We Are Fat and We Are Legion

by Benjamin Duffy

  I spring to my feet and startle him. “Denny!” I exclaim.

  Denny drops his keys. “What are you doing here?” he stammers.

  “I just wanted to talk with you. You left in such a hurry, I didn’t think we had an opportunity to discuss this.”

  “We did all the talking we need to do,” Denny replies. “You made your position clear. I heard you just fine.”

  “No!” I exclaim. “You don’t understand!”

  He leans over and picks his keys up off the parking lot. “What don’t I understand?”

  This is hard for me, but I’ve already decided to go through with it. Fine, I’ll just say it. “I really changed my mind,” I say.

  “About dieting?”

  “Well…yeah. Sort of. I’m not saying I’m going to go on a diet any time soon, but if it’s something you really want to do…I can accept that.”

  He stands there for a moment, sizing me up. I think he’s probing to see if I’m really serious. I am. He starts to say something then stops. Finally, he mutters, “I don’t think so.”

  “Denny!”

  “I can’t just pretend all that stuff didn’t happen.”

  “Did you hear me? I said I don’t care if you diet. I’ll support you in this. It’s something I want to do.”

  Denny sticks the key in the car door. “No dice,” he says.

  I’m getting desperate now. I fumble with my hands. “Where ya livin’ now, Denny?”

  “None of your business,” he says.

  I gasp. He’s rarely been so curt with me. “I…just…can’t believe…” I stammer.

  “Believe it,” says Denny. “It’s over. I should have been out of this relationship a long time ago.”

  A tear trickles down my red hot cheek. With each passing moment I’m looking more and more like a boob, or worse yet an obsessive ex who’s just begging for a restraining order. I’m not being romantic, I’m being creepy. This whole scene is just so humiliating. “But—”

  “No buts!” he hollers. “You’re pathetic, Gabby. You hang out by my car and ambush me on my way home? What kind of crap is that?”

  “I thought I’d surprise you,” I whine.

  “Why the hell aren’t you at work, anyway? You called out sick, didn’t you?”

  There’s no use in lying. I nod my head. “I did.”

  “Jesus, Gabby! Not again! You call out sick more than anyone I’ve ever met. And you’re not even sick!”

  I look down at my feet. I’d like to slug him right now. “I just wanted to talk things over.”

  Denny opens the car door. “Oh yeah? Well, too little too late. You lost me. I gave you five years of my life, and that was five too many.”

  That last remark cut like a saber. I begin to bawl. A torrent of salty tears and snot pour forth from my fat face. “Don’t say that!” I gasp between sobs.

  “It’s true. I put up with your fat power bullshit for five years and now I’ve finally had enough. If you’re happy being fat, then good for you! You may be the only happy fat person I’ve ever met.”

  He still thinks that fat empowerment has something to do with being fat and happy. My own common law husband doesn’t understand the basis of my beliefs. I have failed in the most absolute sense.

  “Denny…”

  “As far as me, well…I’ve found somebody else. We’re very happy together.”

  That does it. I let out a howl and cover my face. There’s another woman. “Nooo…” I sob. I want to bury my head in his chest but I’m afraid he’ll reel back in disgust. I don’t think I could handle rejection like that.

  “That’s right,” he says, as he gets into the car. “I’m outta here. Stay outta my life, and I’ll stay outta yours.” He slams the door and starts the engine. I back up a few steps and watch as he throws it in reverse. He peels out of the parking lot a few moments later, leaving me a blubbering mass of flesh.

  * * *

  My one semester at UMass is memorable because of someone else besides Zack. I also had a roommate at the time. I’ll never forget that girl.

  I don’t think it would have been possible for UMass to have chosen a worse roommate for me. It was almost as if they purposely chose the two most incompatible girls on campus and stuck them together in a tiny room in the basement of the Melville dormitory.

  I was a fat girl from Ludlow. Portuguese. Vulnerable. I was a freshman, away from home for the first time in my life. I was getting some financial aid and taking out a lot of loans to cover the rest. My family certainly didn’t have the money to pay up front.

