Fat Girl Walking: Sex, Food, Love, and Being Comfortable in Your Skin…Every Inch of It

by Brittany Gibbons

  “Is everything okay?” he whispered as I sat down beside him on the long white sofa.

  “Super okay,” I lied. “I’m so happy to be here.”

  We had dinner on the sunporch, ignoring the formal dining room table that was perpetually set with full china and stemware. His parents asked me about school and what classes I enjoyed. I talked about the musicals I had performed in and the part-time job I held busing tables at the local Mexican cantina. Beads of sweat ran down my back as Andy and his father talked about golf and the latest electronics. I smiled and followed along, every so often playing with the hair I’d spent an hour straightening that was now frizzy and wet underneath. It wasn’t that his parents weren’t welcoming; it was more that the welcome felt temporary. I was okay as a girlfriend, for now. But as they talked about upcoming trips they were taking and Andy going off to college the next year, it became clear that beyond this moment, there would be no room for me.

  Andy walked me to the white Ford Taurus I’d borrowed from my mom, and kissed me as I leaned against the driver’s-side door.

  “So, are you really naked under this jacket?” he asked, slowly pulling up the bottom hem.

  “No.” I swatted at his hand. “I didn’t know what to say. I’m so embarrassed. I can’t believe she told you.” I buried my face in his shoulder.

  From that point on, we spent the majority of our time at my house. Not because his parents banned me from their home after allegedly showing up naked under a jacket like some sort of French hooker, but because I needed another place to feel uncomfortable like I needed a hole in my head. My parents were burly and my house crowded and unkempt, but I was used to the noise, and when I was there, I didn’t feel like I didn’t fit in.

  About a year into our relationship, as my father lumbered out of the bathroom in his high-waisted underwear I turned to ask Andy for the thousandth time, “Seriously, why do you like me, again?” And he would laugh, brush the Great Dane hair and slobber from his nicely pressed Izod shirt, and kiss me.

  As much as our lives had nothing in common, Andy and I shared a common desire: we both wanted out. Andy, from the shadow of his brother, ten years his senior, who set the precedent for high grades, college scholarships, and a successful military career. Me, from being the primary mental caretaker of two parents and a revolving brood of six to ten dogs. Many of our dates consisted of us lying together on the wobbly wooden deck of the broken-down aboveground pool in my backyard, looking up at the stars, smoking a joint, and talking about leaving home.

  “My brother joined the air force in college,” he’d tell me. “Now he lives on base in Colorado Springs in a free house with his wife.”

  “That sounds perfect,” I’d answer, not really sure if this vision included me or not.

  “You wouldn’t even have to work if you didn’t want to.” He said this with a smile, answering the question that hung in the air above our heads. I couldn’t tell if it was because he made me feel beautiful or because I knew he was going to help me leave; either way, I loved him.

  “I love you, you know,” I said staring up at the sky, the words coming out too high and shaky, making my ears ring as I said them.

  “Really?” he asked, rolling up on his side to look at me.

  “Yes,” I sighed, staring into his ice-blue eyes and pushing the shaggy black hair out of his face.

  “Well I love you, too.” He smiled.

  “Good,” I answered, sitting up, “because I wasn’t going to give you your first blow job unless you said it back.”

  “Uh, it’s your first, too, right?” he asked, his voice fast and nervous.

  “Does it really matter?” I asked as I unzipped his jeans and sank my head down low into his lap.

  “Not anymore,” he moaned, letting his head fall back onto the damp wood of the deck, covering his face with his hands.

  And really, who wants to be the person someone learns to give their first blow job on, anyway?

  6

  COLLEGE, I DON’T KNOW WHY I’M HERE, EITHER?

  THE WORST DECISION I ever made was to go to college.

  In my head, I totally imagined myself getting some sort of honorary doctorate and having my student loans wiped cleaned based on the success of this book, but fuck it, I’m going to keep this real. Don’t go to college. It’s the absolute worst and it will ruin your life and you’ll never have good enough credit to own things, ever. Learn a trade or invent Facebook. College is for dummies.

  When I’m asked to speak at a high school or event, I always try to open with this little nugget of wisdom, but the organizers shut me down, all yeah this feels like maybe it’s the incorrect message to spread to young people.

  Let’s try this again: if you decide to go to college, which is fine because I’m not the boss of you and you can do what you want, even if what you want is to make really stupid financial decisions, know that it’s totally okay to have no idea what you want to do once you get there. In fact, college or not, that’s a general life rule. You are allowed to float around having no damned idea what you want to do with yourself, with no actual time frame in which you need to figure it out. People, like your parents or your boyfriend, will act like you have a time frame, but it’s all a ruse to get you to move out of your bedroom or pay your share of the rent. Take your time. Just remember this: college is the most expensive place to be confused in the whole entire world.

  Congratulations! We are delighted to offer you admission to The Ohio State University for Fall 1999 as a Freshman. Your hard work and determination have earned you a spot in The Ohio State University Class of 2004! Since admission to The Ohio State University is a selective process, you should take pride in this accomplishment.

