TEN (1/1)
___________________________________________________________25 CONTROVERSIAL QUOTES FROM THE STYLE EMPRESSOn being a workaholic:“A woman who’s not working is a princess.A woman who works is a Queen.”Sandara Park__________________________________________________ I’M NOT SURE I’M READY TO HEAR about her old flame, the one who hurt her so bad in the past she’s still carrying a torch for him after all these years. I hope it’s not a first love. How can you measure up to a first love? How can you beat that? How can you surpass it? I want to extinguish the flames of that torch. So I’m going to sit here and hold her and listen to her and forget about my own feelings. Her feelings matter more. “I met him when I already made my first 100 million. He was a supermodel.” I inwardly groan. Okay, extremely good-looking. Thank God I don’t know shit about the fashion industry. I don’t want to put a face to this motherfucker who figured big in her life before, whose memories are preventing me from entering her heart completely. “I was twenty-six.” “You were a late-bloomer.” “I know. I wasn’t exactly a ravishing beauty in high school, you know. I was so big, like big and was a constant target of bullies. Nobody even invited me to the prom.” My arms wrap tighter around her. I want to time travel and rain a shitstorm on those bullies and ask her to the prom. I’ve never attended one myself but for her, I would. “My parents divorced when I was six and my mother ran off with her lover to France and stayed there for years, contacting me only during my birthdays. She eventually married her French boyfriend. My father hated her and would constantly trashtalk her I had no good image of my mother while growing up. He remarried shortly and had two kids with his second wife all in two years. Needless to say, I was an excess baggage in his new family unit. His second wife hated my presence and made me feel like an outsider in my father’s house everyday.” “Am I hearing Cinderella here?” I tease her to lighten the pain she must be feeling in reliving this. It’s effective. She laughs a little. “Yeah, something like that but circa twenty-first century. So, you’ve read Cinderella?” “Yeah. Wicked stepmother and stepsisters. Thank God there’s a gallant prince for Dara.” I tickle her ear. She giggles. “A boy who read fairy tales. I find that kind of…uhmm.” “What.” “Sissy.” “There you go with your double standards again. A girl reads Game of Thrones and she’s smart and badass for digging warfare and politics. A boy reads Cinderella and he’s a sissy. Do you see the injustice there?” “GOT versus Cinderella is not a good comparison. But I get your point. I don’t know who fucked up gender perception. Do you?” “Good question but we’ll save that discussion for another time.” “Cinderella? Really? Why not Joan of Arc?” “I loved Joan of Arc, too, but to pacify your chauvinistic and may I add, misogynistic perception, Mother used to read fairy tales to me and improvise, adding dragons, anacondas, giant tigers and all kinds of scary monsters to be slain by the prince before he finds Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty or Rapunzel. I enjoyed those stories.” “Oh. Your mother is really something.” “That she is. Go on, baby.” “My stepmother was very beautiful and so were her children. I didn’t know why they hated me because I tried so hard to make them like me, at least. I was obedient, respectful, didn’t talk much, painfully shy.” “Maybe they actually saw your beauty and resented you for it.” She snorts. “They all thought I was ugly and told me so in very creative ways. My father was blind to everything they were doing to me, or maybe he knew but chose to ignore it. I guess he didn’t want to displease his wife more than anything.” “The list of people I dislike in your life is growing. Your father’s topping the chart, so far.” She sighs. “I guess he was weak. That’s probably why my mother left him in the first place. I developed a bad eating habit out of my depression. At 15, I was over two hundred pounds. I struggled with my weight all through high school, but I didn’t want to show how insecure I was, how bad I felt about myself. I was a straight A student, the team leader of the debate team, the campus paper’s editor-in-chief. I compensated my lack of confidence in my looks with my brains.” I kiss her shoulder. It seems the only thing I can do right now to make her feel I’m with her, that I empathize with her. “I’ve always been artistic and was fascinated with clothes and dress-making even when I was a kid. I used to sew dresses for my dolls and even made jackets for our dogs. In grade school, I sewed a lot of bags and purses for my classmates. I even designed gowns for my friends and dresses for my sisters. At least my sisters recognized my talent and they were happy to wear my clothes while mocking me that I can never wear my own creations because I won’t fit in them.” “Your sisters are worse than Cinderella’s.” “Each to their own wickedness, I guess. My dad and