  My roommate was everything I was not. Her name was Heather Katz. I don’t know how to put this gently, but she was a very wealthy Jewish girl from somewhere in the mire of the sprawling New Jersey suburbs. Look up “Jewish American Princess” in the dictionary and her picture will be there. I’m not an anti-Semite, I’m just sayin’. She was very thin, always at the forefront of fashion. A sophomore. Outgoing. I’m pretty sure she never saw a party she didn’t like. Already a world traveler at the tender age of twenty, she had been to Israel, London, and the south of France.

  And above all else, she was way too cool for me.

  I recall move-in day. My parents and I lugged my stuff up to the university on an idyllic September morning. I was a brand new college freshman, both excited and intimidated by the idea of leaving the nest. I groaned when I saw that they had written our names on construction paper animals and affixed them to the door. One was a tiger with the name “Heather” on it, the other an elephant with the name “Margaret”. Yes, that’s my actual legal name, although I never use it. I’ve always gone by my middle name, Gabrielle. Couldn’t they have come up with another animal besides an elephant?

  Heather had beaten me there and she was rapidly unloading her belongings. Of course she had already arranged the room the way she liked it with no consideration at all for me. As soon as we saw each other, I think we had the same reaction— Oh my God, that’s not my roommate, is it? I smiled weakly and said, “Hi, I’m Gabby.”

  We talked very little over the course of the semester. It was hard to know where to start a conversation when we had so little in common. She mentioned a few times that she missed her friends in New Jersey. Mostly the boys. She talked about her travels. She also mentioned that she’d spent the better part of the summer in Nice, which she said was basically the most fantastic spot she’d ever visited. Being the Francophile that I was, I was green with envy.

  In one really weird, awkward moment she mentioned that she could speak French and I told her that we should chat a little. Her French was awful. Just imagine French with a Jersey accent. I’m sure you get the picture.

  But for the most part, we were strangers who just happened to occupy the same room. We lived together for three months in the fall of 1992 and that pretty much summarizes all of the words that passed between our lips. We were like ships passing each other in the night.

  It didn’t take me long to figure out that Heather lived on nicotine and diet soda. Goodness, she smoked like a chimney and she went through even more of those Diet Cokes than Denny does. Or it could have been Diet Pepsi, I don’t remember.

  The soda didn’t bother me but the smoke did. It seems weird, but it never occurred to me at the time that I didn’t have to put up with it. Smokers still smoked just about anywhere they wanted to back in 1992. Well, maybe not in hospitals or on airplanes. Actually, you could still smoke on airplanes as soon as you were outside of US airspace. These days, non-smokers don’t have to put up with inconsiderate smokers, but back then we did. We didn’t even know we had a choice.

  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to discern her intention with those nasty, tar-filled coffin nails. Like many young women, Heather smoked because it kept her thin. Studies indicate that 25 to 39 percent of female smokers persist with the habit for that reason. It just goes to show that plenty of people actually prefer smelling like shit and having wrinkly skin to being fat. Heck, some people would even prefer
to have their larynxes surgically removed and breathe through holes in their necks than face the shame of gaining weight. Nothing shocks me anymore.

  Big Tobacco recognized early on the marketing potential of cigarettes as a method of girth control. Why do you think they call them Virginia Slims? Advertising slogans reflected the weight loss sales pitch: “Reach for a lucky instead of a sweet,” went one from the 1930’s. It was “the modern way to diet” according to another. Tobacco companies were trying to encourage the emerging trend of women smokers. “Instead of eating between meals…” read one ad, “…instead of fattening sweets…beautiful women keep youthful slenderness these days by smoking Luckies.”

  A substantial portion of America’s recent weight gain can be attributed to a downward trend in smoking. While you may have heard that Americans are ballooning up at an alarming rate, the truth of the matter is that our average weight has increased fifteen pounds since the mid-1980’s. That’s not all that significant. A person could gain or lose fifteen pounds without her friends or neighbors even noticing. The average smoker gains five to seven pounds upon quitting. That’s even less significant, but it does help to explain why Americans are fatter than they used to be.

