The Art of Starving

by Sam J. Miller

  Tariq groaned and stood up. “You’re all a bunch of ugly little hobbits, and we need to stop talking about that wack-ass movie right now.”

  I tuned out their halfhearted objections. I focused on my secret boyfriend, his dark hair and mighty scowl in the late twilight and the back-glare of Bastien’s headlights. His charcoal-gray hoodie, the softest object in the known universe. His huge hands, thumbs hooked into his belt loops.

  And then I focused my powers on the two boys beside me in the truck. The connections between them, the thick and complex coil of bonds that stretched from Bastien to Ott and back again. Bright feelings and dark ones, some too strange and complicated to decipher, but others stark and simple and raw. Ott’s feelings of inadequacy beside his smart and funny friend; Bastien’s guilt and pity toward the poor buddy he’d soon abandon for college and the decent life his father’s privilege would buy for him.

  Tariq plucked a soccer ball from the bed of the truck and proceeded to work it like a hacky sack. Kicking it straight up, keeping it in the air through nimble leaps and leg thrusts and judicious application of shoulders and chest and back. I watched, transfixed, barely seeing the ball.

  “You know what I’m looking forward to?” Ott asked. “Like, in life? Bar fights.”

  “Bar fights?” Tariq asked, palming the ball and pulling a bent cigarette pack from his back pocket.

  “Yeah!” Ott said, high and happy and out of his mind. “Don’t you think that’ll be something? Getting drunk, legally, with a bunch of people, and then when you see something you don’t like? Being able to do something about it.”

  “I feel like, overall?” Bastien said. “Avoiding getting hit is a pretty good life goal.”

  “You only say that because you’ve never been hit,” Tariq said, lighting two cigarettes and handing me one. I could taste the wet of his lips when I put it between my own.

  “Maybe,” Bastien said.

  “Wait, what?” Ott’s voice was high and shocked.

  “What do you mean, what?” Bastien said.

  “Oh, here we go,” Tariq said. He went back to the soccer ball. The cigarette bounced between his lips as he moved.

  “Have you never been in a fight?”

  “No,” Bastien said. “Am I supposed to be ashamed of that?”

  “Never been punched in the face?”

  “No.”

  Ott howled and leaped up to stand beside Tariq. “You’re kidding me. You’re lying—right? That’s a joke?”

  “No. What, that’s supposed to make me less of a man or something? Because I don’t look forward to getting in fights?”

  Ott stared at his best friend, mouth open, face askew, his grasp of the English language inadequate to express what he was thinking. Seeing, perhaps, just how wide the gulf between them truly was. Reminded again of how different they were; forced to contemplate the possibility that maybe he simply did not know the person he liked the best in the world.

  Or maybe he was just passing gas.

  “I’m going to punch you in the face,” Ott said.

  Bastien laughed. “No, you’re not.”

  “Yeah I am. I have to! You can’t go through life without knowing what that’s like. I’m doing you a favor.”

  “Stop playing.”

  “No one’s playing,” Ott said, and stepped into a fighter’s stance.

  “Holy shit,” Bastien said. “You’re really serious?”

  “Stand up.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Suit yourself,” Ott said, and drew his fist back.

  Bastien looked to Tariq and me for confirmation that this was crazy, or wanting one of us to step in. I avoided eye contact, and Tariq said, “Good luck with that.”

  Bastien stood up. “I’m sorry, buddy, but I’m not going to let you punch me in the face.”

  “You can’t stop me either. So, what happens next?”

  They stared at each other. I could see the bonds between them flicker and knot in the air, watch the colors shift.

  Finally, Bastien smiled. “Do it,” he said. And before the sentence had ended, Ott punched him in the mouth. Hard enough to knock Bastien back down to sit-lie on the bed of the truck.

  “Well that sucked,” he said, after a long silence. He pressed his hand to his mouth. When he took it away his palm was wet with blood.

