Jonnah Z. Kennedy - Pica**o Baby lyrics

It takes something like three months to produce a magazine like Vanity Fair--this includes back-to-back photoshoots on a sunset beach in a warehouse; as editors clash with each other for weeks about which tabloids will be pasted on the front cover, which articles will be pushed to the back; and the battle for adspace at the front of the magazine by spokespeople of Ralph Lauren, Louis Vuitton, and Coco Chanel. Journalists race back and forth across the country--the world--contracting the Ebola virus, and getting their eyes bled out with pepper spray as they try to get just one word from the famed al-Qaeda show-runner of the hour. The thing is though, most of the them won't even make the Draft. And the models. The models, who, in herds, gallivant to auditions to become the next Covergirl, to be today's half-baked centerfold in bra and pantie garments, courtesy of Calvin Klein. 95% of them will be rejected. Another 2% will be dropped during a shoot, and the remaining 3% will see their Swiss bank accounts blow up like Koons's balloons. The one percent of that three percent will go on to star in films, write a tell-all, and dance on Ellen. That one percent of the three percent are girls like me, who have sold their soul to the Most High, the camera flashing below us, always demanding: obedience, --flash pa**ion, --flash heart-felt despair--flash--desperation--flash--agony. Flash For girls like me, it's all natural, though. We've been doing this for our entire lives. Suppressing ourselves and showing ourselves, hiding behind the flashing light which captures you eternally in the MoMa, and only you will know the pa**ion well read in your eyes is not pa**ion at all. We who were grown up as monks on 36-acre Holy Mecca plantations atop hills. In the morning, we drank the blood of Christ in the form of bitter cherry creatine monohydrate protein substitute shakes, with half a rice patty, and gave blood on a three mile run around the estate. Noon was divine devotion in the form of rigorous study sessions from the Ten Commandments of America's Next Top Model with Tyra Banks: Though shalt be 5'8", a size 25 inch waist, 120 pound fragile frame, platinum blonde with blue irises, hourgla** shape. This is perfection, this is human, this is natural-- this is the d**h of a Covergirl. Cosmetic surgeons call it Irreparable Face Damage, or IFD for short. This means that, even after grafting all the skin and fat from your thigh, and snapping the bones in your remaining limbs to replace your jaw, the operation still won't fully restore your face. There are only about seventeen cases of IFD each year in the United States; about a hundred and thirty around the world in developed countries, most of those in West Europe. Usually, these cases are the result of tragic burns in car accidents, brutal domestic violence matches, and after-d**h cosmetics. But only I would be struck by a six thousand pound city bus barely down the street at forty-five miles an hour. I got out with only a couple of scrapes and bruises--at least, that's what I like to tell myself. No one wants to be walking, prosthetic cliche. To say that they lost both their legs, a rib, an arm and a face; no one wants to say that they were driven into a trauma induced coma for a month and suffer what medical students call an aneurysm dilation and then be diagnosed with what doctors call severe Hydrocephalus--this means that fluid builds up in my skull and causes my brain to swell. And most of all, no model wants to say that they were hit by a bus and put out of print; reduced to an abstract expression of conceptual geometric shapes, like a jigsawed collage of cutout pieces. To speak the inevitable truth that, as quickly as being struck by lighting, smoke, they were suddenly less than PerFect. Appalling Defective Repulsive-- worse, invisible. That was the thing I noticed above all else, as I lay there in the ICU, amongst the exhibition of discarded canvases. While no one would meet my eyes, my leering gaze that sagged to one side, while no one would talk directly to me, always studying the floor--everyone looked past me. In the world of modeling, the idea is to stand out--to make your chest broad, your smile white, and accentuate your hips. In the world of old oeuvres, though, your objective is to sit and look ugly. This meant that, at night, people masquerading as shadows would come by your curtain, like a confessional, and tell you of their sinful sorrows. Always in the same patter, the same rhyme, while I watched a muted episode of Real Housewives. The only sign of my preying consideration was the slow beep...beep...beep of my prowling heart rate as I devoured, with a spoon, the guts people spilled out on the floor from the other side of mourning. And there was nothing better than listening to the trolley of taglines people often stapled to the coattails of their suffrage: The Original, "There, there. It'll be alright." Everyone's Favorite, "We can get through this," with Tragic Pause and Release, "together." The Cla**ic, "God is watching her." And the Iconic, "I just can't believe this happened." Cancer patients went to ma** on Saturdays and hugged it all out, the elderly had ther Spanish soap operas and angst intensified memories of nostalgia, and the kids in pediatrics had their giant plush toys and Games of Life ahead of them. We all have our coping mechanisms, it just so happened that mine was something altogether sweater, something better than good--it was sinister. There was something about hearing people cry, seeing them fall over each other, and