Fat Chance

by Deborah Blumenthal

  “What?”

  “The man looked like he was going to cry.”

  A definite prospect. “How did he find his way to the paper?”

  “Basketball scholarship to UCLA, and three years down the line he smashed his knee in a motorcycle accident. After that, he started writing about the games for the school paper and then moved to New York and started freelancing. He met Wharton through a friend in sports.”

  So it was Tamara’s first live basketball game. The Knicks were playing the Pacers. It has been a dismal season for the Knicks. A string of losses with no expectations for things to turn around. But New York sports fans refused to lose their spirit and Tamara could feel electricity in the air. Ty had a chance to corner Lattrell Sprewell before the game and they were talking about what the future looked like. While Ty talked, Tamara stood back and took a few shots of Sprewell with the camera I’d given her. She also shot Allan Houston and Howard Eisley. When they got back to their seats, Ty turned to her.

  “I think I’m getting some great shots,” she said to him excitedly.

  “I don’t know an awful lot about photography,” he said, lowering his voice and leaning close to her. “But I think it would be a good idea to take the lens cap off before you take any more pictures.”

  “I prayed for death,” she says. But then she rebounded and turned to him. “Fast eye,” she said, punching his arm. “I knew that you’d pass the test.”

  Ty looked away, stifling a laugh.

  With the lens cap wedged in her hip pocket, she took aim. She shot Sprewell and then the oft-injured Marcus Camby, deciding to concentrate on him.

  She was just about to lean down and get a second roll of film ready when her heart recorded what she saw before her eye. Camby fell hard on his side just moments after he attempted a driving layup shot along the baseline, after ramming into Jermaine O’Neal. Tamara got it all, including his crash to the floor. A crowd started to form around him, and the team doctor hurried over and kneeled beside him. It was hard to tell what was going on.

  “I ran out of the Gardens and jumped into a cab,” Tamara says. “I had to go back to the paper to find out what I had….”

  twelve

  Could there be a sexier place to take a bath than Mike Taylor’s white marble bathroom? I don’t think so. I tuck the shell-shaped bath pillow behind my head and lean back in the calm, white marble oasis, enjoying the geysers of scented water pulsating against me. If only water pressure could pelt away fat. Now, there was an idea. I reach for the seaweed soap, lather up, and then get out to write a column.

  Will We Stop At Nothing?

  How do we try to lose weight? Diet, exercise, fasts, massage, machinery. Why hasn’t anyone come up with a fat-reducing bath?

  Over the years, the overweight have made themselves victims to all sorts of harebrained schemes. Remember when your grandma went to the gym and wrapped a vibrating belt gizmo around her waist or hips hoping it would jiggle off fat? Or how about the rotating wooden rollers she pressed her thighs against to pummel off fat? (Today’s version is the mechanical massage called endermologie.) Then there were herbal capsules to dissolve cellulite (a prescription pill now takes its place) and rubberized suits decades back that connected to the hose of your vacuum so that they filled up with hot air and you schvitzed away pounds through water loss. The market seems to be perpetually reinventing the same useless products and techniques.

  When will women get it? Do we want to? Maybe saying no—even if the idea borders on the absurd—means abandoning hope, and giving up the dream.

  Work aside, I think of dinner with Taylor and tomorrow’s party. I’m not used to mingling with the beautiful people, and I have to psych myself up. Oh, I go out a lot, but mostly to give speeches, talk to women’s groups, conventions and just revisit comfortable restaurants with friends. Even when I do television, it’s the bridge-and-tunnel crowd in the audience. Not too many celebs in my circle. Where did all those physically perfect creatures hide themselves, anyway? Not at the paper, or my apartment building. They weren’t riding the subway, pushing carts at the Food Emporium, or even shopping at Bloomingdale’s. So who told the bookings editor of Men’s Health where to look for their cover boys? Or Calvin Klein? How in the world did you get access to that glorified kingdom of male pulchritude—www.hunkdatabase.com?

