by Kit Reed
In daylight, nobody knew. Listen, when I dress for business, I get respect. Let the lower classes grapple with weight issues and fight off the Fashion Police. People in my tax bracket are protected. We are not without power. When necessary, money changes hands. It isn’t what we do to people who piss us off that makes the difference. It’s what we can afford to do. So what if I buy my shirts and underwear at Big Men Outfitters, the XL rack? The suits, I get hand-tailored with matching vests, vertical pinstripes in complementary colors, and if I do say so I look impressive. Solid, like Gibraltar, and it is in my best interests. I mean, who wants to buy munis or T-bills or shares in major corporations from a young guy? But no matter how much I make, I hear you snickering as I pass by. I knew what Nina was thinking as she walked away. Wuoooow. Huge.
I moved home after the last breakup, because in the settlement Nina took the condo and all my stuff. I would be there still if it hadn’t been for Mom. After Saturday-night waffles, Mom nudged me into the Barcalounger. Dropped a fruitcake in my lap. She tipped me back and flipped on the tube. “Be good. Have fun.” She stuck the remote in her pocketbook and left. If you want to know the truth, I had leverage issues because of the distribution of the weight. I couldn’t get up to change the channel. I couldn’t tip back. I was stuck in the recliner until she got home, watching the Hour of Power, starring Mom’s idol, the Reverend Earl.
Trapped by my own body, enduring the demagogue. Oh, the shame.
This is how he works you, the unconverted. He rubs your nose in it. The way you look. “You’re disgusting.” Every bite you ever ate. “Stop,” I said; I would have done anything to cut him off but given the distribution of my weight, the recliner kept my feet higher than my head. I was stuck, looking up at the Reverend Earl between my highly polished Bruno Magli shoes. I threw my can of beer nuts at him, begging, “Please stop.” My five-pound fruitcake missed the screen. “Stop it. Just stop.”
It went on for hours.
“You can do it.” Then he went into the litany of offenders. Names. Body weight. The Reverend’s thousand mile stare bored into me and I could swear he said, “I mean you, Jeremy Mayhew Devlin.”
“Wait a minute!”
“You need my help.”
“Wait!”
By the time the sun came up over the Crystal Cathedral on TV it was after 2 a.m. in Greenwich, Connecticut, and I was convinced. I was overturned by emotion and drenched and shaking. When the choir came in at the climax I could swear somebody had oiled them and rolled them in gold dust. Good thing my Nokia was charged. Nina was still on my speed dial. Late as it was, she picked up.
Like this is a setup. I was raging. I shouted into the phone. —Nina, was this your idea?
She tried to get off the line.—Oh, Jerry. I was just … She couldn’t think of an excuse.
—Was it?
—Can’t hear you, you’re breaking up.
—Did you send in my name?
—Can’t talk now, I have to see a person about a thing.
—Nina, it’s the middle of the night!
—Not really. They’re waiting, gotta go.
I said to Nina,—What can I do to get you back? Mind you, Nina was not the first, she was just the next.
—Lose the weight, she said, and I am here because she made it so clear that she didn’t mean it, she was done with me. I heard that weary sigh, right before we finished and she hung up, like, what’s the use.—Just lose the weight.
I shook the phone, we were in separate states of mind at the moment, so she had no idea how mad I was.—That’s easy for you to say!
What are the stages of death? That night I went through rage and denial through bargaining to acceptance. By the time Mom came home I was in tears.
“Well Jerry,” she said, “did you like the show?”
I was too beat up to speak. “OK,” I said. “OK.”
I sent for the brochure.
The first day I was happy and excited. We were lined up in the brick courtyard of the clubhouse, men and women together waiting to be classified, who knew that was the last of the clubhouse we were going to see? Waiting, I scoped the women: humiliated in their muumuus and flip-flops, most of them, although there was one stupendous redhead with her head raised defiantly and earrings like chandeliers picking up the gold threads in the brocade tent she wore. She tossed her head. I caught her eye. The next thing I knew she was gone. All the women were gone. Then we were gone. One of the acolytes started us marching downhill, good-bye clubhouse, good-bye life. We kept marching after the grass gave way to gravelly sand and we didn’t stop until we reached the classifications shed. We were in the fucking desert. Except for a few sheds, desert was all there was. I was sweaty and exhausted. I said, “Yeesh.”