  “Was it good for you, too?” Tariq asked Ott, who frowned down at his fist and said nothing. Tariq spun the soccer ball on his finger, faster and faster, and then, slipping me the tiniest of tiny winks, he tossed it up and tilted his head and caught it on his cheek, where it continued to spin. Because of course it did. Then he tossed it into the bed of the truck and jumped up after it. Ott followed him. When Tariq lay on his back to look up at the sky, I sidled in beside him and did the same. The other two followed suit.

  “You’re right about stars, Matt,” Bastien said, hands behind his head. “They’re totally trippy.”

  We lay there, looking up. The four of us—friends?

  Why had I wanted so badly to believe that they’d hurt my sister? Because it hurt my heart less to believe that something terrible had happened to her than to know she abandoned me. Because a Mission of Bloody Revenge had given me a purpose, let me fool myself into believing there was something I could do about it.

  “Anybody know any constellations?” Tariq asked.

  “The Big Dipper’s over there,” I said, pointing. “Beyond that I don’t know.”

  “Back in the day we’d know,” Tariq said. “We’d have to. In order to be hunters, warriors, in order to navigate . . . The modern world has spoiled us. Filled our heads up with stupid, meaningless knowledge.”

  “You’re only saying that because you’re gonna fail your precalc test next week,” I said.

  “These are unconnected facts,” he said, and kicked me.

  “Don’t the stars make you feel so small?” Bastien said, and there was a slight roughness around his words from where his lip was already swollen.

  “People always say that,” Ott said. “I don’t understand it. The stars make me feel . . .” I could hear the gears turning, the struggle as Ott tried to cram the whole huge tapestry of his thoughts into the meager words of his vocabulary. “They make me feel big. A giant cosmic accident. Like—what are the chances that I would even happen? You know? If my parents hadn’t met, if the dinosaurs never died out . . . we might not be here. But here we are. And we get to look up at the stars at night. Who would appreciate them if we didn’t?”

  “Whoa, Ott,” Tariq said. “Unlikely Voice of Profundity.”

  “Profundity means deep thoughts, Ott,” Bastien said.

  “I knew that,” Ott said, and then, after a second, laughed and said, “I totally didn’t know that.”

  Tariq’s fingers found mine. Our hands clasped in the dark, secretly, watching the stars, and Ott was right: I felt strong, I felt lucky, to be here, to be alive, to be able to appreciate what was wonderful in the world, even as I let what was ugly in it tear me apart.

  RULE #35

  This is the hardest rule. The one I still have to keep repeating. The one I accept, on an intellectual level, but still cannot truly believe.

  Your body is just a thing. Whether it’s strong or weak or beautiful or ugly is all in your head. In your mind.

  DAY: 27

  TOTAL CALORIES, APPROX.: 1600

  You’re too sexy.

  After school I went with Tariq to the weight room. A handful of grim-faced boys and one frightening beautiful girl were in there, too. So I stopped myself from jumping him and dragging him off to a cave somewhere when he stepped out of the locker room in an A-shirt and short shorts. His absurd words echoed in my head, threatening to unravel everything.

  You’re too sexy.

  I watched him lift. Veins stood out in his neck. His beard and hair shone with sweat. His abs and pecs became hard as iron, strong as anything the Spartans wore into battle.

  He can’t possibly believe that I’m sexy
. There’s no way he can look at this disgusting useless weak flabby body and feel physical desire. He must be lying. He just wants to get me into bed. Or maybe it’s a bet? Like some gay version of all those movies where the jock’s friends bet him he can’t bed the class weirdo or nerd or telekinetic religious fanatic. He caught me staring, between sets, and he smiled. I smiled. And I knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it was real. We were real.

  When I was alone, however, the voices went to work. Reminding me what a worthless ugly slug I was, how filthy and sinful, how only treachery and deceit could explain anything remotely good in my life. Tariq took me home. “Here,” he said, reaching into his gym bag to hand me an orange. “Last one, from what we stole up at Albany Academy.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and held it to my nose. It smelled like him. And like an orange.

  When he was gone, I went up to my room and sat on my bed. Facing the full-length mirror I’d draped in clothes so long ago. Staring at where my face would have been.

