because when I looked
up, he was staring at me as if I were mentally unstable.

Aha!

“Your eyes!” I
shouted, pointing at them and almost poked one out as I waved my finger in his
face. He looked around the room at the other people and smiled as he pulled me
over to the side of the room. “Your eyes are brown!” I said, as if I were Perry
Mason cross-examining the murderer. Where did he get off having brown eyes?
Fantasy Daniel had brown eyes, not real Daniel.

He smiled at me
in that same doctor-talking-to-a-mental-patient way. “Yes, Millie. My eyes are
really brown. Sometimes I wear blue contact lenses. They are cosmetic; I don’t
have to have them, so most days I don’t bother with them.”

“You bothered
with them every other time we’ve ever met.” Apparently I was intent on
continuing the cross examination. In my head I knew this wasn’t a big deal, but
something about having seen his real eyes in my dream was kind of freaking me
out.

He laughed and
turned back to the samples to spread the rest of them across the table. “Is
this really shocking to you, Millie? Tons of people were colored contacts. I
sometimes get tired of these dull brown eyes staring back at me. You wouldn’t
know since you have those sparkly green eyes.”

I don’t know why
it bothered me so much. I should have realized the first time I met him that
they weren’t real. Very few Indians had anything other than brown eyes. I was
so rattled that somehow sex-starved, dream Millie had realized this before
conscious, alert Millie. 

“Oh, it’s no big
deal. I was just surprised, that’s all. I was used to blue-eyed Daniel, but now
there is brown-eyed Daniel, and I’m sure I will get used to—”

“Are we going to
be using the dress form or just the worktable? It’s going to impact which angle
I use, so just let me know, okay?” Ryan shouting across the workroom was enough
to remind me that I had more important things to do then discuss Daniel’s eyes.
Or my eyes. My sparkly eyes.  Sigh.

“The table will
work best. The sample sizes aren’t fit to the dress form, as I just found out.”
And with that, it was back to business for professional Millicent Parker.

Later that
evening, as I was finally finishing the last of the emails, I couldn’t stop
thinking about our afternoon together. Daniel was polite and attentive; he
answered all my questions, and unlike most designers, he did not talk
exclusively about himself. Much of what he talked about was his family and how
growing up in India influenced his ideas about clothing and, in some cases,
women.

There were so
many times during our conversation that I wanted to interject my own opinions
about India. I, too, loved the country almost as much as Daniel. When I lived
there while in college, I discovered a part of me that never existed in the States.
It was a quiet part, a contemplative part that found order in chaos. Anyone who
had ever walked down the street in Delhi was experienced in chaos.

It was one huge
melee of every form of transportation known to man. Walking, bike riding, bike
rickshaw, auto rickshaw, oxen cart, moped, motorcycle, car, truck, and bus. But
somehow it all coexisted. In the year I studied in India, I only saw one car
accident, and that was because of a cow that walked into the road, causing a
car to swerve and hit a truck.

And the chaos
didn’t end visually. The sound of the street, the car horns, the truck horns,
the talking, the shouting, and the bike bells. The thick heat of the summer
with the smell of rain or the cool smog of the winter, the smell of mothballs
everywhere that people gathered, all wearing clothes they only bring out for
one month of the year.

India was a
second home to me. My sponsor family quickly became my real family. I had more
familial connections in India than I did in the US. I spent many nights Skyping
with my aunties in India as they began their day and I ended mine.

None of them could
understand why I was still single or why I worked so hard or why I didn’t come
and live in India. I had thought about it, many times. New York was not an easy
place to live, especially when you had no family and your work life left little
time to make friends. All my aunties had promised me a great husband with a
good job who would not be marrying me just for a green card. They were sweet to
look out for me, but they didn’t understand that establishing who I was and being
happy with me was my first step to finding someone to share my life with.

I did know that
if I were to ever marry, it would probably be to an Indian man. One of my male
friends at university in Delhi described for me his perfect woman. Unlike
American men, it did not start out with a physical description and then include
things like easy to get along with and lets me have my space. Instead, my
Indian friend described a caring woman who took care of others when they were
sick or needing help, a woman who found the joy and happiness in even the
hardest day. A woman who would stand by him and stand by his family. A woman
who would put her heart and soul into her family. This was his ideal woman. No
age, no height, no hair color, no weight. It didn’t matter. That wasn’t what he
was looking for.

But I had decided
in the beginning to keep my knowledge of India to myself. It did allow Daniel
to feel as if he were sharing his culture and life with me and introducing me
to that culture. It gave us a place to start, and it kept me from sounding like
a know-it-all, which I knew was one of my less attractive qualities. It didn’t
come from a place of wanting to seem smart; it came from a place of never
wanting anyone to think I was stupid. I had grown up with people who made me
feel less than adequate, and I had been fighting the urge to defend myself and
overcompensate ever since.

The elevator
dinging pulled me out of my musing. I couldn’t imagine who might be here at
this time of night; usually it was just me and the cleaning crew, but they had
left hours ago.

“Well, hey. You’re
here awfully late. Working on something I should know about?” Scarlett leaned against
the doorframe. She was dressed for a night out in a skintight Herve Leger
bandage dress and sky-high Louboutins. While my internal, fashionable woman
admired her ability to pour her cute little self into that dress, the fat kid
in me wanted to smear cake all over her and run away.

“Nope.” Maybe if
I stared intently at my monitor, she would get the hint and walk away. And even
if I was working on something, there was no reason she should know about it.

“No, you aren’t
working on anything, or no I shouldn’t know about it?” Now she had straightened
up, almost looking life she was going to come into the room and settle in for a
nice long chat. My defensive strategy coach had better come up with something
fast.