  Back in the 1960s, the proportion of American adults who smoked was around 41 percent. The thinner American of those days was thinner for a number of reasons, but one of them is because she was more likely to inhale toxic substances into her body twenty times a day. In the modern era, the percentage of smokers hovers at about 22 percent. If all of those ex-smokers gained an average of five to seven pounds, that would tend to nudge the national average upward. But so what? We gained a few pounds and we’re a whole lot healthier for it. A little extra flab is preferable to consuming benzene, nicotine, tar, and pesticides.

  Besides smoking herself thin, Heather had another miracle weight loss method that she kept all to herself. She was a binger and a purger. She puked her guts out to rid her stomach of any morsel of nutritional value that might have inadvertently found itself there. She tried to hide her nasty habit but she didn’t do a very good job of it. I can remember smelling the acrid stench of stomach acid in our room at least a dozen times. It didn’t blend well with the omnipresent smell of cigarettes either. If you want to know how our room smelled, just think of ashtrays and barf. That describes it pretty well.

  Even so, I was a little too naive at the time to connect the dots between bulimia and the smell of vomit in our room. It wasn’t until I caught her in the act that I figured it out. I came in one evening and heard the sounds of heaving and wrenching coming from her private wardrobe space. She must have heard the door open and I think she tried to stop herself mid-barf, but she couldn’t.

  “Heather?” I said. “You okay?”

  More heaving.

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m fine,” she said finally.

  I left it at that. She’d been caught in flagrante delicto. I knew it and she knew it. She came out into our common space and gave me a weak smile. Her face was red, either from embarrassment or from hard core vomiting, I’m not sure which. I knew that from then on her bulimia would be our little secret.

  That didn’t stop me from snooping, of course. When she went to class the next morning, I crept over to her side of the room and poked through her stuff, being extra careful to replace everything exactly how she had left it. Just morbid curiosity, I suppose.

  I only had to brush away a few articles of clothing before I hit the jackpot. There, on the ground in the back of the wardrobe, were five glass jars of various shapes and sizes. They were all packed tightly with half-digested food chunks. I inspected them closely and identified things that looked like apple pie filling and chocolate pudding. It was gross. I also found a box of Ex-Lax in her drawer. Laxative abuse is also a form of bulimia. Later on in the semester I would find evidence of her eating orgies—pizza boxes, Twinkie wrappers, and empty pints of Ben and Jerry’s.

  She was a real basketcase when it came to food. It consumed her, not the other way around.

  Unlocking the secret to Heather’s thinness put me at ease. It knocked her down a few pegs, made me feel less crappy about myself and my body. Sure, Heather was a popular girl who received loads of attention from guys on campus, but what price did she pay for it? I imagined that she would look a lot like me if she didn’t stick her damned finger down her throat every time she ate something. Or shit her brains out for that matter. I told myself that I could look like her too if I was desperate enough to resort to bulimia. But of course I wasn’t that desperate. I had more respect than that.

  Since that time, I’ve learned quite a bit about eating disorders. The fat acceptance movement has a lot to say about all the crazy, unnatural, unhealthy things people do just to stay thin. I know that bulimia is classified as a disease and that I should have some sympathy for people who suffer from diseases.

  As cold as this sounds, I don’t feel sorry for bulimics. Not one bit. I have no sympathy for Heather. She was very weak. Her bulimia seems to me like a character flaw. She was nothing but a shallow person who wanted so badly to avoid the curse of fatness— to avoid looking like me —that she subjected her body to dangerous acts of brutality. She doesn’t need pity, she needs a good swat upside the head. If she’d prefer to kill herself slowly and stay thin, I suppose she’ll get what she wants. I won’t cry tears for her. She was a moron then, and if she ‘s still doing it, she’s a moron now.