  I shimmy into a long sleeveless black jersey dress. Understated, unpretentious. My reddish hair just covers my shoulders and is slightly layered so that the waves frame the angles of my face. Hair—one of the few parts of the female anatomy where thickness is welcomed. For that at least, I’m grateful to my double helixes. I fasten a gold chain around my neck with a green tourmaline that matches my eyes.

  It’s the body that always haunts me, perpetually eroding my self-esteem. Even after losing weight, the mind’s eye doesn’t see it. Sort of like the phantom limb—gone, yet the sensation remains. You feel it, it itches. You live with that fixation of fat, the dark lurking shadow, despite what the scale reads or the mirror shows. You become blind to what you have become. The distorted image lodges itself behind your eyes like a bad dream, a nightmarish visitation that could never be forgotten.

  Would I ever feel secure? Comfortable with my body? Have the confidence of Jolie? Wear a bikini brief or short shorts and put myself on display? I can’t imagine ever casually flicking off a bikini top so that I wouldn’t get tan lines. But being overweight and being secure don’t go together. Maybe it has to do with the fact that you have failed repeatedly, every time you dieted, and eventually it demoralized you, robbing you of self-esteem. You hated your inability to succeed, and you hated your body.

  What does someone like Jolie agonize about? There has to be something. Big ears? A high forehead? Bony shoulders? Nail ridges? That other models are more beautiful than she is? I open the Vogue that’s on my night table—this man has thought of everything—and thumb through it. Even though the models on the magazine’s glossy pages looked perfect to my eyes, well-known models had confided to me in their letters that they felt they were fat or that they hated their looks. One said she was haunted by an offhand remark tossed her way in jest years before. You’re an ugly duckling. Someone else remembered being called pimple-face, just because she had the normal sprinkling of adolescent zits. The pimples went away, but the scars remained. Every mirror in the world reflected back the depression.

  Every woman seems plagued by body dysmorphic disorder—a fixation on some body part that they view as unsightly. Some obsess about puffy midriffs, shopping endlessly for heftier control-top panty hose and camouflage clothes. Others target their wrath on billowy thighs or loose under-arms, a fleshy face, a recessed chin, a protruding one, or worse still, a collage of imperfections, a smorgasbord of ills, that are magnified to ghastly proportions.

  The only two parts of the body that women rate more positively about themselves compared to the way men rate themselves are the lips and the ears. Ears? I don’t recall ever looking at mine closely—they are usually just buried under my hair. And lips? Finally, a place where plumpness was welcomed.

  It has occurred to me that maybe I’ve just been born in the wrong continent. If I was born in West Africa where the ideal figure is fat, I’d be a different person. There’s a contest called Hangandi, where women of the Djerma ethnic group gorge themselves and compete to weigh the most. And in southeastern Nigeria, brides are sent to fat farms for a few weeks before their weddings, and then are paraded in the streets where their fleshy figures are admired.

  Men are a different story. They’re rarely consumed with their weight, or tyrannized by the scales, from what I can see. They coast along untroubled by their defects, if they see them at all. So many of them secretly consider themselves to be borderline Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise. Even Tex.

  While I try to hide my stomach, he pats his and laughs. Of course, he doesn’t spend bathroom time peering in the mirror and pulling back the corners of his eyes to erase the crow’s feet, or stay up at night ruing
the fat pads that time and good food have put over his football player’s physique, like a thick extra layer of clothing.

  So now I’m close to my weight-loss goal. I can’t make myself taller, but oh, well, five-eight in spikes isn’t bad. My hair is well cut, a perfect color. I know how to put on makeup. I’ve got a great job. But am I happy? Well…

  Researchers found out that people have a set point for happiness, just the way their bodies have a set point for weight. And even though they shift up and down from that point, nature has mandated that they gravitate back to it like water seeking its own level. In other words, if you were the “sort of happy” type, not counting the day you won the lottery, or the time your dog died, then that was how you’d end up feeling much of the time.

  Was I happy with my looks? Ha! I felt like a lacquered Russian doll that contained smaller and smaller ones nestled inside. While the outside shows a slim, confident red-cheeked Maggie, beneath the outer lacquered babe lay the inner unhappy clones. The ones who pop up in dressing rooms with garish fluorescent lighting and wavy mirrors, or emerge outdoors in the reflections of store windows, as if magnified by a fun-house mirror. Worse still, the one who appears on the beach to watch an endless parade of women, all with better figures, who don’t have to hide under beach wraps. The dreaded creature, the unhappy clone of myself lurks beneath the surface, unseen, like a malignant cell.

