Besides, I had been brave enough to attend both weddings in sleeveless dresses that brazenly displayed my batwings of underarm flab. I deserved a reward, especially for not swinging my arms too wide and accidentally smacking a kid in the eye by doing the Macarena. I’d decided to buy two formal dresses for the weddings, because even though I was wearing a size-14 dress, I felt great about myself. The last time I’d been to a wedding, I had been a bridesmaid in a size-26 gown. I was paired with a groomsman whose posture was so good I was tempted to refer him to a proctologist who could check for a flagpole up his ass. I felt like a blob rolling down the aisle next to him.
I’d started dress hunting when my mother brought home the spring catalog from the bridal store where she worked. That was when I realized a frightening truth—most formal dresses were sleeveless. There were literally only two dresses with sleeves featured in thirty-six pages of designs. At first I thought this was because the store was targeting skinny girls. The designers obviously didn’t realize that fat girls hated their flabby upper arms. As I continued my search for plus-size dresses online, I discovered this was not just skinny-girl couture. Sleeves were out. Some dresses came with a wrap to drape around the wearer’s arms, but I knew I would fidget with it all night long or accidentally dip the end in the toilet. I pitied anyone who had a scar on her shoulder or a mutant mole on her arm that she didn’t want to display.
I visited a local plus-size thrift store in hopes of finding something beautiful and cheap. I discovered a silver dress with sparkly straps and took it into the makeshift dressing room that doubled as a bathroom. I pulled it on over my purple panties and mismatched bra, twisting my arm like I was trying to get myself to say “uncle” as I zipped it up the back. I turned to look in the mirror.
Sleeves were overrated. This was the dress. No one cared as much about my underarm flab as I did anyway.
It was only a couple of weeks later that I had to shop for a funeral.
My father’s sister in New Jersey had terminal cancer. My life was just beginning again, but hers was near the end. I walked into my favorite clothing store and started circling the racks like a vulture, searching for something black. It felt wrong to be shopping for the funeral of a woman who wasn’t even dead yet. The beeping of the register at the moment the cashier rung up my black polyester pants felt like the final death knell, as if the act of buying the clothes might kill her from a thousand miles away. I had the pants, so I had better have a funeral to wear them to.
By the next Wednesday I was driving out to New Jersey from Indiana with my younger brother. I had planned on packing boxes that day in preparation for the move out of my mother’s house and into my new apartment, but I had no grounds to complain about rescheduling my U-Haul reservations. My mother was still alive, after all, even if I felt half dead from all the cake stealing and small talking I’d done earlier in the month.
I would also get to see my father for the first time since the day we’d stood in the Johnson County courthouse and witnessed the official dissolution of my parents’ marriage. Two weddings and a funeral all in one month. If I crashed two more weddings would Hugh Grant show up to seduce me?
I hadn’t made any long-distance trips since I’d starting eating right. I stocked a cooler full of celery sticks, apples, and oranges as a defense against fast food. If we careened off a cliff and became trapped in the twisted metal of our wrecked car, we’d have survival food for a week. I ate a salad at each rest break (though eating a burger and fries would have been much more convenient) because salads were preferable to grilling chicken breasts on the engine block.
After twelve hours on the road, we stumbled past two rabbits and a cat into my aunt and uncle’s back kitchen door in Wilmington, Delaware. After depositing our bags in the guest rooms, I wandered back to the kitchen, where a wall of casseroles and baked goods lined the counter like the Great Wall of Carbohydrates.
“Are you hungry? Do you want something to drink?” my aunt Beth asked.
“Oh, we just ate a couple of hours ago. I’m not that hungry,” I replied, hovering at the counter. I really wasn’t hungry. I hoped she didn’t think I was secretly starving but lying about it. When I had been fat I didn’t want people to think all I did was eat, but now that I was managing my weight I didn’t want people to think all I did was not eat.
“Are you sure?” Beth asked as she leaned over to open the oven and pull out ... a fruit salad. “The church ladies have been ringing the doorbell all day. We’ve got brownies, pies, turkey ...”
