I’m like a man, parched with thirst crawling over the endless sand dunes of the Mojave Desert.  Except I’m doing it in 71 dresses.  My No Shopping Project is coming to an end.  A few months ago I decided to take a real look at my shopping addiction by pulling every single dress I own out of my drawers and closet to count how many I actually have.

Can you guess how many?  I suspect the title of this post gives it away.  I’ve worn a dress-a-day ever since and haven’t spent more than 18$ on myself (meaning wardrobe, jewelry, hair products, shoes, underwear, bras or mechanisms that vibrate) in, as of today, 71 days.

Now, full disclosure, I did get a little shopping thrill by purchasing loft beds and desks for my daughters and outdoor patio furniture for our house.  Having said that, these were items that were long on our TO DO list.  My girls are getting older and needed more study room and we needed somewhere nice to sit outside.

But shopping for myself has been a no.  I’ve been successful because of this blog project.  Each time I want to navigate over to my favorite clothing site I stop myself short because looking IS buying.  If I’m at the mall buying a gift for a birthday party or a graduation, I don’t go into any of my trigger stores.  I try not even to look at the display windows.

Recent research on Addiction revealed that the brain becomes conditioned to respond to certain stimuli that actually makes it near impossible for an addict not to relapse.  This is why, when drug addicts go to rehab, they are stripped of anything familiar that can trigger the addictive reaction; these familiar items include all people, places and things connected to the addiction.

It’s an attempt to recondition the brain to new stimuli and short-circuit the addiction synapses.  That sounded really smart, right?  I didn’t even look that up on google .  You can check my cred on the internet.  (But I am really smart, in case you were wondering).

So, in taking myself away from temptation I’ve managed to change my behavior.  At least in the last 70 days.

Once this project is over my goal is to start keeping a journal of all purchases.  For myself, my daughters, our home and gifts for others.  I’ve tried to do this in the past and failed.  I’m hoping this newfound sobriety will be motivation enough to keep it up.

Here are my last batch of dresses.

Dress #64. A Boden summer dress. I’m beginning to think it’s a bit young.

Dress #65. This one is from Anthropologie and while I love the color and cut, it too seems a bit young.

Dress #66. It’s hard to tell, but this is a great dress. It has two really long wrapping pieces which make it possible to wear this dress eight different ways

Dress #67. I wore this one to the Expressing Motherhood show I was in. It’s not great for days I’m bloated (which is code for “ate pizza”) however.

Dress #68. An Anthropologie maxi I got on sale for 50$.

Dress #69. I bought this dress at the French Connection on a trip to London four years ago. It makes me feel half my age. So it makes me feel 12.

Dress #70. I also got this Mad Men-esque dress during the same trip to London.

Dress #71. This is my very last dress! I purchased it for under 50$ at Zara. It always makes me feel trim and efficient.

Ladies — it is done.  I should have posted 72 dresses as my mom gave me an Anthropologie gift card for Mother’s Day and I purchased Dress #60 with it.  But when I looked in my drawers I realized I labelled a bathing suit cover-up a dress.  It’s not really a dress as it can’t be worn solo without showing the lady bits which have a tendency to run rogue.  I’ve given my lady bits a lecture and told them to stop chasing cars like an untrained puppy.  Sigh.  What can you do?

Finally, I want to say Thank You for taking this journey with me.  In 71 days I spent 18$ on myself.  A slight slip-up.  But it was good to know that I could turn the spending faucet off.  I may begin with a shoe and skirt No Shopping project very soon.

One of the best things this project did for me, besides staunching the cash flow, was to show me what I have in my closet and how it looks on me.  I could instantly see what works and what doesn’t and it made me excited about the wardrobe I already have.

In the following gallery I will indicate in the caption which 11 dresses I donated to Out Of The Closet which benefits AIDS research.  xo S

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The post 71 Dresses In 71 Days: Week 10 appeared first on The Woman Formerly Known as Beautiful.

A few weeks ago I talked with Neal Conan on NPR’s Talk of The Nation about my experience as the victim of an attempted date rape in 1986. (I also wrote about the experience in a post titled: It Happened To Me: A Letter To My Daughters About Date Rape.)

In discussing my experience with the young, female producer at NPR prior to the interview, something jumped out of my mouth that startled both of us. I said, “We have to accept the fact that women are prey.”

The producer seemed to recoil from the notion and even I instantly wondered if — as a feminist — languaging women’s status in this way was somehow belittling women? If this nomenclature might undermine the proposition that men and women are equals?

During our discussion Neal Conan referenced the 15-year old girl raped in Nova Scotia who ultimately committed suicide due to the fallout of having the photos of her alleged rape posted online and a similar incident that occurred in Steubenville, Ohio. Both girls were attacked when they were incapacitated by alcohol and incapable of defending themselves.

As a mother of two daughters this news is devastating to me and I instantly wondered if it’s possible for me to protect my children from a similar fate.

So I sat with that notion of women as prey. And once I got over the repugnance of correlating women with animals that are low on the food chain, I realized that taking ownership of this idea could be empowering. Perhaps if we know we’re prey we’ll stand differently in the world.  We’ll make a plan and have our own backs, rather than relying on the kindness of strangers.

(To be clear. Sometimes rape simply can’t be avoided regardless of all precautions taken and I am in NO WAY suggesting that rape is a woman’s fault. But we can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. We should never blame the victim, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t discuss what women and young girls can do to stay safe.)

A few months after I was the victim of an attempted date rape, I was walking to my car alone from a club on Sunset Boulevard on a Saturday night.  It was late — 1 or 2 in the morning — and I was heading down a dark side street when I noticed a black man wearing a hoodie standing quietly in a driveway I had to pass with his hands shoved in his pockets.

Prior to my attack I would’ve passed right by him, because I would’ve worried he’d think I was racist if I didn’t trust him. But, post-attack my desire to be politically correct was trumped by caution. I stopped dead in the middle of the street a safe distance away and just stood there openly staring at him.

After a moment he said, in an erudite, British accent, “Sorry, luv, I’m just waiting for a ride.  Hope I didn’t give you a scare.” His willingness to acknowledge my need for safety put me at ease. And perhaps I’m a bit of an Anglophile who thinks anyone with a British accent is above reproach. Either way, I felt safe enough to continue walking to my car.

Here are other habits I’ve acquired having accepted the fact that I’m prey:

1. When walking at night on secluded streets I stay off the sidewalks and walk down the middle of the road with keys protruding from the fist of my right hand, ready to fight or flee.

