“It won’t be murder if I drive us into a tree and you die,” he said, eyes on the road again, straightening the wheel. “It’ll just be hastening the inevitable.”
“Such a drama queen,” I said.
He parked in the pines, the deep old-growth forest his father never touched, pines that had survived so long they were too big to be chopped down and fit inside any home, had earned the right to live out a natural lifespan without being sacrificed on the altar of Christian ritual.
“How long have you . . . had this?” he asked, putting the car in park.
“I—” and I realized I didn’t know. Long before I began to school myself in the Art of Starving, I’d been limiting what I ate. Fasting and then bingeing. Lying to myself. Googling eating disorders to figure out tips. “A while now,” I said. “You never guessed?”
“Of course not,” he said. And turned up the heat and blew into his hands again.
Because I’m such a disgusting fat greasy hog, I wanted to say, but not as much as I wanted to say, “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” which is what I said.
“You have to confr—”
“I want to talk about your Christmas present,” I said. That stopped the flow of words from his mouth, started a slow smile spreading across his face.
“The best Christmas present a Jew ever gave a Muslim was how I think you described it,” I said.
Silence. “Shut the eff up,” he said. “Don’t play with my emotions like that.”
“Who’s playing? Take off your shirt.”
He giggled, a little boy and a man all at once, as he stretched out his long mighty arms and peeled the flannel off. I almost cried at the sight of it, there in the cold air of his poorly heated truck, in bright December daylight, his torso, its smooth lines and curved muscles, its dark dense hair, its perfection, its beauty, my helplessness.
Maybe your first time should not be like this. Maybe it should happen because you’re both super excited about it—not because you’re terrified you’re going to get dumped because your significant other found out just how damaged you are. Not because you’re using sex to fill an emptiness inside you. But I was super excited about it. We both were. And there were so many reasons, pro and con, so many fears, but in that instant they all fell away.
You don’t want the details. Well, maybe you do, but I don’t want to share them.
Here are a few things I don’t mind sharing with you.
When he saw my own naked torso, he said, “Oh, baby,” and his voice was thick with fear and pity, and he touched my rib cage, and for a split second I saw myself as he did, no longer the fat tub of guts I saw when I looked in the mirror but a tormented tortured body starved to the edge of breaking.
And then he pulled me to him, and his heat blocked out every other concern.
And I was, to use the secret language of gay sex, the bottom.
And it hurt.
And it was wonderful.
And we used protection.
And before we started Tariq whispered, “I have no idea what the hell I’m doing,” and we both laughed, and I knew from the way my heart beat under his hand, from the perfect mix of fear and fearlessness that I felt, that here was true power, here was real magic. Sex was magic. Love was magic. None of the harsh brutal bloody abilities I had figured out for myself were anywhere near as powerful as this.
And “All I’m Losing Is Me,” by Saves the Day was the song that was blaring from my boyfriend’s truck’s speakers when I stopped being a virgin.
And when it was over and we stared at each other’s bodies in disbelief and we held each other and smoked cigarettes and talked about our epic America-conquering road trip, I rolled down the window and sniffed the air and cried, because love was magic but it was not enough to soothe my sickness, my hunger, and nothing would ever be enough.
RULE #46
The human liver produces foul-smelling ketones as a byproduct of metabolizing stored body fat. That’s why your breath suddenly reeks of acetone. Which is what they make nail polish remover out of.
Also: pain will only help you if you let it.
DAY: 36
TOTAL CALORIES, APPROX.: 50
Black stars and the swiftly spinning world were more or less constant by then. Pain in my stomach made walking one hundred percent upright impossible. Pain in general scrambled my brain. Kept making me forget what I’d realized the night before. The epiphany of how delusional I was. Force of habit kept me from eating, because food would take the edge off the pain, and pain was power.
Maya. My father. My mother. The slaughterhouse. Seeing the past, fixing the future. Everything was within reach. Only a little more pain, and I’d be there.
No, Matt. Stop. That’s insanity. You know this isn’t real.
And even though I must have looked like hell, people seemed happy to see me in school. Word would have spread after my encounter with Ott. Everyone in that room had seen our staring contest; seen him start crying. Nobody wanted me to stare into their eyes and plumb the depths of their soul to break their brain.
“Hey,” Tariq said when I found him in the parking lot at lunch. He took a long look at me.
“Hey,” I said.
We sat in his truck.
“Gross, stop that,” he said, swatting my hand away from my mouth, and I didn’t frown or pout because he really had helped me out, because I’d been damn close to pulling out my middle nail altogether. As it was I could feel it bleeding afresh.
“Let’s go to the pines,” I said.
“Fine,” he said, the terse Tariq Fine that meant Nothing is fine.
“I really like The Dharma Bums,” he said, breaking the silence halfway there. “I’ve been reading up on Buddhism, too. Fascinating stuff.”
“Right?” I said. “Like how they say reality isn’t real. It’s an illusion. None of the things that stress us out or frighten or hurt us are real.”
“I like that,” he said.