“Is that a baked fruit salad or something?” I replied. The water in Wilmington was polluted by all the chemical plants nearby, but did they have to cook every food they washed?
Beth laughed. “Oh, no! When I’m not using the oven to cook I sometimes use it for storage. Do you want some?” She set the salad on the kitchen table.
“No, that’s okay.” Beth seemed worried that they’d never be able to eat all this food before it went bad. I doubted it would all fit in their fridge. It did seem strange that the price of admission to a house of mourning was baked goods. Didn’t people usually lose their appetites when they were in bereavement? Did visitors leave brownies lying around in the hopes that the scent of chocolate would tempt mourners to eat?
The next day my aunt and uncle, two cousins, my brother, and I drove to the viewing in their van. When I entered the long lobby that stretched the length of the building, I saw a bearded man in a black suit at the end of the hallway who resembled my father—if he had lost ninety pounds. I waved halfheartedly at the man, unsure if he were my dad, not wanting to commit too hard to the gesture in case I’d made a mistake. I could always claim I’d been swatting a mosquito.
The man bounded forward down the hall and his face came into focus. It was my father. “Hello!” he said warmly, smiling, glad to see me after so many years. I was surprised by how different he looked. I bet this was how old friends felt when they saw me again. I wondered what he thought of my own transformation.
“Hi,” I said awkwardly. We stared at each other. The eye contact made me uncomfortable. We hadn’t talked much since he’d left three years ago, and I didn’t know where to start. Someone said something eventually and we ventured into the viewing room. Between the first and second viewing the family decided to go to an Italian restaurant. I stood in the faux fresco lobby next to my dad waiting for the servers to push enough tables together to seat us all.
“So, you’ve been dieting, eh?” he asked me.
“Yeah, sort of,” I replied. “Eating more fruits, veggies, and lean meats. Stuff like that.”
“Do you count calories?” he asked. “I try to keep it under 1,600 calories a day,” he said pulling out a small notebook to show me his food diary.
“Not really,” I said. “I keep track of what I’ve eaten in my head and sort of guesstimate.” It was far too uncomfortable to talk about why he’d left, but we could talk about calories. That was ... nice?
“I found your blog, by the way,” he said.
I paused in fear. “Oh, which one?” I asked. I irregularly posted to a personal journal, but I’d been writing in the fat blog three or four times a week lately.
“PastaQueen.com, the weight-loss blog.”
Only the solemnity of the occasion kept me from slapping my hands to my cheeks and imitating the Edvard Munch painting, The Scream. There should be a word for the feeling of fear and horror when you realize a family member has discovered your blog. Emblogessment, perhaps? I suddenly tried to remember the content of every one of my two hundred entries in the span of two seconds. Had I said anything about him?
“Oh,” I eeped.
“It’s a great site. I’m really proud of you.”
“Thanks,” I said. Had he told anyone else about this?
Our party name was called. Our table was ready. I was rescued from the 212th awkward conversation that month. Only eighty-six or so more to go. I was starting to build up a tolerance.
After the
viewing I said bye to my dad. The rest of us returned to my aunt and uncle’s house and congregated around the kitchen table, where cheesecake, cracker boxes, and liquor bottles were piled high like a barrier against the bad feelings. They wouldn’t have to cook for weeks. The day before I had barely snacked on any of the chocolates or cookies, though I did eat a slice of cheese because I didn’t want to be viewed as “the girl on a diet” who wouldn’t eat. That was like being the prudish girl who wouldn’t drink and go dancing. But now I was hungry and tired and had cheesecake clinging to the roof of my mouth. We talked for hours.
Beth leaned back in the wooden kitchen chair and wondered out loud, “Why do we always end up entertaining guests in the kitchen? We’ve got a huge living room we never use.” I spread some cheese on a cracker, but I didn’t say anything. The kitchen is the heart of the home. Where else would we spend an evening of mourning?