Nigel said, “Pretty much. Nobody said it would be easy.”
I studied him. Big, but not a patch on me. “I still don’t know what you’re doing here.”
He wasn’t about to tell me. He grabbed his love handles, which were minimal. He feigned disgust. “You do what you have to, to get what you want.”
Yitch, I thought as the man in front of us waddled up to the Armed Response box where the nurse-trainers were waiting. I’m never going to let myself get that bad. But I had, and I did.
So they separated us then, the men from the women, who filed off to their designated hell.
The evaluation makes getting into the Green Berets look like an ice cream social and the physicals at Fort Benning and Parris Island look like church. The place is built on the principle that drives the high-end spas where the rich and lovely do fasts and purges and work out and submit to heavy-duty massages that are more like beatings and finish off with salt rubs and glasses of lemon juice because you have to make people suffer to convince them that they’re getting their money’s worth. When he turned THIN into a religion, the Reverend Earl took it all the way. There’s the carbolic shower: after they take your clothes away, one of the Rev’s trusties comes in with a loofah and scrubs all those parts you’ve gotten too bulky to reach. Then you’re issued the uniform of the day: paper smock like the one you have to wear in a doctor’s examining room, and you march outside for roll call with the desert wind bringing in sand to abrade your butt.
Once you’re lined up the Reverend’s lieutenant leads the group confession. Raw and humiliated like all the other new recruits, you take your place and everybody shouts in unison:Y
“OK, I’m here because I hate myself for being fat. I hate it and I am ashamed.”
Next comes the interview. You go inside and sit in that waiting room for hours. When you think you can’t wait any more they shut you into the solitary examining room. The staff doctor comes in and pokes and prods you without speaking, takes his notes and goes. As he shuts the door behind him you hear sobbing coming down the hall: some other new recruit in the last stages, with the Reverend just winding up that interview. You are cold and humiliated in your paper outfit and sore from the shower and bone hungry—it’s been hours! You try the door but it’s locked from the inside so you are cold and humiliated and hungry and sore and what’s more, you’re trapped. It’s then and only then, when you are at rock bottom, that the Reverend Earl comes in
“Look at yourself. You are disgusting.” The Reverend Earl fixed me with those eyes. If you want to know the color, look into the heart of an iceberg and look hard. “Jeremy Devlin. What do you want?”
Everything in me welled up and I croaked, “Thinner!” I wanted to look amazing and live in the clubhouse and testify on the infomercials as advertised, and maybe I wanted Nina to come begging so I could blow her off, but I was too beaten down to say.
“And what will you give to get it?”
He was my leader; I would do anything he said.
I said what he wanted. “Everything.”
5
By the time they leave Bonanzarama it’s almost ten. A meal that should have taken a few minutes kept them for hours. Usually after one of these triumphs Danny jabbers about the
details nonstop but now that it’s done he’s engaged with the massed hormones and endorphins racing around inside his body, too drugged by what he just ate and too drained by the experience to speak. Slouched in the back of the car, he lies with his head bumping against the window, becalmed somewhere between here and sleep.
Betz is just as glad. She and Dave just finished suffering through the actual event and she doesn’t think Dave is ready to hear about it right now. He is driving along with his jaw set and every muscle clenched, refusing to process what happened back there.
“What was that?”
“I tried to warn you,” she says.
He doesn’t answer. Dave is driving hard, making up for—what? Lost time? Some failure within himself?