“Some Buddhists believe that because reality isn’t real, someone enlightened enough can control the fabric of reality.”
“Huh,” he said, unsure what that had to do with anything, which was fine, because I had really just been talking through a little theory of my own: that hunger had made me an enlightened being, an awakened soul, that I could do anything, or almost anything. That I could control all matter, bend time and space and substance. Like I said: old habits. The more likely scenario was me dying and losing my grip on reality in the process.
“Did you call those therapists?” he asked, looking at me.
“Yup,” I lied. “Called a couple. Eyes on the road! Their offices were closed for the holidays. I left messages.”
“Good!” he said, and then it occurred to him that I might be lying. Clever boy. “I want to talk to you about it. I think it’ll help you.”
“I don’t want to,” I said.
“Relationships aren’t just about what one person wants,” he said, veering into the wrong lane again. “For this to work—for us to work—”
“Fine,” I said, and touched his stubbly chin. “Three questions. Go.”
With no hesitation, he asked: “Why?”
I shrugged. I thought-stuttered several excuses, rationales, lies, oversimplifications. But Tariq deserved an answer. And so did I. Pain and dizziness made me open to anything. “When I started, it was because I didn’t like the way I looked. But then I liked the way it felt, to limit the amount of food I ate. It became an end in itself.”
“Do you like the way you look now?”
I looked in the rearview, saw my too-long chin and preposterous cheeks, and shook my head no.
“What don’t you like?”
“I don’t want to say it.”
“Say it.”
I am fat and gross and no one will ever desire me.
I opened my mouth to say it, but it wouldn’t come out. Nothing would. The whole way to the pines, I could not say a word. When we arrived at the clearing and c
ame to a stop, I leaned across and kissed him until he relented and kissed me back.
There is a thing I am obsessed with. It is a thing most boys are obsessed with. It has a lot of slang names, all of them ugly, and a couple formal ones, none of them pretty. In fact it’s funny that something so awesome should have such dumb names. It involves your mouth. Even saying that sounds creepy, but it’s the best I can do. By now you will probably have guessed what I’m talking about because you are smart. That’s why I like you. I don’t need to spell out every little thing.
Anyway I wanted to do That Thing. Bad. Like, overpoweringly bad. I wanted to seize Tariq and do That Thing to him, because I wanted it . . . and also to change the subject. Even though my head was ringing with monstrous, stupid, ridiculous questions.
Does sperm count as food? How many calories are in an orgasm? In a spit vs. a swallow? Will it take the edge off enough to hold me back when I go to find my father? And punish him?
Yes. I am an idiot. We’ve established this long ago.
But I made the decision to set all those concerns aside.
“I want to try something,” I said, leaning over, kissing him on the lips, then the neck, then the stomach, then onward. “Stop me if you’re not comfortable with it.”
“I can’t,” he said, and I knew he wasn’t talking about The Act. “I can’t do this anymore, Matt. I can’t watch you destroy yourself. I’ve been reading all about eating disorders on the internet, and people just drop dead all the time—like their hearts give out or their brains starve or something—”
He had never been more beautiful. His eyebrows were two thick troubled daggers. His fauxhawk stood up proud and fearsome as a shark fin.
This was happening. He was dumping me. The only good thing in my life was gone.
Distant lights flashed. Winter lightning, weird and wrong. The black stars fell into shapes, constellations, omens, portents. My fingertips burned, began to bleed again.
“I hope you do get better,” he said. “I really do. But you have to do something or—or I can’t be with you anymore.”
There was a silence, thick and heavy between us.
Then he whispered, “They say recovery can take years and—”
“Recovery takes years? Did the stupid internet tell you that? Because the internet also says gays are demons who will burn in hell forever, and communists kill babies. Just because something’s on the internet . . .”
He said nothing. Anger and frustration fizzled to life inside him.
“And you think you’re so great to be boyfriends with?” I asked, powerless to stop myself. “Mr. No One Can Ever Know About Us? Mr. You Are My Dark Secret I’m Ashamed Of?”
“I know,” he said, his voice a little harder. “And you deserve better.”
“So that’s why you’re dumping me? Gee, thanks, Tariq, you’re so considerate. But you’re still a goddamn coward, and you know what the proof is?” I wasn’t steering the ship anymore. My body swooned and trembled with the same shivering sensation as the night I ended up in the emergency room. “You know how I know you’re a spineless piece of shit? Because you think I’m an inspiration! Me! Disgusting, worthless, hideous me—you think I have courage? You must be some—”
He started up his truck.
I stared out his window, thinking Maya Maya Maya, all the way home.
Lightning followed us. We did not speak.
RULE #47
I got nothing for this one.
DAY: 37
TOTAL CALORIES: 0
Mom got fired. She got one week’s pay as severance, which is half of our rent, which was already past due. She came in full of false cheer, knowing we were doomed, determined not to let me see it.
“There are lots of layoffs,” she said, her voice heavy with wanting a drink. “I’m certainly not taking it personally!”
“But what about that transition job?” I asked when I got my head around what she’d said, which was a while.