On the way back to Indiana I ate more salads. I was starting to get sick of radicchio and restaurants that were out of fat-free salad dressing packets, but I didn’t want to stray too far from my plan. If I ate one Big Mac, I might regain all 150 pounds right there in the front seat. That could really affect our gas mileage. A piece of cake stolen here and there was fine, but I didn’t want to relearn my bad eating habits. It had been stressful not knowing when or where I would be eating or if there would be any carrots on the buffet table next to the potato salad and fried chicken wings. I was completely out of my routine.
My only good exercise had been walking twenty blocks around Washington DC with an old high school friend. I matched her fast walking pace so well that I kept stepping on her flip flops. I wondered if my concern about food and exercise could be considered an obsession. I didn’t want to break my number one rule: Don’t get crazy. But if I didn’t catch small slips when they happened I was bound to get fat again. I liked my new ass far too much to let that happen.
We arrived back home Saturday night, and I spent Sunday recuperating. I weighed in and was happy to see I was up only half a pound. I tried packing up the last of my stuff for my rescheduled move on Monday, but ended up napping on the couch instead. I was still digesting all the apple spice cake from the wedding, cheesecake from the wake, and too many buttery Bob Evans biscuits from our final dinner stop.
The next morning, I got my mother, Jim, and his muscular friend Wes to load the rental truck as I drove ahead to my new apartment complex to sign the lease. The rental manager showed me my unit for approval. Looking at the closed doors of my new neighbors in the courtyard, I was happy that no one here would know that I had been morbidly obese. The last time I’d made an identity change like this was when we’d moved to Maryland in the first grade and I’d stopped going by the nickname Jenny. Only the postman might profile me as a fat girl when he stuffed my Lane Bryant catalogs into the mailbox.
I’d requested a unit on the second floor so I could incorporate more incidental exercise into my life when I trampled up and down the stairs carrying groceries or hauled a basket of dirty clothes to the laundry room. The complex was also close to a nature trail that stretched through the city on a former railway line. I wanted to get off my treadmill and run outside. The complex had a small exercise room with an elliptical trainer that I wanted to try too. I was now making decisions about where I would live based on the exercise options the location provided. I wasn’t just brainwashed into a life of fitness, I was brainwashed, rinsed, and dried.
The van containing all my earthly possessions arrived in the parking lot. We bounded up and down the stairs carrying boxes of books and CDs. The last year and a half of running and eating well had all been leading up to this. Some people train for marathons, but if you know anyone who is moving, it would be more practical to train for that. You could fill up cardboard boxes with free weights and walk up and down several flights of stairs. Rearrange all the furniture in your living room. Then move it back. The day after my move I had so many bruises on my forearms from carrying boxes that I looked like I was in a violent relationship.
Someone should start a service in which instead of wasting money on gym memberships, you volunteer to help people move. You’d get a cardio workout, and you’d actually be accomplishing something instead of just wearing down the soles of your running shoes. It would be a blend of community service and exercise. You could start by doing first-floor moves and then work your way up to sixth-floor apartments with no elevators.
I typically prided myself on being a big strong woman who could carry her own groceries and squash her own bugs, but I did have limits. I let the men shift the heavy piece of machinery known as my treadmill up the stairs. I bought them a case of beer in payment.
By the end of the day, I’d thanked my family and sent them away. I shoved a bowl of cat food under the bed where my kitty was cowering from posttraumatic stress and realized I’d barely eaten all day myself. When I kept my mind busy, I didn’t notice when I was hungry. I’d had a sandwich for breakfast, a chocolate-chip cookie dough milk shake for lunch, and a salad for dinner. I didn’t have much of an appetite. I’d forced myself to chew the last piece of tomato in yet another salad only because I didn’t want to become someone who tried to subsist on eight hundred calories a day and collapsed because all her muscle had been metabolized. How would I carry my lamps up the stairs then?