  Chapter Sixteen:

  Ten Pounds of Shit in a Five Pound Bag

  I return home and cry until I’m all cried out. I’ve been doing a lot of bawling my eyes out lately. I purge my tear ducts until there’s nothing left, then get up and make my way to the kitchen. It’s nearly lunchtime and I’m hungry. I check the cabinets and the fridge for something good to eat but find nothing, or at least nothing I feel like preparing.

  My stomach is empty. My cabinets are empty. This house is empty too. I decide to go out for something to eat.

  I drive to Webster’s Fish Hook in Northampton, one of my absolute favorite spots. The locals love it too. The barbequed ribs are a delight. The fried shrimp, scallops, and mussels are fresh and firm. The burgers are generous and tasty. They serve beer and wine. Basically, they’ve got everything you could possibly want all in one place.

  I park my car and remove a twenty dollar bill from my pocket. According to the federal reserve, twenty dollar bills last about two years in circulation. I pick a newish looking bill just to ensure that my message will stay in circulation for the maximum amount of time. I pause to determine which of my slogans I will write on it. Finally, I put my pen to the cotton paper. “CHANGE THE WAY YOU SEE, NOT THE WAY YOU LOOK,” I write in small letters. I place the bill back in my wallet and enter the restaurant.

  The place is busy, as usual. It’s lunchtime and the hungry people of Northampton are filing in for delicious seafood. I approach the cash register and place my order. I’m pleased to discover that the woman at the counter is nicely rounded. She’s not as fat as I am, but she’s certainly not a skinny bitch either. I’d say she’s probably five or ten years older than me as well. It’s quite normal for women of her age and weight to be relegated to the kitchen or simply not hired at all.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Hi. Can I take your order?”

  “Sure. I’d like the rib and seafood combo dinner,” I say. I feel a little bit guilty because it’s not even dinnertime, but that’s what I feel like having. “I’d like shrimp with that.”

  She doesn’t chastise me for ordering a dinner at lunchtime and I’m glad for it. I bet she understands. “And what would you like for your two sides?” she asks.

  “I’ll have the roasted potatoes and the salad bar,” I reply.

  “That’ll be $18.05.”

  I hand her the twenty dollar bill I prepared, making sure that the words are safely hidden from view on the underside. She takes it and hands me my change and a plate for the salad bar. “Your number is seventy-one,” she says.
<
br />   “Are you a Webster?” I ask.

  “Me? No. I just work here. I’m not part of the family.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious,” I reply.

  The real reason I asked is that I believed that the only way she could have gotten the job is if she were part of the family that owned the place. For the second time in the last two minutes, I am pleasantly surprised. The Webster family hired a woman to work the counter who isn’t nineteen years old and a hundred pounds. Good for them. I knew I liked these people.

  I take my tray over to the salad bar and load it up with lettuce, shredded cabbage, chickpeas, croutons, and two scoops of yummy macaroni salad, then douse the whole thing with bleu cheese dressing. I am about to sit down when I spot a bun warmer with a sign on top of it that says “Help yourself to a warm dinner roll”. I open the drawer and remove a whole wheat roll with the tongs. It’s moist and toasty.

  After grabbing a tab of butter and some utensils, I search out a seat. I choose a small table in the corner. I don’t want people to watch me eat. No matter how many times I tell myself that I have the same right to eat as everyone else, I still prefer to hide myself from view every time I sit down to have a meal. I can’t count the number of times I’ve grabbed fast food to go and then enjoyed my feast in the privacy of my car. Small children have a habit of making innocently insulting remarks about the fat lady eating by herself. It’s happened to me before. The children’s mortified parents always apologize, but I know that they’re only apologizing because their children said the things that they themselves were thinking.

  Before long they call my number and I fetch my main course from the counter. The food is everything I expected it to be. The shrimp and half rack of St. Louis barbeque ribs are out of this world. The roasted potatoes are to die for. I get another dinner roll and butter, then a second plate of salad. I’m in love with Webster’s Fish Hook.