“Turns out the transition is going to happen on a much faster timeline, so they won’t need any managers for it. Ended up going to someone else,” she said. Her smile was so fake it hurt us both.
“But you said your boss said—”
“Said it was out of his hands. Decision from upstairs. What do you want for dinner?”
I gaped at her, and she turned without another word and walked away.
I sat at the edge of my bed. Turned up my music so I wouldn’t hear her pouring out another drink. But I heard her anyway. I heard everything.
I could do so many things. Teleport, read minds, stop time. Why couldn’t I help her? Why couldn’t I help anyone? Why couldn’t I take away everything that made her life so hard?
I stared at my hands. Starving myself gave me powers. But what good were they? I was sick. I was destroying myself.
I went down the hall. Mom sat at the table, glass of scotch beside her mug of coffee. Her head hung. It wasn’t hunger or superpowers that told me how sad she was. It was being a person. Being open to the needs of someone other than myself.
Love could heal. Love could change people. Love was the thing that made me want to die when I saw her, when I saw how much she was hurting. Everything else, all the imaginary abilities my sick mind had conjured up, all of that was meaningless.
“Hey,” I said, heart hammering.
“Hey.”
I put a hand on her shoulder, and she leaned her cheek against it. I almost lost it right there, the courage I’d somehow mustered, so I reached out with the other hand and picked up the bottle.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Whiskey,” she said.
“Why are you drinking it?”
She sighed.
“I love you, honey,” she said. “But you’re my son and I’m your mother and I don’t want to have this conversation with you.”
Hunger and sadness made me brave, let me say the words I wasn’t strong enough to say. “I think you do,” I said.
“Well. I also think a lot of things that aren’t true.”
I kept on, undeterred. “But seeing you like this. It hurts. It makes me feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I can’t do anything about that.”
She looked up at me for the first time.
I whispered. “We should get help.”
Mom clinked her coffee mug against mine.
“I’ll make some calls in the morning,” she said, the emptiness of the promise echoing in the kitchen.
RULE #48
As previously stated, the manufacturers of the human body have a very strict returns policy. You can’t simply snap your fingers and say, “Okay, I’m done, take it away, boys.” You can’t just decide to stop being alive. You have to do something. Usually something pretty sucky.
THE LAST DAY
TOTAL CALORIES: 0
When I got to the slaughterhouse it was abandoned, shut down for the night, which would have been unheard of a month before, but these were the final days of its transition into obsolescence. The workers were home in their beds, asleep, unemployed, poised to lose everything, so no one could stop or even see me as I raised my arms and watched the massive hydraulic loading bay door open slowly as I walked in and followed the familiar metal walkway that my mom used to take me and Maya down when we were little. She’d point out the pigs in their cages and then take us down to the huge long freezer hall where the cleaned skinned hacked-apart carcasses were kept, always careful not to let us anywhere near the bloody slaughter rooms. I blinked those memories away.
How had I gotten here?
I was outside my body, watching myself. I was a force of nature. I could do anything. No one could stop me. What did it matter what a forest fire did? Who was to blame for a flood?
Easy as thinking about it, I used my power and erased my image from every camera I walked past.
I felt them as I moved into the main bay, every pig asleep and dreaming in its cage. They t
ingled like extensions of my body, limbs I never knew I had, and when I whispered, “Awake,” I could feel them open their eyes, fear keeping them silent, confusion making them anxious, for they were aware of me as a predator, but they perceived no threat from me.
Unlocking the cages was the only truly difficult part of the whole process. I had to kneel and put both hands on the metal grid floor, extend myself through it to the entire iron system of cages and doors and locks, smell the overwhelming almost-fatal stink of the ocean of pig shit that waited beneath me, for every cage was built on the same grid, so excrement could pass easily through. I felt for the locks, fumbled around the bars and slotting mechanisms, grunted and thrusted a couple times before they moved, and then they only rattled against their own restraints. And then I was shaking every door, lifting and pushing, pulling and easing, and the pigs began to whistle and snort anxiously, and then—the gates swung open as one. Two thousand pigs stepped daintily into freedom.
Pigs are omnivorous. Pigs eat people all the time. And some of these pigs were big, with fierce tusks and eyes full of rage. The kind of totally understandable rage you’d have if you spent your whole life in a cage so small you could not turn around.
And once they were out, when it was too late to turn back—that’s when it occurred to me to be afraid. They might eat me, I thought.
They stood still, or wandered around, snuffling nervously, socializing awkwardly. Once again, as I had at Bastien’s party, I pierced the veil of separation. I understood that the same divine spark lived inside of them. I could feel on my skin, in my arms, in my brain, the army of docile minds at my command. When I turned and headed for the exit, they followed me.
Here is something you maybe don’t know. Up close, like really close, close enough to make eye contact and feel weird about it . . . Pigs are freaky. There is something so close to human about their faces. And something so intelligent, too. If science discovered tomorrow that pigs were a race of hyperintelligent aliens who had spent thousands of years studying humanity to prepare for some horrific mass extermination, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.
The Art of Starving Page 20