My statuesque German friend Bettina does this too, but adds a colorful bit of dialogue for potential predators in her heavy Bavarian accent, “You try to grab me and I punch you in the face and then I kick you in the balls!” (I would NOT mess with Bettina).

2. I also make a lot of noise when I walk home in the dark. I sing loudly and badly because I don’t think predators want noisy prey. I know I must look and sound ridiculous, but I just don’t care.

3. I’m married now so I don’t have to be out there in the dating world. But if I do find myself in circumstances due to business or travel where I might be socializing with a man or men I don’t know well, I stay sharp. I avoid alcohol or anything that could render me vulnerable.  This is particularly important for young girls and women who haven’t learned yet to drink responsibly and can often drink too much or be given drinks spiked with the date rape drug.

4. I don’t enter remote locations with a man or men I don’t know. For college girls this remote location could simply be upstairs at the Sigma Chi house on-campus. Men in a group, particularly young men, are capable of behavior they would never engage in if they were alone. They can often incite one another to the extremes of date rape as a way of showing off.

5. When I have Mom’s Night Out I make plans with my fellow moms to keep each other safe. For me this means having a designated driver, or walking home together. In college or while dating in groups this could mean having plans not to leave each other alone in vulnerable circumstances. To watch each other’s backs.

My attempted date rape occurred on a deserted beach at night because my girlfriends left me alone there with a boy we’d just met. They didn’t know me well enough to know I didn’t want to be left alone there. Had we made a game plan prior to going out I wouldn’t have ended up struggling for my life on that beach.

6. I don’t step into an elevator, or a stairwell alone with a man I don’t know. I was taking summer classes at UCLA the year prior to my attempted date rape. I noticed a male student who seemed to keep popping up outside my different classrooms and the cafeteria where I ate lunch. As I walked to the parking structure at noon, I noticed the same student behind me.

My animal instinct TOLD ME this young man was stalking me, but my social contract not to be unkind, not to be aggressive or confrontational won the day. As I entered a stairwell to get to my car three stories up, the young man was right behind me. I was incredulous. I couldn’t believe he would dare attack me in broad daylight on a busy campus. I was thinking this right up until the moment he shoved his hand under my skirt.

My reaction was to spin around and punch him in the face, knocking him down one flight of steps, dropping my purse and running down the stairs at him screaming, “I’m going to kill you!” I was emboldened by the fact there were other people nearby and I was taller than my assailant. Had the campus been deserted and the student twice my size I guarantee I would’ve had a less successful outcome.

Here is a comprehensive list of 25 Things to Do to Avoid Rape from WikiHow that really are a map for keeping women and girls safe.

I feel fortunate I escaped my attack with only a few bruises and bite marks. It was a cheap price to pay for an invaluable lesson. But I don’t want any other women to garner their streets smarts by being attacked.

We need to make it clear to our mothers, sisters, daughters, friends that we are prey and must behave as such; aware, alert and prepared to take measures to have our own backs.

The post Accepting The Fact That Women Are Prey Can Empower Us appeared first on The Woman Formerly Known as Beautiful.

These are the things I’ve done recently that made me want to vomit while shitting water.  (Yes.  You can take that line and use it as your own.)

1.  Wrote a book detailing my slatternly (Merriam-Webster: “Of, relating to, or characteristic of a slut”) years on the fringes of Hollywood celebrity.

2.  Wrote query letters to New York book agents to be published in more locales than Amazon.  Let me just check my Query Tracker to see how many rejections I’ve had so far … oh yes, there it is … 37.9% rejections, 62.1% have not replied yet.

Apparently none of these agents quite realize the import of my tome.  I imagine their slack jaws and glazed eyes as I accept my Pultizer … or a card from my kids telling me how great my book is which is why they want to emulate my life, after which I drown myself in Schnapps.

3.  Got onstage with a bunch of other mamas to perform my piece Walk The Walk, Naked Lady.  My body completely rebelled.  There were digestive issues I won’t detail (as I suspect I’m already over my  irritable bowel limit for this post), cotton mouth issues (I looked like Katie Couric in a wind tunnel) …

… and one instance of vertigo.  When I came to, my fellow actresses were feeding me pinot grigio from a funnel backstage.  Man, I love those homegirls.

5.  Took a meeting with Hollywood producers I vehemently admire and was able to communicate without being as obsequious as Arsenio Hall interviewing Robert DeNiro (“You lookin’ at me?  Well I don’t see anybody else here!”)

6.  Made the first step toward repairing a friendship that had gone off the tracks.

The post May: The Month to Do The Things That Scare The Bejesus Out Of You appeared first on The Woman Formerly Known as Beautiful.

Oh when will this odyssey of pinafores cease?? Why did I buy 71 dresses? Am I the Queen of Marrakesh?

Yes that’s me. With brunette hair and no hips, troubled by my own beauty. That’s Henry in the background awaiting my bidding. “Get me another dress, Henry or I’ll smite you and clap you irons.  Some flagellation may occur as well, but no, you like that too much!”

This is my pen-ultimate week of wearing every single one of my dresses before I may purchase anything for myself.  However, this week I have a confession to make.  I have not completely failed, but I have failed a little.  It should be noted, however, there was a villain conspiring against me.  Foresooth, my evil mother …

She came to visit during Mother’s Day. Catching me off-guard she brought a tempting gift … an Anthropologie gift card. Back you wicked temptress!

Yes, my mother gave me a gift card.  What the hell is wrong with her?  Doesn’t she know that, for me, walking into Anthropologie is like Charlie Sheen walking into a Catholic high school for girls?

Come pillage and plunder us!

That gift card never left me alone for a minute.  It whispered at me every night, “I could be worth 200$, maybe more since you’re such a wonderful daughter who never writes confessional pieces about her childhood in which your mother is frequently the scapegoat.  No, no!  You are beyond reproach, much like Mother Teresa during her menses.  When she was alive.”

Alas, I listened to that gift card voice emanating from my wallet and indeed found myself breaching the walls of the nearest Anthropologie on Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills yesterday.

I went straight to the checkout counter and handed them my gift card.

“How much is on it?” I query, lips atremble in anticipation.  Swipe, swipe, swipe.  ”I can’t seem to read it,” murmurs the checkout girl.  Thinking fast I hand her a pair of piquant reading glasses from a nearby display, “Please,” I beg, “Try again!”

“Oh!” she says pleasantly, “It says here you have fifty dollars on this gift card.”

“Fifty dollars?  Are you sure?  Isn’t there an extra number missing?”