  You’re too sexy.

  I decided to put the echo to good use. Quickly, before my mind could intervene, I stood up and stripped the clothes away from the mirror. And stared at the boy I found there, the one with the giant lopsided eyes and too-big chin. Touched my face, pinched my cheek, thumbed my lips.

  Is this what Tariq sees?

  And then took off my sweatshirt. And my T-shirt. And my pants. And turned the teddy bear around to join me in judging myself.

  I stood there, in socks and underwear, and made myself watch. Made me see myself.

  I felt: fine. Not great, but fine. My stomach still felt swollen and immense, my thighs were still all jiggly flab while my calves were chicken-leg-thin, my arms when I tried to flex a bicep actually laughed at me—but looking up at the mirror the boy I saw was . . . not disgusting.

  What the hell happened? I wondered.

  Tariq is magic, I answered myself.

  Figuring I’d quit while I was ahead, I stepped away from the mirror and dressed myself. Turned off the lights, opened the window, knelt there to breathe in the cold bitter wind. And focus.

  A crash from down the hall. Something heavy falling. Something breaking. My heart, already overburdened, sputtered and stopped.

  “Mom?” I called, opening my bedroom door.

  Silence. I said it again, and took two steps into the hallway.

  “I’m okay!” she called. “Stay in your room, okay, honey?”

  “What happened?”

  “I just tripped over something,” she said. Her voice muddled from sleep or . . . something. “Everything is okay. Just go back to bed. Okay?”

  I stood there. Wondering what I should do. And then, to my great shame, I did what she asked me to do.

  I needed to feel my powers at work. I went into the bathroom and sat down on the floor, reached under the sink to grip the pipe with both hands. Shut my eyes, listened for vibrations. Extended my awareness down the pipe, feeling the miles of cold earth it dug through, the knotted junctures where the copper piping of our house’s water line connected with the iron of the county water main, branching back down to someone’s home, through their basement and into their bathroom, and listening, listening—

  But my sense of touch was dull, and all I “heard” were faint droning sounds like distant machines. When I released the pipe I felt as empty as it was.

  Happiness had blunted me. I needed to be sharp again.

  In the hallway, I stopped to listen, but heard nothing. My mother was dying. Her situation was killing her, just as surely as if she had some kind of disease.

  If I couldn’t save my sister—if she had no need of saving—then I needed to keep my powers up for my mother. I just had to be stronger. I could start with sharpening another superpower: use of the internet. I researched the company that owned Mom’s slaughterhouse. Global trends in hog production. I learned that Westfield Foods was “jockeying hard” to be acquired by a Chinese meat-processing giant. They’d been trying to “spend down debt” by selling off assets. They were closing plants all over the country.

  Useful. High school would work so much better if the things we learned could actually make a difference in our lives.

  I felt my mind kick into overdrive, processing all that information. I began to see the patterns in the chaos, make the connections, understand the problems—but I was still so sluggish, smothered in the food I allowed myself to eat. If only I were a little hungrier I’d be able to see clear as day what needed to be done.

  RULE #36

  Depending on what the body you’re born into looks like, you get put in a box marked either Boy or Girl. That box is packed with expectations and requirements, demands and obligations. The box says you can like This, but not That. The box says you can wear This, but not That. The box might fit you perfectly. In that case, everything will be wonderful. Alternately, the box might be so cramped and tight and full of horrible things that you’d rather be dead than spend another minute in it.

  There will always be something. Some horrible thing to stress you out, make you miserable, remind you how little control you have. Once you have begun to practice the Art of Starving, there will be a thousand reasons to continue.

  DAY: 28

  TOTAL CALORIES, APPROX.: 1000

  Tariq is a communist.