my stepmother knew my inclinations so I was shocked when I said I wanted to pursue fashion designing at Parsons, my father adamantly refused to support me. He wanted me to be an accountant, like him.” “Nothing against accountants but I guess your dad was miserable and he wanted company. Counting other people’s debts is boring.” She laughs a little. “He was making good money and told me I’d never amount to anything as a fashion designer. Maybe he also thought it was an irony I was designing beautiful clothes when I couldn’t even walk properly. I was so fat I waddled—” I cover her mouth with my hand. “If you say fat one more time, I’m going to spank you.” She turns her head to kiss my chin. “You’re just being nice, but it was my reality for a long time. Anyway, I had a row with my stepmother after graduation and I couldn’t take all the verbal abuse anymore. I would have preferred it if she just hit me rather than hearing it over and over how disgusted she was with my looks. I harbored bitterness towards my mother for leaving me to suffer on my own but I swallowed my pride and wrote to her. I begged her to bring me to France.” “I swear if I see your stepmother now, I’m going to drop her ass in a vat of Elmer’s glue.” She laughs again. “Then you’re meaner than my stepmother.” “So, you went to France?” “Uh-huh. I was seventeen and it was a whole new world for me. My mother and I haven’t seen each other for a decade and it was a struggle for both of us to reconnect. I barely remembered her and she already had a daughter of her own too, a popular teen in Paris during that time, a ramp model. She’s actually her stepdaughter, her husband’s child from a previous relationship, but my mother raised her as her own. Yup, I was always competing with my parents’ pretty daughters, but of course, I was never in their beauty zone. But I’m glad for my stepsister, Bom. At first I was secretly jealous of her that she got all my mother’s love when she was young and I had nothing from my own mother, but she was so kind to me I couldn’t help but truly love her. She’s still very much in my life right now. I’m closer to her than with my own mother.” “Then I wanna meet her, too.” “She’s engaged now,” she quickly adds. I grin in her hair. “I wasn’t planning on hitting on your stepsister. I dig this particular sister like no other.” I cup her knockers and squeeze gently for emphasis. I hear her snort. I thumb her nipples. She moans. “Don’t distract me with sex. I’m spilling my guts here.” My hands fall back from her luscious breasts and I link our fingers again. “I’ll behave. Go on, baby.” “Well, Paris was the most exciting place for a young, aspiring designer like me. I tagged along with Bom during her go-sees.” “What’s a go-see?” “It’s a modeling jargon. When designers want to choose models who’d wear their collections in fashion shows, they’d arrange a go-see. Models show up and get checked out. Bom did a lot of that and landed many gigs. I served as her assistant and stylist, doing her make-up and choosing her clothes.” “You didn’t go to college?” “When I left my father’s house, he cut any financial support for me. My mother had a blue collar job and couldn’t afford to send me to college. Even Bom started modeling after high school to save up for her college education. I didn’t want to impose on my stepfather. I was just grateful he welcomed me into his family. He’s a good man, soft spoken, simple.” “Glad you didn’t have Cinderella Volume Two in France.” “Well, what I had was Bridget Jones Diary, only multiply her ex-BF Daniel’s assholery level to ten.” “I don’t think I know Bridget’s story.” “I don’t expect you to. It’s a famous chic book. Made into several movies.” “Can we skip the Daniel’s-assholery-level-times-ten episode?” “But that’s where the shit got worse.” “Okay, make it quick and simple so I won’t have enough reason to plot his excruciating death. But wait, the shit got worse in his episode? I’m going to kill him.” “I thought you’re a forgiving person.” “I can forgive transgressions done to me, but done to you…I don’t know, baby.” I feel her fingers tighten around mine. I know, I feel what it means. She believes I care. It warms me inside that she does. It’s very important to me that she does. “I met Yunho during one of Bom’s ramp gigs.” “Is he the asshole?” “No. He was my first love.” “Okay… and?” “He saw me painting Bom’s face and he approached us and proposed a collaborative work with us. He was a professional photographer and doing a coffee table book on body art. Of course, we agreed. We shot at his studio in Paris. During that time, Bom had a BF. Yunho and I had some kind of chemistry. I believed we had one.Our minds met on many levels. Our shared interest in art glued as together. He was my first kiss.” “I don’t like this part.” “Why?” “Your first kiss. Was it good?” “Yes, it was. Yunho was a great kisser.” “Okay, can we go to the asshole’s episode now? You seem to have fond memories of Yunho. I don’t wanna hear any more about his great kisses.”