“No.  No, it’s fifty.”

How could she say this so casually?  As if it were nothing!  Next time she tries to board a plane to Marrakesh I’ll stop her at the gate, take her ticket (because I’ll have become a stewardess in order to enact this revenge) and say, “I’m so sorry, this is a ticket to Bakersfield.”  After which I’ll cackle insanely and until the end of time.

Fifty dollars.  Okay, I’m sure I can stay within that limit.  (Addiction lies, people.  It lies.)

You can imagine what happened next.  I almost broke both of my forearms by draping three treasure chests full of dresses over my arms before I managed to scale the stairs to the dressing rooms.

My name was already on one of them, scrawled across a tiny, bevelled mirror.  ”Shannon,” it said.  I felt so special!

And hence my changing orgy began.  Dresses all beyond the 50$ price tag.  This is where a little voice begins to whisper, “It’s okay if you buy a 118$ dress, because it will really only cost 68$ which is almost nothing at Anthropologie and you haven’t purchased anything for yourself in SIXTY DAYS!  How often does that happen?  Never!  That’s how often.”

There was good news throughout all of this, which was that I looked horrible in almost every single one of those dresses.  In many my hips seemed broad enough to hoist the Titanic from her depths.  In others there were tummy rolls on top of my tummy rolls.  In even more there was a strange fleshiness heretofore unseen protruding from my armpits.  What the hell is that?

I walked out of Anthropologie carrying with me one dress.  The dress cost exactly $68 dollars, which means I spent 18$ on  myself.  I know.  It’s not bad, yet it is a sign that when you give me a gift card it should be for at least 100$ (take note the next time you want to send me money).  Because this is someone else’s fault.  Certainly not mine.

I have eight days left of my #71dressesin71days No-Shopping project.  In penance for my relapse I will be giving away an extra dress.  Bringing my dress donation total to 11 dresses.

Let me know which one of the next seven dresses I should donate or possibly smother myself with.

Dress #57. I wore this dress to perform in at the Expressing Motherhood show and received a lot of compliments. Having said that I won’t be having any more outdoor photos taken as my head seems to get very large outside.

Dress #58. I always worry this Athleta dress cuts me weird across the tummy. But love the color.

Dress #59. This Boden summer dress is super comfortable. But after eating linguini I wonder if it makes me look pregnant.

Dress #60. I bought this as a bathing suit cover-up at El Capitan last summer. It’s wise not to bend over in this one.

Dress #61. This is the dress I bought at Anthropologie mostly with my mom’s gift card. So it cost me 18$ and now I have to post 72 dresses instead of 71. And I have to give an extra dress away. Was this little number worth it?

Dress #62. This Anthropologie dress is one of my favorites. I don’t know how they did it, but they made these horizontal stripes slimming?? Or I’m on crack.

Dress #63. I purchased this dress in Franschhoek, South Africa. I’ll be buried in it.

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We just wrapped our first week of performing Expressing Motherhood to packed audiences.  Thirteen moms address everything from adoption to nude photos (who could that be?) to molestation to husband’s who work too damn much to discovering their teenage son is (no, no, no) no longer a virgin.

This is the badass cast of Expressing Motherhood 2013.

These women are funny, fierce and unforgettable.  If you haven’t purchased your ticket yet you can do so Here.  We have three shows left.

Here I am at rehearsal. I loved performing because I always love when my knees shiver, my palms sweat, I get cottonmouth, I barf a little in my mouth and my intestinal lining is inflamed. Oh why did I ever give up acting?

Backstage where a copious amount of wine is quaffed both before and after the show.

To watch the founders of Expressing Motherhood, Lindsay  Kavet and Jessica Cribb, on the Today Show with Maria Shriver click the arrow.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Here’s the piece I performed (based on my post Walk The Walk, Naked Lady).

I entrusted my naked body to a man for the first time when I was 18.  He was my first lover; my college sweetheart and we were together five years.

He did a lot of things right, but the one thing he did wrong was to pinch my thighs when I weighed a hundred and fifteen pounds dripping wet to show me that I had cellulite.

I’d never heard of cellulite before, but apparently those little divots in my pinched thigh flesh were what cellulite is.  Did you know cellulite is a sin?  I had no idea.

Several years later – my ex in my rear view mirror – I found myself in a photographer’s loft having nude photographs taken.

Had I been lured there by someone in the flesh trade?  Was I heading down the road to becoming an adult performer?

No.  I was actually paying to have nude photographs taken of myself so that I could reclaim my body.  So I could see beyond the invisible divots in my thigh-flesh to the whole woman instead.

It was terrifying.

But when the photos came back it was all worth it.  The girl exposed there wasn’t the damaged, fat cow I saw through my former lover’s eyes, but someone, dare I say, healthy and beautiful and strong.

Here I am today.  Twenty years, two kids and thirty pounds later.  That’s like a small ocelot.

I’ve had two cesareans, a dozen mammograms, sonograms, ultrasounds, eco-cardiograms, gynecological exams and I’m not even going to tell you what happened at the gastroenterologist’s office.

Just know there was a snake involved and it was the kind plumbers use.

The west L.A. moms I hang out with only eat hemp and air while I’ve been known to have wine and chocolate orgies all by myself naked in my bedroom.

I can’t help thinking if my ex could see me now he’d be mortified.  I’m feeling fat and flawed all over again.

But I know the remedy!

It worked once, so it’ll work again.  I’m going to take a second set of nudes!  At 47!  Yes, that’s a good idea!

I’ll find the right photographer.  He’ll use flattering lighting.  Perhaps a fan or two.  I’ll pop a couple of amyl nitrite capsules even though I’ve never done drugs, but this seems like a good time to start.

And off I’ll go to self-love again.

Cut to:

My mom and me driving to Pasadena in the dead of night so I can get naked in front of a stranger who isn’t checking my breasts for cysts.

My mom – who is a calm, solid person — worries we’re going to be murdered since I’ve lured her into the dark under-belly of the naked pictures world.

I assure her this is all on the up-and-up as we park in front of a beautifully refurbished 1929 Craftsman home … with no lights on inside.  Or outside.  And a couple of the street lamps are shot out.

Either we’re at the wrong address or my photographer– who we’ll call Ansel — is storing the remains of his last photographic subject’s body parts in a sub-zero freezer in his antiseptic basement.

Girding my loins, such as they are, I ring the bell.  Ansel appears.  He seems – benign.

But those are the ones you gotta watch out for.  They put you at ease with their round, placid faces and their flat, expressionless blue eyes and then WHACK! someone’s identifying your corpse at the morgue.