  In accordance with the plan of Andy and me to leave our hometown and never come back, I applied and was accepted into The Ohio State University, a Big Ten college located in Columbus, Ohio. It’s one of the country’s largest schools; I went from a graduating class of 120 to over sixty thousand. I’m going to pause here in case you are a Buckeyes fan, because I can already feel you getting giddy and spazzy on the edge of your seat waiting for me to bellow “O-H” in your direction, so O-H!

  If you are not a Buckeyes fan, whether it’s because you don’t follow college football or you think our team is made up of a bunch of cheating, overrated criminals, forget I said anything.

  Now, I don’t want to sound all small-town beauty pageant right here, but at the time, getting accepted into college was pretty amazing. I was the first in my family to go, and one of only a handful of members of my graduating class moving away. Putting aside that I was playing the insecure-girlfriend card when I decided to attend the same college as my boyfriend, I was pretty proud of the accomplishment, and things started off great. I had a cute dorm room on the south campus and was assigned a perfectly normal roommate named Sarah. At that time Sarah was majoring in Spanish and dating a migrant farmworker named Arron (you have to roll the rr when you say it) who spoke no English and sat stoically on her twin bed and stared at me while I studied. I couldn’t figure out if he hated me or was genuinely curious about my American ways. Sarah told me he had some disorder that made him sleep with his eyes open, so it wasn’t that he didn’t like me, he was just napping.

  I began my college career majoring in early childhood education, because in my head, I liked kids. Also, every career aptitude test I took in high school came up inconclusive. I was actually fired from my first job as a busgirl at a Mexican restaurant after my thirty-day review, in which I was described as “aloof, distracted, and bad at carrying things like glasses or sharp knives.” I was lacking direction and working with small children seemed like a fun job, until I volunteered at a local homeless shelter near campus. While playing hot potato with a group of kids, the adorable little girl I was holding turned around and threw up into my open mouth.

  I immediately stood up, rinsed my face off in the sink, and ran to the Student Health Center demanding to be tested for every disease
in existence, not because she was homeless, but because another human being had vomited into my mouth. I feel the need to clarify that point. I just walk around assuming all people who are not me have infectious diseases and contagious open sores, whether they are homeless or not.

  The next day I went to the arts and sciences department to switch my major to Undecided, but opted at the last minute to go with English, which my school advisor explained as being basically the same thing.

  A SERIES OF BLIND DATES

  I was lucky early on in that my college advisor, Jemma, realized I was a bit of a flight risk, and decided to help pave the way to my future adult career using glossy brochures and fancy metaphors.

  “Think of internships as career blind dates,” she said excitedly.

  Jemma felt that the best way for me to actually figure out if I wanted to do something for the rest of my life was to nibble on it for eight to ten weeks before realizing it tasted like an old diaper and then lighting it on fire and watching it burn to the ground. Which happens to be how all seven of my internships ended, by the way.

  Event planner. My first internship was for a nonprofit agency that was planning its yearly fund-raising event at a downtown art gallery. Throwing parties for a living seemed like a dream job, and how else to guarantee being invited, than to be the one making the list? The night of the event I spent fourteen hours in heels yelling at caterers and band directors, all the while being berated through a tiny Britney Spears headset by a small Australian woman named Natasha. The only fun I had that night was after the guests left and I smoked pot with the Mexican kitchen staff out back. I asked them if they knew Arron (you have to roll the rr when you say it), and they did not.

  Lawyer. I got this internship at the height of popularity of The Practice, when plus-size powerful women in smart suits were a thing—high-five Camryn Manheim. The red flag should have been that every young lawyer I encountered in the firm silently mouthed the words “Do Not Go to Law School” to me from their shared offices, but it wasn’t until I experienced how inherently boring real court hearings were and that nobody actually looked like Dylan McDermott that I realized I couldn’t do this for the rest of my life.

  Reporter. The summer after my sophomore year in college I scored an internship as a summer reporter for a local ABC News affiliate. I was really excited to have been chosen for this opportunity. I mean, who doesn’t want to be famous and on television? So, okay, fine, I wasn’t actually on camera, but the people I held the microphone up to as I asked questions didn’t know that. To them, I was a fancy TV reporter. My excitement began to dull after a few weeks of writing copy aimed at the lowest common denominator, with absolutely no artistic license.

  John, the anchor: This weekend Worthington is hosting their third annual community dog wash in the park. I guess they don’t call it the dog days of summer for nothing.

  Shannon, the other anchor: Oh John, you are hilarious.

  I was eventually “fired” after I forgot to bring a pen with me to interview the manager of McDonald’s about the exciting new launch of bratwurst, so the only note I took was writing “McWeiners” on my notepad in eyeliner. According to my supervisor, you can’t be serious about news without a pen.

  Radio DJ. I actually really loved this job. I worked on a morning radio show, and the main hosts were crude and funny. Having an internship at a radio station was like showing up every day to a game of Truth or Dare; I was able to write funny bits and was rewarded for pranks and general debauchery. It also did wonders for my self-esteem as my coworkers spent their time on the clock wearing pajamas and eating fast food. Unfortunately for me, the consensus was that I didn’t have an interesting enough dialect for radio and that nobody wants to live in a world where every other song I played is by Hall & Oates.

