Page 18 of Backstage

“Don’t worry, we’ve all been through hot flashes over that one. Trust me, I’d like to do him on every surface of this apartment, too,” the guy whispers in my ear as he hands me a skirt and a top.

“I can hear you, Sid,” laughs Damian, amused without turning around.

“It’s no mystery to anyone that I’d like to fuck you, sweetheart,” he jokes, pointing to a screen I should hide behind to change. Too bad it only shields me from the people inside this apartment and not from the rest of New York that stretches behind me through the windows. Great.

“Honestly? If only I could put a gag on him. He gets on my nerves nine times out of ten,” I find myself answering Sid.

“You like bondage. I thought you were a prude, but you do love extreme sex,” he replies, in a conspiratorial and almost-impressed tone.

“I’ve actually thought about tying him up several times, but not why you think. Sometimes it’s the only way to keep him quiet. You know how annoying he is when he doesn’t like something you do?” I answer from behind the screen.

This conversation is getting surreal, and fitting into the clothes Sid gave me isn’t helping.

“Oh, no, honey, you’ve got to take that bra off,” he says to me as I reappear behind the screen, trying to see in the mirror as I’m leaning against the glass next to me.

“Without a bra?” I ask incredulously. “This tank top is so see-through you can see my nipples! And this thing?” I point to the back of the thin layer of fabric that can’t be called a skirt. “They can give me a colonoscopy looking up at me from under the stage.” What I want to say is:Don’t you realize it doesn’t even cover those damn stretch marks on my thighs that relentlessly remind me of the days when I couldn’t even get into a pair of jeans or had trouble bending down to tie my shoes? Do you really want to show everyone that my inner thighs still touch when I walk, even if I kill myself running every day?

The disappointment in my voice draws Damian over to the couch where he sits with wide eyes a few steps away from me. “No, I’m not gonna be able to keep the crazies away if you make her dress like that. I’ll have to carry her off the stage,” he says, searching every single inch of my body with such intensity I feel like I’m bursting into flames.

Of course, if he looks at me like that, I might think about wearing a miniskirt, maybe in private, just for him.

Sid rolls his green eyes and takes a pair of leather trousers and a bodice in the same fabric from the rack. “How puritanical you Americans are,” he says in his British accent.

“It’s not a matter of being puritanical. It’s just the fact that that stuff doesn’t even cover the minimum necessary to achieve decency,” laughs Damian as he makes himself at home on that couch, making me feel embarrassed at the very idea of parading in front of him in different clothes.

I squeeze into my pants and the leather bodice that wretched Sid gave me, and I can hardly breathe. All I need is Damian’s wide eyes and a quick look in the mirror to understand that tonight I won’t be walking around like this. You can see my belly swelling and my stomach about to explode. I knew I shouldn’t have eaten the muffin my mother gave me last night; if only I’d run those extra two miles instead of going back at the first hint of fatigue. What’s a little leg burn? I would have avoided looking like a barrel today.

“Sid, honey, I can see the shape of my vagina, and my breasts are so high it looks like my tonsils are inflamed,” I angrily hiss.

I do not like this stylist thing at all. Can’t I just pick something comfortable out of the closet and let this charade end? Brad will have a field day if I show up in such an outlandish outfit.

“Damian, please, can you say something?” I turn to him, but I find him with his mouth half-open and a look that screams, “If you come near me, I’ll bite your clothes off.” Okay, apparently, I have an effect on him, too. “Damian, my face is up here,” I say to him, pointing at my face, but I can’t get his eyes off my breasts.

Right now, I wish the stylist wasn’t in this room. Being looked at like that makes me forget to breathe, and if we were alone, I would probably give in to the desire of letting him take my clothes off.

“Look, Sid, why don’t you let her choose something she’s comfortable with?” he asks, looking at me, not giving the guy an ounce of attention and making me feel more naked than I did behind that screen.

“So, it’s like that with you guys, always picking what you want without ever hearing my opinion?” Sid whines, falling down on the couch next to Damian in a melodramatic way.

“Lilly, try to put on something that isn’t four sizes too big, okay?” Damian begs me with a half-smile.

I roll my eyes and realize that to quickly get out of this situation, all I have to do is opt for something that covers enough and doesn’t make me look dressed in a burlap sack. I grab a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and I hear Sid groaning in pain as if I’ve stabbed him and let him bleed to death while Damian laughs.

I come out from behind the screen and, while I look in the mirror, I hear Sid’s disappointed comments. As for me, I’d prefer the jeans to fall more softly, so as not to bring too much attention to my wide hips. The shirt should be longer to cover my big butt and the top of the jeans are a bit too tight on my belly. At least the t-shirt it’s wide enough not to show too much breast and arms.

“No, absolutely not. Get rid of that t-shirt now.” Sid gets up and grabs the white, broad, lightweight tank top I wore at the beginning, along with a black bandeau top that should cover the rougher parts. I wear what he proposes and, when I come out, I can say I’m quite satisfied. I still feel a bit too naked for my taste, but the top covers precisely what it needs to, so as not to make me look like a prostitute. It’s soft and doesn’t hug my shape, and I have the perfect sweatshirt to put on over it, but Sid doesn’t need to know that.

“Do I have your approval?” I finally turn to them, and I can tell by the look of relief on their faces that it passes. Sid’s not smiling like Damian, but at least he’s not having a nervous breakdown. I interpret it as a sign of approval.

It takes Sid almost half an hour to clear out the apartment, with the added threat of going to the concert venue that evening to do my makeup and hair. Which makes me fear the worst.

“Is it always going to be like this from now on?” I ask Damian. I’m sitting exhausted on the stool at the kitchen bar while I watch him pull the pots and pans out of the cupboard.

The kitchen mirrors the rest of the apartment I have seen: the white lacquered furniture stretches all around the wall, and opposite it, there is a massive island with a white Carrara marble top with a few grey veins, which looks like it costs as much as my entire Brooklyn apartment.

“You’ll feel more comfortable when Sid figures out what you like. Imagine, from the moment I met him, he wanted to get me on stage with a pair of leather pants and a skinny mesh shirt,” he laughs as he boils some water and prepares the onion and a drizzle of oil in a pan. My mother has tried countless times to teach me how to cook without ever succeeding. Food and I are not exactly on the best of terms. He’s handy with knives, and I watch him cutting and slicing and doing things I don’t even know the purpose of.

“Where did you learn to cook?” I ask, intrigued.

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