I shake it off.  This bitch is happening, people!  No turning back now.

I change into my robe in Ansel’s bathroom, trying to recreate the exact look I had in the photos from 20 years ago.  I wet down my hair, I wear no make-up, I do a few tummy crunches and I have a hot flash.

(Deep breath)  I’m ready.

Ansel and I leave my mother in the kitchen –  reading his copy of The Night Stalker — and I follow him to his photographic lair!

What happens next is blood-chilling — A 47-year old woman disrobes and walks around naked.

Ansel methodically has me recreate each pose from twenty years ago.  This should be my first tip that things might not turn out as expected.

I was squatting and bending over in a lot of those old photographs?  When you have two children in your late 30s you don’t bend or squat anymore because your kids will use your tummy as an accordian.

I ask Ansel if I can look in his viewfinder to see how the shots are going.  He demurs, telling me that it will only make me feel self-conscious.  Okay, no sweat.

An hour later – my muscles spasming from attempting to get into poses I’d struck spontaneously all those years before – we are done.

I feel confident Ansel’s captured what I want.  Something on a par with Dove’s Campaign For Real Beauty.  No make-up, no retouching, but real and pleasing.

After I’ve dressed Ansel asks my mom and me if we want to see the photos once he’s downloaded them into his computer.

Of course we do!  Now I’m going to see just how hot I still am!  “Coming Ansel!” I chirp.  And there I am on his computer screen … so … so …

What fresh hell is this?

I see what appears to be the craven image of an elderly, cornfed woman who might’ve been an extra in The Night Of The Living Dead.

Who is that dimpled, sun-spotted, wrinkly person?  That isn’t me!  Those elbows can’t be mine!  I could pack a suitcase in that neck!

It turns out Ansel is killing me after all!

I beg him to delete the photos.  He tells me he will if I want him to.  But first I have to wait three days.  I tell him I don’t need to wait three days.  He tells me I do.  I don’t.  You do.  I don’t.  You do and no, I won’t give you your money back.

During my three-day sentence I’m in mourning for that effortlessly limber, fresh-skinned, bright-eyed younger woman.  But I want to let her go and embrace my current incarnation.

Three days go by.  Then four, five, six.  Slowly I begin to see the woman in those photos a little more clearly.

The cellulite kicks and fights to be acknowledged, but I try to look through or around it.

About day fifteen I begin to think that maybe that 47-year old woman in the photos is – after all – much lovelier than I’d initially thought.

Eventually I have the courage to post my nudes – both the old and the new – side by side – in The Huffington Post where I blog about beauty and aging.

Yes mom and dad there’s my ass for the world to see!

There are plenty of negative comments about my vanity and moral looseness.  I’m accused of being as shallow as a contact lens.

But there’s one comment I select to be the voice in my head, replacing the voice of my first love.  This person, who is kinder to me than I’ve ever been to myself, writes:

“At 27, your silhouette was quite lovely, the play of flesh and bone along your back flattering­ly delicate and feminine.  (which interestingly makes your shoulders seem a bit strong in contrast).

At 47, the earlier strength of shoulder now finds its inherent balance; if the silhouette is less delicate the play of flesh and bone is more suggestive of feminine strength and maternal solidity.

One is a fortunate, almost errant, flower in bloom; the other the curve of rock, the swell of earth, without which no flowers would ever bloom.

I have often considered it a trifle foolish the way that shallow youth is considered inherently beautiful.

There is such a terrible beauty which only age brings, a depth of power that only deepens the sense of mystery that utterly, completely­captivates.”

My wish is that this voice could reside in all women of all ages, shapes and sizes.

The post Moms Speak Out About Their Motherf%@king A#@holes appeared first on The Woman Formerly Known as Beautiful.

Hello All — I’ve been MIA in the blogging world.  I’ve been writing screenplays, query letters for my book and a piece to perform at the Expressing Motherhood show at the Lillian Theater in Hollywood this Fri-Sun and next Fri-Sun THAT YOU SHOULD COME TO!  Tickets and times are HERE.

I am blown away by the depth of talent in this show.  There’s Elizabeth Jayne Liu of Flourish In Progress, irreverent actress Beth Littlefield,  Shannon Noel Webb of Lullabies for Mommy and a bevy of other hilarious, heartbreaking, magnificent talent.

Despite all the extra-curricular writing I’ve been up to I couldn’t miss a week of my 71 dresses in 71 days which began HERE.

I still haven’t purchased one item for myself – especially no dresses – now on my 56th day.  Sad, but I’m fairly certain that’s a record since I was 12 and didn’t have any money.

So here are week 8′s next seven dresses.  Please help me select the one I should donate to Out Of The Closet which helps fund AIDS research:

Dress #50. I wore this one out with my Pussy Posse at Mom 2.0 conference in Laguna Niguel. I think we all know by now that women dress for women. (This one I purchased whilst in Africa). Is it just me or do I look like I’m on Roofies in the picture?

Dress #51.  I love this one. Just outside the Ritz Carlton mid-conference in Laguna Niguel.

Dress #52.  This is a staple from the now-defunct Forthe & Town. They had the best lighting in their dressing rooms, camouflaging all dimples and divots. Oh, how I miss them

Dress #53. This is a long-ago Banana Republic purchase. Not that in love with it anymore.  It doesn’t hide my carb orgies as well as I’d like.

Dress #54. This was purchased somewhat impulsively and furtively in a little shop in Johannesburg when I had only one hour to myself. Still, it holds a sweet memory of an amazing trip.

Dress #55. Another lovely Boden. I will absolutely never have to buy another dress to wear to a wedding.

Dress #56. In fact, someone needs to get married so I can come to your wedding in this Boden. Pull the trigger, people!

Tell me which one gets the boot.  xoxo S

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The Cannes Film Festival is almost here!  Have you ever wondered what it’s like to fall in love there?  Then this excerpt from my book Smash, Crash and Burn: Tales From The Edge of Celebrity is for you!

It’s fall of 1991.

As my airplane wings its way over the Atlantic Ocean I feel like I’ve finally arrived.  I’m an actress accompanying my auspicious director on an all-expenses-paid trip — airline, hotel and food tickets — to the Cannes Film Festival!

I’ve been to Cannes once before as an anonymous semester-abroad student who drank two-dollar Bordeaux on the Promenade de la Croisette outside an arena I couldn’t afford to get into where James Taylor sang Mexico.  If James Taylor could see me now he’d be sorry he hadn’t given me a personal serenade.