  Who do I really want to look like? Jolie, with Mike, her perfect knight, sweeping her up for a spirited romp beyond a mundane reality. If only… Why do I obsessively engage in sidewalk beauty contests, evaluating other women’s figures, haircuts, makeup, skin? Inevitably, it leaves me feeling compromised.

  For tonight at least, I feel good about myself. I’m looking forward to having dinner with Taylor. What a kick to go out on his arm. Maybe it’s some newfound, if temporary, self-confidence and good cheer that came with weight loss. Or, more likely, just an upswing in the hormonal continuum that leaves me feeling that I can tackle anything that life tosses my way because I am basically smart and accomplished.

  I put makeup on that face, and slip into my snakeskin Manolos. By now, I can walk in them as though they’re Hush Puppies. I check the mirror once more, pull back my shoulders, lift my rib cage, and my chin—all to make me look slimmer and more confident—and head for the door. I pause for a moment, and then go back and grab my sunglasses. Hey, it is California.

  We aren’t arriving at the Academy Awards, just a restaurant; still, a gaggle of fans along with the ever-present paparazzi are clustered outside Spago. As soon as Taylor pulls up, cameras appear and frenzied girls seem to emerge from the shadows, slipping scraps of paper through the car window for him to autograph. He stops short.

  “Mike, I’m so in love with you, I swear. Would you sign this for me, PUHLEEZE!”

  He scrawls his name and mumbles, “Thanks.”

  “Thank YOU!” she shrieks. “I’ll keep this for the rest of my life, I swear.”

  Another tries to wedges her mouth through the window and kiss him. “I’ll go home with you,” she whispers.

  He eases back. “I’m driving the car, hon, I…” A blonde shoves her away and tries to lean into him, cleavage and all, as he’s edging the car forward. I don’t believe what I’m witnessing.

  “Do you always have this effect on teenagers?” I say, half laughing.

  “It depends. Sometimes after I make a movie, they throw food.” He leaves the car with the valet, and we duck into the restaurant. We’re ushered to a small table in the back. Taylor waves to Tom Hanks, and then leads me to a table. So maybe it isn’t just a restaurant.

  “Say hello to the dream team,” Taylor says, introducing Steven Spielberg and his entourage.

  Before we sit down, a patron with a menu in her hand comes over. “Would you sign this for my daughter? She’s madly in love with you.” Taylor obliges.

  “Don’t let me leave without an autograph,” I say. “I’m so forgetful about those things.”

  “Now you’re sticking it to me,” he says, narrowing his eyes. “What do I have to do to impress tough Maggie O’Leary from New York?”

  “Impress me? What for?”

  “So that you’ll stick around and cook for me. I’ll never forget the meatballs.”

  “You’re better off on Jolie’s waif-loss diet, it’s the only way to stay thin. If I did the cooking, your career would crash in a month. Who would love a fat heartthrob?”

  “At least I’d be fat and content.”

  “The two don’t go together much in this world,” I say, meeting his eyes. “That’s why I write a successful column, and you have the role. Being overweight is to blame for a lot of misery, and unless you’ve been there, you have no idea—”

  “I didn’t recognize you when you came off the plane,” Taylor says, finally owning up to it. “You don’t look the way you used to. What made you change? How did you do it?”

  No way am I going to admit that he was the prime motivator. I try to come up with something fast, but am saved when the waiter intervenes to take our drink order. I open the oversize menu, and put it between us like a bundling board, but he puts his hand over mine.

  “So how did you do it?”

  “It had a lot to do with someone I was seeing.” Not much of a stretch, I was seeing him, on TV, in the movies, on the net. “It’s a long story. Why don’t we order, and then we can talk about what I’m here to talk about.” So I was blowing him off, but what else could I do?

  “Business, sure.”