“I should have stopped him. I thought I was helping him.” She and her twin get along so well, Betz realizes, because she applauds when Danny needs it and doesn’t ask questions. She wants her brother to be a champion because it makes him happy, but—this? If you want to know the truth, it’s kind of disgusting. It was easier to go along with it when she didn’t know the details. She could imagine Danny winning without having to see the food stuck in his eyelashes or the grease running down his face.
Danny was all happy and excited, walking in.
Dave, of course, had no idea what they were walking into, and Betz? She should have waited outside. She always managed not to think about what went on at these contests, which made it a lot easier to congratulate Danny when he came home with the gilded hot dog, the silver medal in the shape of a pizza, the yellow ribbon with the jalapeño hanging from it. She’s never been to an event. It’s a lot easier to cheer somebody on if you don’t have to watch. When you think about it, it’s revolting. All that food.
But you don’t think about it when you’ve been driving for hours and all you want to do is sit down at a table in a nice place with your brother and this cute guy you think you probably love.
Of course by the time the three of them walked into Bonanzarama they were also hungry; it was half past dinnertime. They’d been stuck in the car for so long that they rocked when they walked. The place was nice. The manager was smiling. The checkered tablecloths were fresh. Of course the challenge was attractive. Who doesn’t want to eat free? As Dave pointed out, what was the worst that could happen? They’d pay. Listen, they could live off the contents of the doggy bags for an entire week.
Danny was excited. So was Betz, until she saw the warning sign.
THE 50-OUNCER WEIGHS MORE THAN THREE POUNDS
50-50-50-50 THE BIG 50 OUNCES 50-50-50
EAT AT YOUR OWN RISK
“This is so cool,” Danny said, sitting down. “I broke training when Sis got taken. One more day and I’d be totally out of shape.”
Dave closed his fingers on Betz’s wrist. “Do you think she’s OK?”
“If you guys are gonna try this you need a few tips.”
“I hope so,” Betz said. He touched me. He’s touching me!
“The important thing about these things,” Danny said, “is never waste time chewing and don’t put anything too big in your mouth.”
Dave’s fingers tightened. “What do you think they’re doing to her?”
“Mom and Dad so wouldn’t talk about it that it creeps me out.”
“The next most important thing is to pace yourself.”
“I knew she was in trouble,” Dave said, “but I didn’t think it was this bad.”
“But when you’re seriously in training, before that …”
“I thought as long as she wasn’t scarfing and barfing it was OK.” The wait-kid came and Dave let go of her arm; it was like a little death.
Danny went on, “ … before all that …”
The waiter asked Dave was he dead sure they wanted three fifty-ouncers, you’re looking at three pounds plus and Dave said yeah yeah fine fine but his head was somewhere else. “The last time we hugged I thought she was going to turn into nothing. Betzy, she was so thin.”
“I know.” He used my name.
Danny finished, “ … you have to be able to drink five gallons of water at a sitting to stretch your gut.”
When their plates came, Betz and Dave didn’t recognize them at first. The mounds of meat were too big and shiny to be real food. The hologram on the sign out front—EAT FREE IF YOU EAT ONE OF OUR STEAKS—was a mere shadow of the actual thing. Fifty ounces may not seem like much in the abstract, but in person the things were huge. The platters the three staggering wait-kids in barbecue aprons and paper chef’s hats set down in front of them dripped French fries and fried onion rings and, lost in one corner, the chain’s gesture toward healthy eating lurked: the requisite ice cream scoop of coleslaw. At the surrounding tables, the regular customers were eating their burgers or filets (no rebate offered) with their eyes on the Abercrombie table, amused.
“So, here goes. Good luck guys.” When his fifty ounces with sides shook the table, Danny laughed. “Awesome!”
The table shuddered when the other two platters hit. Betz and Dave exchanged looks. Dave muttered, “No way we can finish these.”
Danny was rolling up his sleeves.
Betz whispered, “What are we gonna do?”
On the far side of the table, Danny tied the industrial-size checkered napkin with the Bonanzarama logo around his neck.
Dave said grimly, “Pay and make them pack up what’s left.”