“Hey, Shannon, did you bring any money?” asks my director, Benjamin.

Benjamin looks like a feral squirrel who never flosses.  There seems to be a small bonsai bush growing out of his mossy teeth.  We’re going to Cannes to find distribution for his film Leta Has Two Lovers of which I am the star.

“What do you mean did I bring money?  Don’t you have any money?” I ask.

“So you do have money.  How much?”

“Two hundred dollars.  Why?”

“Can I borrow a hundred?”

“What?  No!”

“I really need it,” Benjamin whimpers. “I have to look successful.”

(Did I mention Leta had a nano-budget?  But that doesn’t mean it won’t be my breakout vehicle).

“I don’t think a hundred dollars is going to make you look successful,” I inform Benjamin.

“I can get it broken down into five-dollar bills and roll it into a wad.”

“Benjamin, how can you not have any cash?  Are you seeing hookers again?”

(Did I mention Benjamin has an affinity for ladies of the night?)

“Won’t you ever let me forget the trannies in Tijuana?” shrieks Benjamin

(Did I mention we were almost thrown in the pokey for trying to transport Guatemalan hookers across the Mexican border?  I probably should have mentioned that.)

I was just giving them a lift!” Benjamin shrills.  ”I spent my family’s entire fortune on this movie, I just got an eviction notice and they turned off my phone.  I’ve been sleeping in my car.”

“Well, why did you make a movie about the sweatshop abuses in Mexico and then hire a French-Canadian actress to play the lead?”

(Did I mention I’m not the lead in this movie?  Still my character is a catalyst that really drives the movies, even if she’s only in two scenes.)

“Caprice is French-Canadian via Portugal with Andalucía roots!” says Benjamin. “She was perfect for Leta.  Maybe you could just give me twenty?”

(Did I mention that we’re not going to the crowded Cannes Film Festival?  The one they have in May which hosts the mainstream films with actresses like Julia Roberts, directors like Scorsese and the rabble that trails them?  What do you mean I should have told you that?  It’s a mere technicality).

We’re going to the more exclusive December Cannes film festival for the off-off-off Hollywood actors and directors; young, fabulous people who haven’t yet been discovered, most likely because their iconoclastic talent burns so bright as to be threatening to the powers that be.

“Benjamin, get your hand off my knee.”

“What hand?”

“That hand!  The one that’s on my knee, sweating right through my pants.  Listen, I told you I would come as your Plus-One, but you weren’t supposed to take it the wrong way.  I told you that!”

“Sometimes people change their minds.  We could pretend we aren’t Shannon and Benjamin, but strangers swept away by air travel.”

“Benjamin, you’re not my type.”

“What’s your type?”

“Men who floss.”

“I have sensitive gums, they bleed when I floss.”

“Because you don’t floss!”

“But we’re physically matched.”

“Benjamin, when I stand next to you I can rest my elbow on the top of your head.”

“You know what they say about short men.”

“I don’t want to hear any penis references.”

“How can I make any when you’ve castrated me?”

There will be no fling with Benjamin.  But I feel it’s my duty to have a passionate liaison once we arrive in France – a country known for its frank sexuality.  Especially after being rejected by the INXS Drummer, whose name I prefer not to know (jon farris) when I danced for them at the 1990 VMAs.  It’s time to close the deal with a Frenchman.

How can any self-respecting actress stay chaste for so long?  How am I expected to emote, to hone my instrument if I’m not having any life-experience?  There’s no way I can transition from ingénue to leading lady without my share of heartbreak, romance and perhaps, just once in my life, a ménage a trois.

What better opportunity to throw caution to the winds, even though I still have trouble getting a condom on a banana and am embarrassed to buy them.  I’ll be a post-feminist Modern Woman in charge of her sexuality.

Even now I notice a heavy-lidded Frenchman gazing at me from Aisle 22, seat B.  Oh, to order a Hennessey XO Extra Gold and slip into the empty seat next to him.  Unfortunately it’s impossible to move with Benjamin’s balding head now resting in my lap, spittle and the beginnings of a muskrat snore emanating from his lips.  I can’t help myself.  I cover him with a blanket.

This is the harbor in Cannes, the view from my hotel suite.

TWO DAYS LATER

I’m going to barf.  I’m crammed in the third row of a tightly packed festival minivan heading up the winding cliffside road on the way to a supposedly quaint little village called Grasse.  Whose bright idea was this?  Someone at the festival orchestrated this little tourist jaunt for festival invitees and I was so honored I forgot I get motion sick hiking.

“Do you need to vomir vos tripes?” says Marco, a 20-year old student juror at the festival, “Or as you say in English, ‘Vomit your guts out?’”

I met Marco at the festival mixer on opening night and he’s stuck to my side ever since.  I’ve maintained a friendly distance, as I don’t want to break his heart.  He reminds me of an eager puppy, his hair hanging down on both sides of his head like floppy ears.  He has a sweet smile and his hands shook when he helped me into the van twenty minutes ago.

He won’t be my French treat.  I’m too worldly for him.  Sadly, I still haven’t managed to figure out how to have an orgasm (perhaps I simply don’t have a clitoris?); but I did once attempt The Eagle Takes Flight kama sutra position with a Oaxacan dishwasher.  This acolyte will no doubt kiss sloppily, fumble at buckles and bra straps, need help finding various hidden body parts and, although he is French, will absolutely fall short of the long overdue tryst I seek.

“Yes,” I say to Marco, “I may need to lancer, or, as we say in English, “hurl.’”

It is our Grasse driver, Jean-Christophe, who has caught my eye.  He’s an older man of twenty-three (well, older than Marco at least) and alluringly poker-faced.  His eyes are a cerulean blue, his hair a tangle of black curls one could twist one’s fingers into.  He has a dimple at the left corner of his mouth and an intelligent forehead.  His ears are friendly.  His nose is shy.

There’s also the charming way he now places his hand on my back as I barf down the side of the Alps Maritimes, then allows me to use his shirtsleeve to wipe my mouth.  I straighten and give him my most seductive look.  “When do you get off work tonight?”

“Four-thirty in the morning,” he replies.  Then, “Do you know there are women who come here for a few days and they give me their room key just for sex?  Especially the Americans.  It is disgusting.”

“Repellent,” I cry as a small bolus of barf pops out of my nose.

Jean-Christophe. Sigh.

The next day Marco and I leave the screening of Leta Has Two Lovers with Winnie, a conspicuous bombshell from Dubai.  She’s attached herself to Marco and me, I suspect, because she’d like to get to know an American actress better.  I can tell they’re both impressed by my performance in Leta.