  He told me this nonchalantly, the way you do with a deep dark secret you want someone to believe is no big deal. We were in his room, his broad and spacious room, with the wide windows and clean lines and dark cherry wood. His well-ordered room full of books and technology and a closet almost as big as my whole bedroom, his room that brought home to me in a whole new way how different we were, how much money he had, and how much something like money changes who you are. Tariq was never ashamed to bring someone home; Tariq never had to wear the same sweater more than once a week. Tariq’s mom, who I met when I arrived, who was sweet and thin and quiet and seemingly as in awe of her son as I was, did not have to go to work. Did not have to heave a hammer, murder hogs, drench her forearms in blood every day.

  But Tariq was very concerned about injustice, about poverty, about rich corporations and greed, about the exploitation of poor countries by rich ones. He gave me a copy of The Communist Manifesto, and something called What Uncle Sam Really Wants. We sat on giant beanbag chairs on the floor behind his bed, talking politics and gossip and our hopes and dreams and nightmares, listening to punk rock music, looking up at the gruesome and obscene album covers he’d stuck to his ceiling, kissing and cuddling clandestinely. Every few minutes he’d stop and tilt his head and listen for his mother’s footsteps.

  I wanted to tell him not to worry. I wanted to tell him she was watching television in the living room, and I’d hear her if she so much as stood up. I wanted desperately to tell him that I had very good hearing—because I was starving myself—because it gave me superpowers.

  I didn’t tell him any of that. In all honesty I didn’t say much of anything. I listened to him. I nodded, agreed or expressed anger when appropriate. I tried to concentrate. I put my hand out to rest on his shirt, pressed tight to feel the muscled stomach beneath. But I couldn’t stop thinking about my mom—and my sister—and my father—and my own repulsiveness, especially when compared to Tariq.

  “Your hands are so cold,” he whispered, holding one up.

  “Poor circulation,” I said, and did not say Poor circulation is a symptom of many eating disorders. Because as I have discussed . . . not my problem.

  “And I hate to say it, but your fingernails look gross.”

  I shrugged. Fingernail deterioration is a symptom of many eating disorders.

  “Huh.”

  Tariq was a paradox. He made me feel better and worse, all at once. His interest in me, his desire for me, made me feel almost human for the first time ever. But when I looked at him, when I touched him, I felt my inadequacy more sharply than ever before. Here is a man, I thought. Strong and beautiful and perfect. Here is what you’ll never be.

/>   Tariq smelled like pine sap. December, by then: the busiest time of year for Christmas tree merchants, and his father was working eighteen-hour days, and Tariq himself was spending every available hour hauling and sawing and being an all-around brutish burly sexy person.

  This was homework time, my visit technically a study session. His father believed in education, in bettering oneself, and had Tariq’s whole educational career and rise to staggering success in business and industry planned out.

  His father believed in the opposite of everything Tariq believed. The rich were rich because they were better. The poor were poor because they were bad, broken, lazy. Men should behave like This, and never like That. Women should simply behave.

  “Your mom’s coming,” I said, scooting my beanbag chair away from his.

  He cocked his head and listened. “No, she’s not.”

  “Trust me.”

  It took her five whole minutes, but she came. Bearing a plate where two strange pastries nestled intimately together.

  “Wow, Mom, thanks,” he said, and snatched one up. “These are called ma’amoul,” he told me. “They’re stuffed with dates. My mom’s an amazing baker.”

  “Thank you,” I said, sincerely, touched and moved and terrified all at the same time. They practically sparkled with butter, with empty carbohydrates, with demonic sugar.

  “What are you two studying?” she asked, standing in the doorway, almost certainly waiting for me to take a bite and express astonishment, happiness, gratitude. I took the pastry off the plate. My stomach screamed with wanting it.

  “History,” Tariq said. “American for me. European for Matt.”

  “You’re not in the same class?”

  “I’m a senior, he’s a junior,” Tariq said. “But we’ve both got tests this week. We’re quizzing each other.”

  “Ah,” she said.

  Tariq’s cookie was almost gone already. His mother waited an extra five seconds, ten, fifteen. Waiting for a response. Expecting me to take a big bite, and tell her how wonderful her pastries were. When none of that happened, she said, “Well, I won’t distract you any further.”