  I study the menu, or rather, am transfixed by it. White asparagus soup with Parmesan croutons and chive oil. Crisp potato galette with smoked sturgeon and freshly grated horseradish. Maine lobster spring roll with Chinese apricot mustard and pickled vegetables. Seared foie gras with arugula and cherry chutney. Stir-fried Chinois lamb salad with ginger, scallions and sweet soy sauce. And those were just appetizers. No wonder Jolie didn’t come. One appetizer would exceed her calorie allotment for the month. She’d have to go to Lourdes for a cure. Then, of course, there were the famous pizzas, nothing like the soggy imitations from the frozen food cases. My eye scans some of the choices: pizza with peppered Louisiana shrimp; plum tomatoes, leeks and sweet basil; pizza with artichoke, seared eggplant, caramelized garlic and shaved Parmesan.

  And the entrées—grilled white Copper River salmon with caramelized asparagus and lobster nage, crispy Mandarin quail with tangerine, pineapple glaze and Asian greens, roasted Sonoma lamb with fennel potato gratin, black olives and thyme, and on and on.

  “What’s your pleasure?” Taylor says.

  E V E R Y T H I N G. “The lobster spring roll and then the black bass.” I’ll eat slowly, savor every bite. This was above and beyond sustenance. Art. Just recognizing this is progress. I congratulate myself as if I’m a nutritionist watching over a high-maintenance patient. Here I am, about to eat food prepared by an interior designer. I appeal to a higher power—at least get spiritually filled—to help me feel that I’ve had enough.

  Taylor orders asparagus soup and the dry aged prime New York steak with arugula, grilled onion salad and crisp potato galette. Men always order the beef. Never a qualm. I look at him.

  “Foods of love. That’s what I’m writing about for Valentine’s Day.”

  “Aphrodisiacs?” His eyes widen.

  “Sort of. There are some great books about foods as aphrodisiacs. My readers love that sort of thing. Hard data may be scant, but everyone loves finding out that they’re not the only ones seduced by great food. Two psychologists in Chicago did a study years back that found that heavy women liked to have sex more often than thin ones.”

  “Now you tell me.” He looks into my eyes. “To think that all these years I’ve been hangin’ out with the wrong women. So tell me all about the foods of love.” He feigns a naughty grin. “What do you eat to fan the flames?”

  “Fowl for foul play. No…ah, let’s see, there are lots. Seafood, because of the high phosphorus content, shark-fin s
oup, don’t ask me why, but the Chinese swear by it. Then there’s the Japanese fugu fish. You do know about it?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Aka the puffer fish. It’s been a gourmet food of love in Japan for centuries. But there’s a catch—not to pun—if it’s not prepared properly, it’s deadly. It’s supposed to be so lethal that just about an ounce can kill more than fifty thousand diners. And, by the way, there are no antidotes to the poison. By law in Japan, it can only be made by chefs who have taken a course and received a license, and only about thirty percent of the chefs pass the exam. But that hasn’t stopped unlicensed chefs from preparing it, so you’re playing Russian roulette if you order it. But I guess the game and the danger turns people on.”

  Taylor takes out his cell: “Hello, Japan Airlines?”

  “There’s more,” I say. “The most potent aphrodisiac they say is made by mixing a teaspoonful of its testes with hot sake. Sounds yummy, right?”

  “You think Wolfgang knows how to make fugu?” He slaps his hand on the table. “I’m in. Fugu sake this minute.” He holds his hand up with a dramatic flourish as if he were summoning a waiter. I’m enjoying this.

  “What else, what other foods?”

  “I’ll give you the column as soon as I write it. I can’t give away all my secrets.”

  “Promise me you’ll make me a Valentine’s dinner using all that stuff. A steaming pot of it, okay?”

  “Why do you need me? You mean to tell me that you don’t have your own fugu chef? I can’t believe that. I thought everyone in Hollywood did. Make sure that’s written into your next contract.” Neither of us says anything as the food is served. Then Taylor looks up.

  “You love to make fun of us out here, don’t you?” He shakes his head. “Betcha can’t wait to get home to your snowy city, and tell all your friends how you goofed on us.” I look back at him. Nobody is ever completely kidding.