“That was fantastique,” Marco enthuses, “I loved that bottle house that Leta lived in at the desert.”

“Yes, the bottle house was so unique,” says Winnie.

“Benjamin stumbled on that location on his way to Fran’s Ranch, this down-at-the-heels whorehouse in Beatty, Nevada,” I say.

“Benjamin?  You mean your director?” asks Marco.

“Yes.”

“You were in that movie?” asks Winnie.

“Wait, what?  Of course, I was in that movie.  That’s why I took you to see it!”

“Oh.  You look very different in person.  I didn’t recognize you as Leta,” says Marco.

“That’s because I didn’t play Leta.”

“Of course, of course, I’m so sorry, of course I knew that, you were la putain.  The whore,” says Marco.

“That woman outweighs me by fifty pounds!”

“I thought you lost weight.”

“Her front teeth are missing!” I point out.

“I thought maybe dental implants?”

“She looks nothing like you,” says Winnie, her cheeks aflame.

“I play the lead character’s girlfriend!” I state the obvious.

“He had a girlfriend?” asks Marco looking at Winnie.  She shrugs.

“I was in the scene in front of the volcano at the Mirage!”

“I might have fallen asleep for a moment,” whispers Marco.

“Me too,” whinnies Winnie, “We were up very late last night.”

“Remember the lead character and my character had a moment of forgiveness, it was very moving?”

They just stare like villainous puppets that come to life at night and stab sleeping people with nail files like in Trilogy of Terror.

As I stride purposefully away, Marco calls after me. “You were a chameleon blending into the scenery!”

“You disappeared into the role!” yells Winnie.

Self portrait of said-chameleon in the elevator mirror in the Hotel Splendid. I’m so mysterious and vaguely French.  Me oui!

It’s four a.m. on the third night of the festival.  Jean-Christophe ferries a group of us from Studio Circus disco back to our hotels in the festival minivan.  He passes The Hotel Splendid, where I’m staying.  I’m about to tell him he’s missed my stop when it occurs to me that he might have done so on purpose.  Marco is the last person to be dropped off besides me.  He steps out of the van but reaches back to take my hand and kiss it.

“I will think fondly of you until I see you again,” he says, gazing at me with blatant yearning.

Dear boy, I want to say, save your innocent love for a girl who deserves it.  I am simply too jaded for you.

I bid him a fond adieu.

“Would you like to sit up front with me?” asks Jean-Christophe, looking back at me, his eyes dark with something.  Could it be … desire?

“But of course.”

And so it begins.  My French love affair.  He’ll be Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless and I will be his American Jean Seberg.  We’ll be caught together in passion and crime with an indecipherable French nouvelle vague plot.

“Would you like to see the harbor in my hometown?” Jean-Christophe asks.

“I’d like that very much,” I husk.

“It’s not too far; it’s a little fishing village called Antibes.  My mom and dad still live there.”

He already wants me to meet his parents?  It’s fast, but understandable given the novelty of my star status.

He’ll introduce me.  The four of us will have a picaresque feast of baguette avec Camembert de Normandie.  He’ll expect me to stay the night in his childhood bedroom, covered by a duvet whilst he feigns sleep on the divan below, until his parents retire for the evening.  Then he’ll sneak up the quaint, creaking, cottage staircase and slide under the covers with me.  We’ll make l’amour-passion after he feeds me un pain au chocolat.

“Why are we stopping here?” I ask as Jean-Christophe parks in front of a secluded cove.

“I wanted to show you le port d’Antibes.”

“You’re not taking me to your parents house?”

“Well … no.  They’re asleep.”

“Of course they are!”

“I love it here,” says Jean-Christophe.  “When I feel anxious or overwhelmed I come here and just look at the water and everything slows down.”

Handsome and philosophical.  Would he notice if I just threw my right leg over his lap?

We watch the little harbor for some time.  Sinking into a companionable silence for ten minutes, fifteen minutes, thirty minutes.

When is this guy going to kiss me already?  I’m getting a neck cramp from leaning toward him so that my lips will be accessible.  My ribs are starting to hurt from twisting like a churro.

It’s five a.m. and I’m … starting … to … get … groggy … Jean-Christophe is talking about something … I don’t know what it is … I need a pillow … wait, snap out of it!  He’s trying to gaze into my eyes.  He’s asked me a question, what was the question?

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“I was just wondering,” Jean-Christophe says, “Do you like me just because you’re leaving on Wednesday?”

What kind of question is that?  Of course I like him because I’m leaving on Wednesday.  What does a girl have to do to get taken advantage of in France??

“No,” I prevaricate, “I’d like you even if I was leaving on Saturday.”

This seems to fall flat.

“Or even if I was staying forever, because you’re so likable.  In the short term and the long term.  On any terms.”

He’s leaning.  He’s leaning.  Our lips are inches apart.  He has sweet breath.  Our lips meet.  Now, now for the passion!  Wait.  What is happening?  He isn’t moving his lips.  It’s as if his lips are using my lips as a landing pad.  His rotors are winding down, stopping altogether.  His lips rest on mine.

Where is his tongue?  Does he have one?  I try to recall linguistics and which consonants rely solely upon the tongue.  Did he use any “T’s” in our conversation?  I can’t remember because this is a comfortable position and we’ve both fallen asleep.

The following evening Benjamin and I eat dinner at L’assiette Au Boeuf.  One table over Marco and Winnie make out over bowls of noodles in creamy meat sauce.

“Would you look at that lucky bastard,” says Benjamin nodding to Marco.

“I guess,” I aver.

“What do you mean you guess?  Winnie’s the most beautiful woman at this festival.”

“If you like the strangely exotic type.”

“If you like any type.”

I leave Benjamin to his delusions.  It’s obvious Marco is rebounding with Winnie after he intuited I did not return his affections.  I suppose he had to move on.

Besides, things are heating up with Jean-Christophe.  He spent last night in my hotel room.  There was quite a bit of dry-lipped kissing and the passing of his palm along my ribcage.

“Do you find me repulsive?” Benjamin asks, startling me from my reverie.

“What?”

“So you think I’m attractive?”

“Benjamin, seriously, get your hand off my knee.”

“I don’t see why you’re with that French guy, Jean Luc.”

“Jean-Christophe.”

“What’s he got that I don’t have?”

“Let’s see … morals, manners, charm?”

“I’m charming.”

