This is an embarrassing story. But I'm going to tell it anyway, because I swore I'd always tell all the things that happen, good, bad, and slightly humiliating because they expose parts of myself that I would really rather keep hidden away, and keep you thinking I am a nice girl with a pleasant personality who can really dance, possibly like a motherfucker.

So I went to the dentist this morning. I am not an early riser. The morning and I, we were never best friends, and we never will be. The appointment was at 8:00 a.m., and I had to get up at 6:30 a.m., except I got up at 7:15 a.m., and I was very late. These are the excuses I have for you, for not really thinking about what I was wearing first to a dentist appointment, and then to work for 8 hours, and then to another doctor's appointment because I am extremely high-maintenance. What I wore, see, was a dress I like to wear out to bars, and parties, and clubs, and the whorehouse. It's a blue babydoll dress, and it is cut pretty much down to my navel. Okay, not my navel. But close enough. It is a dress that is not appropriate for the dentist's office, work, or the doctor's office. It is--how you say?--boobalicious. Boobtacular. I got a lot of tits in this dress.

I didn't think about it at all, because I was so late, and so not down with being alive at ridiculous o'clock, and so busy charging up Powell Street, dodging tourists and hating the lack of coffee in my life, because really, how fucking unfair is that? So when I got to the office five minutes late, and tore off my coat to throw in the closet and realized that I had just almost flashed the entire waiting room, I felt deeply, spectacularly, wildly uncomfortable and pretty damn stupid, too. I did some surreptitious tucking and lifting and yanking upwards, but all the yanking and tucking and lifting in the world, it does not do much in this dress cut down to my navel.

My solution was to brazen it out. That's right, people. Here I am, in your dental office, and here too are my breasts. Please enjoy! Except I booked it down the hallway and leaped into the dental chair and crossed my arms over my chest and the dental assistant bibbed me up, and then I was decent. It felt important to be decent, because my dentist is an awesome, extremely sweet guy who is very fatherly toward me. Not in that condescending, there's my stupid little girl with her stupid little girl brain kind of way, but just kind and concerned, you know? My dad is not supposed to look at my boobs.

We fast-forward through the procedure (quick and easy, my ass) and they un-bib me and I stand up and stretch. He turns from putting his tools away, and he does a double take. An actual, literal, double-take. His eyes dropped down to my breasts, and got big, and then he looked at my mouth, and then he snapped back to making eye contact so desperately, I could feel the waves of concentration and panic emanating from each of his little dentist pores. I stood there, and chatted pleasantly with him, and realized, suddenly, that I didn't feel self-conscious, or stupid, or uncomfortable. I believed it. And I liked it.

I liked that look in his eyes. I liked the way I had disconcerted him. I liked that instant of bone-deep interest, so to speak, that spark of attraction from this previously unflappable man. I was standing there, feeling unquestionably and without a doubt, sexy. Hot. Attractive and attracting, in a way I had never felt before, with a rush of power that I was definitely enjoying.

And that's where the embarrassment comes in, on so many levels. On a basic level, I mean, what the hell was I doing, standing in a dentist's office and feeling sassy at 9:00 in the morning? Discomfiting a nice guy? And what was I doing, enjoying it? How was that possible, that I had become that purely and utterly vain, that arrogant, so utterly convinced of my own gorgeousness? That is not me. That has never been me, and it staggered me.

Do not get me wrong, please--through the whole of my life, no matter my size, I've had moments where I've felt undeniably lovely, and beautiful and attractive. I've felt crazy-sexy and unstoppable. But that word there, "undeniable." That's not actually true at all. At every moment, even when I was feeling best about myself, there has been an undercurrent of insecurity, of instability and unreality. That, at any moment, someone could take that all away from me and refute that feeling I had. They could point out that I was fat, and that would kick the support out from under me, and send me tumbling down, with no hope of recovery at all. I could be solid gold, from the tip of my head to the tips of my toes, but with a black blemish of an Achilles heel, winking there, above my wedge sandals.

I would find someone attractive. They would find me attractive in return. And that chorus in my head would start up in three-part harmony--is it because they think I am beautiful? Or do they think I am beautiful for a fat girl? It's an insidious earworm.

This was so different, this weird and ridiculous moment. There was no doubt in my head, there was no one who could tell me I was wrong, and shortly after I liked it, I hated it. I wanted to put on a sweater--preferably a really baggy sweater that fell to my knees and not be looked at, because this shit is dangerous. This is volatile. This feels deadly. How do people go around having rock-solid, unshakable self-esteem, all the time? I mean, I don't suddenly believe that I am the shit and you can't mess with this, not at all, but people are reacting to me more positively with every day that passes and you can imagine by now, I'm sure, how much that pisses me off. And now, you can imagine how much I like it.