holler out to the ceiling with strangled, shaking fist: "Why God, why?" They cried so that I wouldn't have to, released so that I could hold on tighter, drank so that I could stay sober, and spoke so that I could remain mute. It doesn't change the fact that there's a warning label on the side of very medicine bottle, in big, bold, italicized letters reading SIDE EFFECTS: insomnia, depression, diarrhea. The same goes for coping: sooner or later, the tears fill the jar, the oil tightens, the bar stays open another night, late night. So, you drink every night. Ten months into rehabilitation. I'd gotten used to the sunny silence of the John Soprano Private Rehabilitation Center, only accompanied by Vivian--the nurse with pink Lancome mascara, red Sisley lipstick, and tight black leather Armani miniskirts--and Dr. Pinin. My days were spent at the mirror reflecting, striding the halls, and reading Scripture: Vogue Maxim Glamour The Victoria's Secret Spring Catalog In this way, I was addicted to the pain of rehashing my Golden Days--pink nails carrying a white Prada bag as a sullenly sweet face looked back, blowing kisses (give me unrelenting desire); shaven smooth legs and two hands running towards marble feet sculpted into a Chanel heel (show my lust); wings of a size zero angel in nothing but a halo (demonstrate falling). Every Tuesday, I was supposed to go down to Dr. Pinin's office, where we'd talk about what I remember from the Day of the Bus. Th answer was always the same-- pink asphalt blood CHLOE smiley face mermaid. Like typing into a search engine everything that comes to mind. That was it wasn't it? Searching for a memory which I only had certain views of: pink asphalt blood CHLOE smiley face mermaid. Not even Google could give me answer--there were 0 results for your search in .2 seconds. And there's no suggestion for what you might'vge meant--I must've been insane, according to my WebMD diagnosis. That's why I went to Dr. Pinin, why I allowed myself to confess to him all that I held in, remembered. Because he could remember so that I didn't have to. One day, when I was on the beach side patio drinking my daily Crystal Light Lemonade with a side of beautiful model eye-gouging in the all edition of Covergirl, as monsters like me are like to do, Dr. Pinin came for me. I had my Gucci shades on, so when I looked at him over my shoulder, I pulled them down for a 90210 freeze frame. he put his hands up in front of him in the shape of a camera lens and made a flashing noise: Give me pitiful. "You've got visitors." Show me disbelief. He only nodded. Cut to the lobby, close up of CHRISTIE and DAVID SINGER. Christ Singer who's had so many procedures on her nose it's only attached by a threat, Christ who's had so many implants she has to get her bras shipped in by the kilometer, Christ whose lips are so red she may as well have been s**ing on a tampon all day. Hello Muddah. David Singer who wears sweaters in Miami because he looks like SpongeBob with all the holes in his arms from Synthol injections, David who has enough bleached hair implants to make a Barbie doll gasp in shock, David whose routine laser tooth whitening procedures have turned his teeth into transparent gla** pieces stabbed into his gums. Hello Faddah. Here I am, your hideous daughter, Chloe Singer. My mother slapped her hand over her collegian packed lips. My father stared at me for a long time before bringing Mom in for a tight hug, regrouping. I noticed there was a Frappuccino on the counter. My name, CHLOE, with a smiley face made out of the O; the green mermaid on a backdrop of pink. Two red stains on the straw. It hit me like a bus. The TV was no longer muted. "Do you see me?" I broke. "What?" Dad said. I sauntered forward. "Do--You--See--Me?" He opened his mouth and closed it again; his eyes were averted to the floor. "Look at me!" They shook, but keep their eyes off the screen. I threw the Frappuccino at my mother, who screamed as her black Celine dress was painted pink--suddenly her floodlight eyes splashed on me. Little specks of it were on my father's Burberry coat, his mouth open wide. I had my captive audience where they had held me for so long: in the spotlight. This was my starring role, my cover photo, my centerfold. I'd prepared for this role my entire life. Action. "I never told you, but you're the worst art connoisseurs--you can't even see beauty when it's right in front of you, so have to distort it. That's why you're so afraid of your own pale reflection." I chuckled. "That's why you're so afraid of me: Frankenstein's monster, the walking dead, heathen among ye! That's why you dressed me up, because you frighted by y imperfections--but, here's a secret: that's how genetics work! Yet you still hid me behind a veil of makeup and punished me for being anything less than perfect." My heart was palpitating, head pounding and hot tears dug trenches through my cheeks. The floor dropped from under me, vertigo.' they looked away from me again--:"Look at me! Look at your prized beautiful, plastic Pica**o replica, baby!" The coil sprang. I was struck with a rod of lighting as a chorus of thunder cheered: flashing lights surrounded me, Embraced me-- I let them take me. +++ My autopsy revealed that the bus had nothing to do with my development of Hydrocephalus, rather, the bus simply accelerated its development. It was a preexisting condition resulting from a series of traumatic experiences and mild cranial injuries I endured as a child. Beatings, extended periods of exhaustion, and malnutrition. And caffeine. What can I say? Girl loved her Starbucks.