Suddenly one of the student coordinators Marguerite arrives with her walkie-talkie, “Shannon, Jean-Christophe says you should meet him outside in ten minutes.  Is that okay?”

“Yes, sure.”

“It’s because he speaks French, isn’t it?” asks Benjamin.

“Yes, Benjamin.  It’s because he speaks French.”

Look at the poor guy.  All he wants is a little love, some affection.

“Shannon?” says Benjamin.

“Yes?”

“Can you lend me five food tickets?”

THE LAST NIGHT IN CANNES

Jean-Christophe lies next to me on the duvet in my hotel room at three a.m.  He’s just finished his final shift driving festival attendees around.  The next morning Benjamin and I are flying back to Los Angeles to resume living in our cars and waiting tables until our fortunes arrive.

I’ve done it again.  Managed not to make even one meaningful business-related connection at this festival.  I’ve been too busy trying to seduce Jean-Christophe to work on my career trajectory.

I’m hopeless as a self-promoter.  Networking never seems to work out the way I want it to.

Point in fact: I met two producers after Teddy’s last play at the Mark Taper Forum.  We’ll just call them Frick and Frack.  Frack mentioned they were making a low-budget Jean-Claude Van Damme action film and were looking for someone to play his love interest.  Would I like to join him the following evening at Chaya Venice where he was hosting dinner with several of the film’s investors?

I agreed.

The next night I arrived as arranged at the restaurant and was, indeed, the only actress at the table with several legitimate Dutch film financiers.  Aside from a slight mishap where my merlot went down the wrong pipe and came out my nose everything went well.

Shaking hands good-bye outside, Frack asked if I wouldn’t mind driving him back to his hotel room at the Chateau Marmont as he’d taken a taxi to Chaya.  I was pleased to help a future colleague and all seemed well until I reached for my stick shift and found his erect penis in my hand.

After some negotiation he put it away.  And although I still drove him to his hotel, I was not cast in the Jean-Claude Van Damme film.  I tried to be thankful that at least I wouldn’t have to portray a character that dies by electrocution via her nipples.

“Where did you go?” Jean-Christophe asks.  I look over to see he’s gazing at me intently.

“Nowhere.  I was just thinking that the men I want to want me, don’t, and the men I don’t want to want me, do.  Does that make any sense?”

“I want you,” says Jean-Christophe.  He’s perspiring slightly and opens his shirt to his navel, exposing manly chest hair and a slender, architecturally lovely pectoralis major.  He strokes my hair, my face.

“It’s just, when I really appreciate somebody,” he says, “I don’t like to make love right away.  I want to take my time to discover that person and get to know her.  The first time is always awkward, but the lovemaking becomes better as you become better acquainted both physically and emotionally.  Then it becomes delicious.”

He leans forward and kisses my neck, my face, my lips.  Wait a moment.  There it is!  He has a tongue!

In a moment our shirts fly off.  Jean-Christophe is sweating profusely.  Oh.  This is going to happen and now suddenly I’m not sure how I feel about it.  Jean-Christophe reaches for my bra strap then stops.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, “What is it?”

“I have to vomir vos tripes,” say Jean-Christophe.

I keep my hand on Jean-Christophe’s back as he barfs in the hotel toilet.  He’s got the stomach flu.  He throws up and dry heaves until I have to leave for the airport four hours later.  I tell him he doesn’t have to drive me to the airport as we’d planned.  I can just get a taxi.  But he throws water on his face, gets dressed and drives me to the airport anyway, stopping three times along the side of the road to dry heave some more.

We stand on the tarmac where a ladder has been pushed up against the plane I’m to board.

The sun is just coming up.  The sky is streaked pink, orange, red.  The air is soft.  I’ve been in Cannes for seven days: I’ve known Jean-Cristophe for five of those days, and I’ll never see him again.

I turn to hug him goodbye.

“Oh no,” he says, “Why are you crying?”

“I don’t know.  I always cry at all the wrong times.”

I’ve managed to find the one Frenchman in France who wouldn’t sleep with me.  Instead he kisses my tears one by one.  He hugs me so hard that my ribs ache.  That my heart aches.

It seems I did manage to have a torrid French love affair.  Merci homme doux.  Or as we say in English, thank you, sweet man.

The sunset on the tarmac at Cannes airport. Au revoir amor.

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For more of my ignominious sexcapades whilst living on the edge of celebrity download my book HERE.  And comments are soooo appreciated.  Unless you’re suing me, in which case, I’m not really Shannon Bradley-Colleary.  I’m really just a heavier set Mary Kate Olsen.

The post My Sexcapades at Cannes appeared first on The Woman Formerly Known as Beautiful.

This week hits dress #49 in my #71dressesin71days No Shopping Project.  I’m wearing all 71 of my dresses before I can buy myself even a tongue bolt.  And I want a tongue bolt really badly because I’ve never been badass and if not now, when?  Who’s going to take a 90-year old tongue bolt, pistol-packing mama seriously?  (I just realized that I should also be pistol packin’ – but it should be a gun that’s really a Pez dispenser because I might accidentally shoot something off of myself that I want to keep).

I don’t know if you can tell in the following photos, but I’m getting dress fatigue.  I wake up at night in a cold sweat shrieking “Oh you! Pretty Chitty Bang Bang, pretty Chitty Bang Bang we love you!” and I don’t know why, but it must be the dresses.

I think you can see what I mean.

In any case, I’ve already donated 5 dresses as per your many suggestions:

Dress #4 sayonara baby, blue tights on a woman pushing 50′s just a little sad.

Dress#8 will hopefully find a home in the Haight.

Dress #16 will hopefully find a home in a rerun of I Love Lucy.

Dress #37 must find a hipless home to hang upon.

And finally (sob, gasp) Dress #41 landed in the 23-year old hands of my age-appropriate babysitter and made her very happy – so that felt good.  Now, I must eliminate 5 more dresses before the madness ends.

Also, will some of you invite me out so I have an excuse to wear my remaining 61 dresses?  Someone ought to get married .. or divorced (those are always fun celebrations), however, no one should die.  I don’t expect you to take a bullet for me.  You’ve got my digits, I’m available most nights and weekends.  No I don’t want to go to a revival of Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang.

This week’s offerings:

Dress #43 — I purchased this a very long time ago so I’m not sure where I got it, but I love its silhouette.  The look on my face seems to suggest I’m proud I gave birth to this dress.  What’s up with that?

Dress #44. Another Boden. I have no idea what’s happening with my head.  It seems to’ve elongated drastically, yet I feel no smarter.  However, I like the dress.

