Ever since I can remeber I have loved Marilyn Monroe, something that baffles me as I usually cannot tolerate women who are so overtly sexual. But there was something different about her, something unique....something 'fragile'. It's 46 years since her death, Marilyn was also tormented by a long battle with depression - perhaps this is what drew me to her? I’m approaching the age she was when she died, when they found her body that morning, lying naked on her bed wearing nothing but Chanel no 5. Thirty six. Thirty six years old and something’s got to give, the failed marriages....the failed pregnancies. I can see it in her face, or maybe it was all just part of the act, the final act. They say that to be in her presence was to feel as though you were the only person in the room. There was something so soft about her and devoid of edges, like sweet dough that you could shape into just about anything you desired. In stillness I can sense her, can almost feel her lift right up off the page, I know I’m not the only one yet she makes you feel as though you might be, that’s part of her magic, that’s Marilyn.
Letting me in on the final scene, I stare through a gap from her mirror cloaked in cashmere and she takes over – ‘take one’.
I reach for my old familiar friends – the barbiturates and the telephone, neither of which seemed to work anymore. The body has worked up a tolerance, and so have my friends. But I’ve been saving up for this one. I was once just plain old Norma with a mother in a psychiatric hospital; and I guess she’s still out there.......somewhere. But they made me forget her; they tried to make me forget everything.
There’s someone in the room – a large lurking figure in the corner and I can hear their voices buzzing about my head, ‘who let you in?’, ‘who invited you? ‘You see that blood you carry? That’s not your own!’- ‘I want to see you squashed flat, a mere mark on the wall you thieves, you PARASITES’, yet I’m too weak to even raise my hand. But it’s just the full length mirror staring at the opposite wall. Standing there covered by clothes, patiently waiting to be unveiled in moments when I think I can brave myself – the white hair and the lines, so many lines, lines that haven’t always been there. Lately I try to forget it’s even there, I cannot bear its lies – its betrayal. And the voices, I can’t explain the voices but lets just say that they’re always there, ready to strike - if I listen long enough. So here I am at thirty six – a bottle in one hand, the phone in the other and the sounds from the street outside are fading and it’s dark, so dark and cold and no one knows but me.
This is all taking longer than I’d thought; I wished I’d turned the heat on so I wouldn’t feel so cold. It’s early August and I just didn’t plan on it being this cold, but I guess this is what happens when you cut to the basics and you’re shut to the core. Too late now, I couldn’t move even if I tried. How long till someone finds me? Till someone misses me? Will it be tomorrow? What will become of all my things? Will they be put on display and sold at auction to the highest bidder? Surely Lee won’t let that happen. No, he’d never let that happen.
Perhaps they’ll miss me when I’m gone? They’ll look for traces of me in other young girls – in a curve of the hip or in a bottle of peroxide. They’ll dress her up in a similar fashion and have her strike a familiar pose. I wonder if they’ll sew her skin into their clothes with their needle and thread and have her change her name.
Who knows maybe in another time; decades down the track there’ll be some girl somewhere running into forty but holding onto thirty who thinks she can hear me – even if only in a whisper, an echo. It may be that she’ll see an image of me, that one taken by Newman just this year – the one where I look so sad, so fragile, so old. She’ll see it and think she knows me, thinks she understands me, but she doesn’t really .......do you?
Letting me in on the final scene, I stare through a gap from her mirror cloaked in cashmere and she takes over – ‘take one’.
I reach for my old familiar friends – the barbiturates and the telephone, neither of which seemed to work anymore. The body has worked up a tolerance, and so have my friends. But I’ve been saving up for this one. I was once just plain old Norma with a mother in a psychiatric hospital; and I guess she’s still out there.......somewhere. But they made me forget her; they tried to make me forget everything.
There’s someone in the room – a large lurking figure in the corner and I can hear their voices buzzing about my head, ‘who let you in?’, ‘who invited you? ‘You see that blood you carry? That’s not your own!’- ‘I want to see you squashed flat, a mere mark on the wall you thieves, you PARASITES’, yet I’m too weak to even raise my hand. But it’s just the full length mirror staring at the opposite wall. Standing there covered by clothes, patiently waiting to be unveiled in moments when I think I can brave myself – the white hair and the lines, so many lines, lines that haven’t always been there. Lately I try to forget it’s even there, I cannot bear its lies – its betrayal. And the voices, I can’t explain the voices but lets just say that they’re always there, ready to strike - if I listen long enough. So here I am at thirty six – a bottle in one hand, the phone in the other and the sounds from the street outside are fading and it’s dark, so dark and cold and no one knows but me.
This is all taking longer than I’d thought; I wished I’d turned the heat on so I wouldn’t feel so cold. It’s early August and I just didn’t plan on it being this cold, but I guess this is what happens when you cut to the basics and you’re shut to the core. Too late now, I couldn’t move even if I tried. How long till someone finds me? Till someone misses me? Will it be tomorrow? What will become of all my things? Will they be put on display and sold at auction to the highest bidder? Surely Lee won’t let that happen. No, he’d never let that happen.
Perhaps they’ll miss me when I’m gone? They’ll look for traces of me in other young girls – in a curve of the hip or in a bottle of peroxide. They’ll dress her up in a similar fashion and have her strike a familiar pose. I wonder if they’ll sew her skin into their clothes with their needle and thread and have her change her name.
Who knows maybe in another time; decades down the track there’ll be some girl somewhere running into forty but holding onto thirty who thinks she can hear me – even if only in a whisper, an echo. It may be that she’ll see an image of me, that one taken by Newman just this year – the one where I look so sad, so fragile, so old. She’ll see it and think she knows me, thinks she understands me, but she doesn’t really .......do you?
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