My new refrigerator was as cold and barren as the Siberian tundra. It contained only three cups of yogurt, two cheese sticks, half a two-liter of Diet Dr. Pepper, and an unused packet of Italian dressing. By the end of the night I was wishing I’d packed that bottle of rum my mom had offered from the cupboard. I’d turned it down because alcohol contains so many empty calories, but it sounded pretty good right about now. My cooking skills were momentarily useless because I didn’t own a microwave and wouldn’t let myself buy one until I unearthed my 20-percent-off coupon, which was buried in one of the boxes that created a geodesic garden in my living room. Cardboard was high in fiber, right? I could eat and unpack at the same time.
I ventured to the closest grocery store to stock my fridge and was frustrated that I’d have to learn a new store layout. I’d finally figured out where every item I liked was located at my old store, and now I was playing dodge-the-salami. It didn’t even carry my favorite brand of fudgsicles. I had to stock my entire kitchen, so I bought more food than I’d ever bought in my life, filling my cart to capacity.
When I finally dug the scale out from one of my boxes, I was not surprised to learn I’d lost five pounds, probably because of dehydration and the near toxic levels of stress I’d been under the past week. I weighed my cat a couple of weeks later and discovered he’d lost a pound too, mainly because of the hide-under-the-bed diet. That might work for me too, but it would freak out my friends and relatives.
A big part of my life had been dedicated to weight loss lately. I considered it to be my hobby, but no matter how much I wanted to focus on dropping more weight, life insisted on carrying on around me. People would always be getting married, dying, and moving—though I hoped they’d stop doing it all in the same month. I had sometimes thought it would be nice to lock myself away on a fat farm where all my food and exercise could be controlled, but I preferred living in the real world, even if that involved tempting platters of chocolate-chip cheesecake served with a very good excuse to eat it. I’d indulged in some sweets, but I hadn’t gorged myself under the pressure, and I’d eaten as best I could under the circumstances. I soon returned to my exercise routine with barely a hiccup. I’d survived a stressful month without seeking comfort in food.
I returned to work on Tuesday and sat at my desk with my eyes unfocused, as if I were gazing through the screen trying to see a magic 3-D photo print. I’d just had six days off from work.
I needed a vacation.
CHAPTER 11
Trail Mix
“Excuse me, are you walking your cat?”
The man I’d asked this question of looked up from the foliage on the side of the paved trail. A tan tab
by cat was walking four yards ahead of him, sniffing flowers and stomping on bugs. His owner meandered slowly behind, no leash in hand.
“Yes, I am,” he replied, hands in his pockets, completely unfazed by my question.
“That’s awesome,” I told him as I let the chain-link gate close. I walked back to my apartment complex.
I was madly in love with the long path and its red line running down the middle. It was part of the new life in my new apartment, a life in which people walked cats instead of dogs. I might have to start eating out of the dumpster to afford the rent, but banana peels were high in fiber. The day after my move, I glimpsed runners, bikers, and in-line skaters whizzing along as I drove home from work. I imagined they were calling out to me, “Come with us! Frolic among the trees and flowers like pixies while elevating your heart rate for long intervals at a time!” I drove on instead, telling myself I really needed to buy a microwave before the store closed at nine. This was true, but I was also putting off my inaugural run because I’d never exercised in front of other people. I’d used the treadmill in the privacy of my own home because I didn’t want to be the gross obese girl at the gym. As a fat person I probably had more of a right to the gym than anyone else. I obviously needed it more. Unfortunately, that argument never got me to the Stairmaster.
I convinced myself to tie up my running shoes after I repeated an old saying: You wouldn’t care about what other people think of you if you knew how infrequently they do. In other words, “Everyone else is a self-centered bastard too.” It was easy for me to assume anyone in visual range of my arms was thinking, “If she flaps her elbows hard enough she could fly away.” It was more likely that they pedaled by thinking, “My panties are really bunching up in these shorts.” Even if they did spare a moment to think disparaging thoughts about me, it was just a passing blip between gear changes.
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