Dress #45. There is a polka dot leitmotif wending its way through my life. Is there an age cut-off for polka dots??

Dress #46. This navy wrap dress from Boden fits whether I’ve eaten nothing but hemp for a week or six chocolate cakes in a day. Love it.

Dress #47. I apologize about the overall orangeness of this photo.  I’m not sure what happened here. But I do love this Boden maxi.

Dress #48.  This dress was purchased impulsively to wear to an American Idol finale where my sister and I stood in line for four hours to hear Jason Castro sing trmeulously.  Which convinced me I’m just too old for that shit (said like Bruce Willis in Die Hard XIII).  Not sure about this one.

Dress #49 Yes. Polka Dots.  I do feel sassy in this sucker.

Lay waste to my wardrobe ladies, which one gets the boost? xo S

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The post 71 Dresses In 71 Days: Week 7 appeared first on The Woman Formerly Known as Beautiful.

Hello all –

I was invited to perform one of my blog posts along with eleven other bloggers in honor of Mother’s Day.  The show is hosted by Expressing Motherhood and the first two nights of the show are already sold out, but I believe there are other nights (including Mother’s Day) where there are still a few seats.  Would love to meet my Los Angelino readers.  Details below:

Click on photo to buy tickets

The post L.A. Readers – I’m In A Show for Expressing Motherhood appeared first on The Woman Formerly Known as Beautiful.

I’ve just finished watching a must-see documentary currently playing on HBO by famed war correspondent and filmmaker, Sebastian Junger (War, The Perfect Storm, Restrepo) called Which Way Is The Front Line From Here: the Life and Time of Tim Hetherington.

Hetherington was a war photo-journalist killed by mortar fire in a conflict in Misrata, Libya on April 20th, 2011 during the uprising against Moammar Gadhafi.

Tim Heatherington. Photo by Sebastian Junger

I was profoundly affected by this news because of a job I had for Fox/Lifetime TV in 2008.  I was hired to write a film tentatively titled Girls of the Green Zone, a true-life story about the friendship between first-time female war correspondent Christina Asquith and an Iraqi Green Zone interpreter turned Iraqi Media Network field reporter, Gia (her name is changed to protect her identity).

Both women met in the Green Zone during the first year of the Iraq War.  I spent six days in D.C. interviewing Chris, Gia and Chris’s now-husband Jack Fairweather (then correspondent for London’s Daily Telegraph) and was both horrified and electrified to be privy to their stories.

They’d all been hard targets for assassination by the Mujahideen, Gia once being chased by a masked follower of Muqtadā al-Ṣadr who tried to behead her with a machete.  She was rescued by American PMCs just outside the Green Zone.

All three of these journalists had lost loved ones and friends to the jihadists, suicide bombers and IEDs.  Hearing their stories, some told for the very first time, gave me a treasured intimacy with them that could never be reciprocal because I didn’t have those kinds of stories to tell.  I’d never been to war.

(Sadly Girls of the Green Zone was derailed by the 2008 Writer’s Guild Strike)

Watching Which Way, Junger’s documentary about Hetherington, brought me right back to those interviews in D.C. — the rarefied world of brave, extraordinary people who do the dangerous things that need to be done — and I was so sorry to hear that the community Chris and Gia belong to had lost one of its own.

What makes Junger’s documentary so exceptional is that Hetherington is one of its narrators.  He’s a strikingly handsome man with an easy, friendly manner, an infectious laugh and a deep abiding sense of responsibility toward his subjects.

After reporting on the civil war in Liberia — his first war zone — he stayed on and lived there and in other struggling countries in East Africa for eight years as not just a journalist, but also as a mentor, teacher and humanitarian.

I find most moving Hetherington’s portraits of sleeping soldiers that were taken when he and Junger embedded with American troops at an outpost called Restrepo in the horrifically dangerous Korengal Valley in Afghanistan circa 2008.  (Their ensuing documentary garnered Junger and Hetherington an Oscar nomination in 2011)

Photo by Tim Hetherington. Korengal Valley, Afghanistan circa 2008.

Photo by Tim Hetherington

In the photographs these very young men are childlike and vulnerable, some of them sleeping in the fetal position, bringing home, on a visceral level, the reality that we are sending children to war to die.

Hetherington wasn’t simply an objective observer.  During the war campaign in Liberia he stepped in front of an armed rebel and began to negotiate for the life of a medic the rebel planned to execute.  Moments later the medic was back to treating wounded rebels.

His colleague, journalist James Brabazon, says of the incident, “Tim had the ability to just do very surprising things.  He didn’t see a division between being a photographer or a videographer or a journalist or a humanitarian or a participant.  He was just Tim.”  There is a long pause where Brabazon tries to compose himself, but tears well in his eyes.  ”It’s very hard to find that.”

Regarding Hetherington’s time embedded with the troops in Afghanistan, Hetherington says, “I’m not looking for the truth of combat as a form of conflict.  But the truth of combat as a form of bonding.”

What follows are a series of Hetherington’s photos of the young American soldiers embracing, rough housing, loving each other like a band of brothers.

Junger observes that “war is the only opportunity men have in society to love one another unconditionally.  It was the depth of emotion at war that Tim was fascinated with (…) war is very confusing to soldiers.  It’s terrible when it’s happening and then you miss it so terribly when it’s over.”

Which, perhaps, is why Hetherington couldn’t seem to give it up.  Prior to Libya he’d promised loved ones he was done with combat zones.  Was his trip to Misrata his “just one last time?”

I leave you with a stunning quote from the letter Junger wrote to his deceased friend, published in memoriam by Vanity Fair:

“You and I were always talking about risk because she was the beautiful woman we were both in love with, right? The one who made us feel the most special, the most alive? We were always trying to have one more dance with her without paying the price. All those quiet, huddled conversations we had in Afghanistan: where to walk on the patrols, what to do if the outpost gets overrun, what kind of body armor to wear. You were so smart about it, too—so smart about it that I would actually tease you about being scared. Of course you were scared—you were terrified. We both were. We were terrified and we were in love, and in the end, you were the one she chose.”

You don’t want to miss Which Way To The Front Line From Here: The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington.  Devastating as it is, it’s reassuring to know there are such impassioned, intelligent, brave gatekeepers willing to shine their light on all of the dark corners of the world.

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This post is in no way sponsored.  I’ve always been fascinated by the people who stand between civilians and chaos.

The post People Who Do the Dangerous Things That Need to be Done: Tim Hetherington appeared first on The Woman Formerly Known as Beautiful.