With the precision of a professional, Danny was rendering his steak into scores of bite-size chunks.
“Yeesh, I might just stick to the fries.”
Huge, the servings were huge. Grimacing, Betz and Dave ate what they could and barely made a dent. Stuffed, they pushed away their plates. Dave signaled the wait-kid. “We’re going to want dog bags.”
“Don’t say we didn’t warn you.” Grinning, the wait-kid scurried away.
Betz said, “It’ll keep us for a week.”
Danny was still eating. Just then his arm shot across the table. He grabbed his twin sister’s hand. Startled, she looked up. His mouth was full and his cheeks were jammed with unchewed meat but he managed to say in clotted tones, “Not so fast.”
“Dave, look!”
In the fifteen minutes they’d been sitting there Danny had disappeared almost half his steak. In another fifteen, it was gone. Dave took out his wallet. So, cool, Betz thought, one less steak dinner to pay for.
There was a thump on the table: Danny’s fist. She looked up.
Bits of steak sprayed. With his mouth full, Danny managed one word. “No!” Before Betz could stop him, he’d pushed his platter away and pulled hers across the table and picked up his fork and knife. More. He was going for more. She and Dave had to sit there for another hour while Danny sawed and swallowed and swallowed and sawed. By this time everybody in the restaurant was tuned in to the drama at the trio’s table. People half-turned in their places so they could watch while Danny ate. This was, after all, why they came to Bonanzarama—for them it was dinner theater, in spades. For almost an hour Danny ate and the regular customers ordered more drinks and cheered him on because in the American life of sport and personal bests at competition, it was clear this lanky kid was a serious contender.
They were there for what seemed like days while Danny sawed and swallowed and stuffed more in while the other patrons applauded and tears of exertion ran down Danny’s face. By the time he entered the final quarter of Betz’s fifty-ouncer, half the spectators were on their cell phones, alternately cheering and giving friends or relations the blow by blow and as Danny gradually closed on his victim and sawed the last ten ounces to bits the crowd of onlookers swelled.
There was a long moment in which Danny stopped eating. Was the kid done for? Was this it?
The tension in the restaurant was almost unbearable. Women cried. Money changed hands. Danny was quiescent for the moment; he wasn’t moving but he hadn’t put down his fork. Could he do this? Would he make it? A lot of the regulars came here just to watch cocky kids like D
anny take up the challenge and then buy it in the home stretch and slink away in disgrace. Hell no he wouldn’t make it, the regulars said. Two fifty-ouncers at one sitting? No way.
Then a voice man’s voice came up from somewhere in the back, strong and strident. “Come on kid, you can do this,” he said, and Danny did.
When he finished the second steak the cheers shook the restaurant.
Dave got to his feet. He was all, like, whew. “OK dude, you did it. You and Betz eat free, so, cool. I’ll front for mine and we’re out of here, ’kay?”
Danny did not move and he didn’t speak. Maybe he couldn’t, Betz thought, but she saw a strange blue light flickering at the back of Danny’s eyes.
Dave nudged him. “’Kay, dude? Check please.”
Danny didn’t move but something inside him stirred; Betz knew!
“Dude?”
The crowd parted to make room for the manager, who had his digicorder and two copies of the restaurant’s special plaque. “No charge, kid,” he said to Dave. “Your pal here ate two. The three of you can walk free. In all the history of Bonanzarama, this has never happened before.”
“Excellent.” Grinning, Dave turned away. “Come on guys, let’s go.”
Oh, don’t, Betz thought in the silent language of twins. But he did.
There was a disturbance on the far side of the table. It was Danny. His cheeks were still full and his eyes bulged. Betz could swear they were getting bigger; he was so full that there was no more room for them; in another minute they would pop out of their sockets and roll down his face. Please don’t. She already knew he would. A gargling sound made its way out through the last residue of the second steak. Congested as it was, clogged with grease and stretched thin by the effort it took to get it out, Danny’s statement was clear: “No!”