  Public relations. I thought that PR meant working for a band or celebrity, but in Ohio, working in public relations meant putting a pretty face on a local metal manufacturer who might or might not be destroying Earth and killing polar bears with pollutants. Also, being in public relations isn’t a good choice if the person who is having a meltdown is usually you.

  Newspaper columnist. I get genuinely sad when I think about the dying industry that is print news. Sure it’s dated and irrelevant, but seeing your byline in print is a surreal life experience, even if your byline happens to be in the obituaries section. Side note: lots of people die in farm machinery accidents in Ohio. Deadliest Harvest. How is there not a Discovery show about this yet?

  Jemma sat at her desk perplexed. I’d spent a year and two summer quarters trying on different jobs, and none of them felt like home. I think we both began to wonder if the issue was the job, or just my poor work ethic.

  “What do you want to do,” she asked. “Right now.”

  “Write a book. Be on Saturday Night Live. Maybe meet Bill Murray,” I answered confidently.

  “Yes, but these aren’t things you go to college for,” Jemma explained. Finally we were on the same page.

  “I know. I don’t know why I’m here, either.”

  Finally the truth was out. I’d followed a boy here and wanted to get away from my parents so badly that I’d taken out tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to do it. But Jemma was determined and began pensively clicking around her computer screen.

  “How do you feel about politics?” she asked, twirling a black braid between her fingers.

  “Al Gore is really hot and I’m pro-choice?”

  “Perfect, the state capitol is hiring interns for the House,” she explained. “There are a few Democrat openings; wanna try it?” She blinked at me expectantly.

  YOU CAN CALL ME MONICA, IF YOU WANT TO

  The names in this section have been omitted because I don’t feel like being murdered by the Secret Service.

  When I reached the designated floor of the Ohio Statehouse, the elevator doors opened to a sign reading “Majority” and pointing to the left down a beautifully painted corridor with gold-framed pictures of old men, satin couches with fluffy throw pillows, and vases of flowers on every table.

  Below that sign was a plaque that read “Minority” and pointed to the hallway to the right, which looked nothing like the majority’s entryway, but instead resembled the kind of third-world hostel you see in documentaries about people being kidnapped and sold as sex slaves. I rechecked the wrinkled Post-it in my hand.

  The Representative. Ask for Maggie.

  I made my way down the dimly lit hallway until it opened to a large wooden desk manned by a small young woman with brown curly hair and cat eye glasses.

  “You must be Brittany.” She stood enthusiastically. “I’m Maggie, the Representative’s executive assistant.”

  Maggie showed me around the offices, introducing me to various levels of assistants and assistant assistants and filling me in on political gossip. Our half of the floor was a maze of gray cubicles emitting a low murmur of tired voices in cheap business suits, answering phone calls and typing nonsense into decade-old technology. It was moist and depressing, and where I would be spending my entire spring quarter.

  She walked me to my cubicle, which was a bit of a shithole, literally. Across the fuzzy inner walls it had brown stains that resembled feces or dried blood. I don’t want to think about what might have gone down in there before I started. Maggie explained how to work the phone system and the computer. Due to my class schedule, I was coming in during the afternoons, so the majority of my work would take place after the other staffers had left and the phones were shut off, but my primary tasks were to take and document constituent calls, open and sort the mail, and put the day’s files away.

  “Will I get a chance to meet the Representative?” I asked. After all, wasn’t that why I was here, to see if being him was awesome?

  “Oh no, he isn’t around in the afternoons. He’s here in the morning, then that’s it. Lots of meetings and hearings to attend,” she chirped, and then double-checking that I was okay, left me to get settled.
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  Weeks passed, and the only glimpse I got of the Representative was from the framed pictures in his office as I dropped the armfuls of mail on his desk. He was a tall black man, somewhat heavyset, with sad, dark eyes, a thick graying mustache, and huge hands. He’d met President Clinton and dined with world leaders and beauty queens.

  The intern work was boring and uneventful, starting off each day with a hefty bout of constituent calls regarding property line disputes, unfilled potholes, and rising crime crates, finishing off my time by opening hundreds of pieces of mail, sorting it into piles based on importance, and distributing it accordingly. Running America was monotonous.

  “You know what, Mrs. Miller, I can take a message on that, but the local government actually has very little say in who wins Top Chef.”

  “No, Mr. Lords, Ohio has no concrete plans to secede from the Union at this time. But I will absolutely take a message.”

  “I agree, Mr. Perez, your neighbor sounds like a total jerk. Now, is the dick he’s spray painting on your privacy fence an actual penis or just the word dick, and yes, it matters.”

  When I was sure everyone had gone home for the day, I’d sneak into the representative’s office to open and sort mail from the comfort of his giant mahogany desk and cool leather spinny chair. The floor was stuffy and humid, and the air-conditioning in his office was a welcome relief from the sweat and smell so I made myself at home next to a picture of him playing basketball with some old white guy and chatted with my mom on speakerphone, because it was mid-month and I’d long since drank away all my cell phone bill money. It was during a particularly passionate retelling of the Sex and the City finale when the representative walked into his office wearing a black tuxedo under a long black trench coat.