by Theresa Alan
Ana didn’t share her friend’s horror about fat, but she did fear Chelsey’s judgment of her when she had all the ugly facts about Ana’s girth in black and white.
Ana gulped as she stepped on the scale. Chelsey set the lower scale guide at 100 pounds and slid the upper guide along. Up up up up.
Oh please, stop already.
But no. Chelsey just kept sliding it up.
Okay, this was just silly.
Completely unacceptable.
How had things gotten so bad?
Stop! Stop or I’ll shoot! Myself.
Finally, the pointer teetered down, then up, then came to a stop in the middle.
It was worse than Ana thought. It was bleak. Nuclear-meltdown end-of-the-world bleak.
Ana waited for an expression of horror on Chelsey’s face, but there was none. Of course, Chelsey was a trained actress.
Next came the measurements. Her arm, her bust, her waist, her hips, her thighs, her calves. Her right calf was a quarter inch fatter than her left, and her left thigh was a quarter inch fatter than her right. Good Lord, in addition to being a corpulent beast, she was a mutant.
“Don’t worry, very few people are perfectly symmetrical!” Chelsey said cheerfully, noting all the horrifying statistics down on Ana’s chart.
As she waited, Ana couldn’t help it, but she yawned.
“See, you’re tired in the middle of the day. That’s because you’re not eating right. What we’re going to do is give you a form to fill out about the foods you like and don’t like, and we’re going to plug it into the computer, and it will give you three different complete daily meal plans. You’ll eat four small meals a day, keeping that energy up there, keeping that metabolism high!”
Just listening to Chelsey’s enthusiasm exhausted Ana. She couldn’t wait to take a nap.
“Now we’re going to measure your body fat percentage.”
“Excuse me, what are we going to do?”
“Your body fat. We’re going to measure it. It’s the most important measurement we’re going to take. The important thing to do is to burn fat. What happens if you don’t eat properly or if you starve yourself is that you burn lean muscle, not fat. So while the scale might tell you that you’ve lost weight, I’ll check your body fat percentage and I’ll know if you’ve been doing what you’re supposed to and whether you’re burning lean muscle or fat.”
That sounded threatening. Ominous. It gave Chelsey a god-like ability to peer into Ana’s life and behavior.
“It’s just about math. We’ll figure out what your maintenance calories are to maintain your current weight. Then we’ll subtract 500 calories a day from that, and that’s the number of calories you’ll consume each day. And with regular exercise, there is no possible way you won’t lose weight. But if you don’t eat a balanced diet, you may lose weight, but you’re going to lose muscle, which will make it harder to keep the weight off long-term. That’s not what we’re trying to do here.”
She took a little instrument that looked like an ear-piercing gun and measured Ana’s upper arms and stomach.
“Okay, your body is thirty-one percent fat,” Chelsey said. “That puts you right here.” Chelsey pointed to a chart that grouped body fat percentages in “Excellent,” “Good,” “Fair,” and “Poor.” Ana was “Fair.” Oh it was grim. “We want to be between twenty and twenty-five percent, ideally.”
After Chelsey had marked down all of Ana’s measurements, she gave Ana a long questionnaire to fill out. Ana filled in what she did and didn’t like to eat in various food groups—what her favorite fruits and vegetables were, what kind of proteins she did and didn’t like, what breakfast cereals she preferred over others. Chelsey typed the information into the computer, and, in a few minutes, it spat out a bunch of stuff about metabolic rates and suggested daily meal plans.
“You can swap the food it suggests for other foods. But you have to follow the diet exactly. Let me explain. Look here,” Chelsey pointed to one of the sample meal plans. “It says to have a lean meat and two servings of carbs for lunch, plus a serving of veggies. It suggests turkey and two pieces of wheat bread, but if you don’t want turkey, say, you look in here”—Chelsey flipped through the small food exchange book that she’d given Ana—“under ‘lean meats.’ There are several to choose from. You can’t swap the turkey for a very lean meat or a medium fat meat, just lean. See?”
Ana nodded.
“Another really important thing is going to be serving size. You have to measure everything. You can’t just pour yourself a bowl of cereal and hope it’s the recommended serving size. It’ll often be twice what it should be. So while you think you’re consuming 200 calories, you’re really consuming 400. See?”
Ana nodded again, more glumly this time.
“Well, our hour is over today, but we’ll hit the machines next week.”
Ana felt robbed. Even at drastically reduced rates, she was paying forty-two bucks a session and she wanted to spend the hour working her abs and lifting weights and flexing her muscle, not just getting humiliated and shamed and being told things she didn’t want to hear. It was an outrage.
But within moments, her disappointment subsided and she felt relieved. Excited even. Now she could go home and relax and get some sleep. God, it would be lovely.
“So now you’re going to go do your cardio, right?” Chelsey asked.
Even though thirty seconds earlier Ana had been disappointed not to have been forced to lift vast quantities of weights and race along the treadmill for hours, since the idea of going home to bed had entered her mind, all of her good intentions and her last shred of energy had disappeared completely. How could she go to cardio when a comforting warm bed was at home, calling out to her? But she nodded, trudged over to the elliptical rider, and worked up a serious sweat.
25
Primordial Stew
They decided to call the show “Primordial Stew” based on a skit they’d come up with and decided to use as the opening scene. It began with the theater completely black, and Scott booming out in his movie-trailer voice, “In the beginning, the world was nothing more than a primordial stew of one-celled organisms bubbling around. Then one day, a couple of cells went nuts and became a two-celled organism, then eventually fish showed up, then muskrats and bandicoots, wombats and kangaroos, then gorillas and eventually, dun dun dun . . . mankind. As time goes by, the number of innovations and creations grows every day. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re proud to present to you tonight, a short history of modern evolution!”
The first skit showed how humans had evolved. Images flashed against the white back wall of the stage of great heroes and heroines of the past as Scott noted the tremendous contributions to society of people like Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Edison. Then Scott noted that evolution wasn’t always an improvement, it changed in fits and false starts. Then pictures of folks like Tanya Harding, Anna Nicole Smith, and John Bobbitt came on screen. Next Scott mentioned about how, in the olden days, all people had to entertain themselves with were books, talking with their friends and families, or playing music and singing. Today we can stare at a box for hours to watch WWF wrestling, Fear Factor, and The Bachelor!
There was a long part about the evolution of the potato chip—how it spawned the cheese curl, Doritos, Funyuns, on and on, in all manner of ranch, sour cream and onion, jalapeño, BBQ, and nacho cheese varieties. There was Ana’s feminist cheerleaders, surely the next evolution in the feminist movement. Every skit made fun of current American culture, from dating to television to advertising to recreation. The finale was an ode to nuclear waste, and a question, “What will tomorrow bring?”
Ana had insisted on adding “A Comedy Hootenanny” at the end of the name so that people wouldn’t think they were putting on some dark performance art thing. She and Scott had made posters that read, One Night Only! Primordial Stew: A Comedy Hootenanny! At the bottom it read, A sketch-comedy extravaganza (like Saturday Night Live, only funny) featur
ing Denver’s very own Spur of the Moment performers. 8 p.m. Sunday October 15. Tickets $12. It listed the phone number to call and the address, all that stuff. And they had spent hours plastering the posters in coffee shops and lampposts all over town.
Ana got home just before seven. This needing to have a day-job thing was really a drag. She had so many better things to do with her life.
Ana struggled to open the door. Strapped to her body were her purse, her enormous gym bag, and her briefcase/ bag swinging around her and colliding into her sides. She could feel her gym bag slipping off her shoulders, but she couldn’t grab it because her hands were filled with flyers she’d made for the show. As she battled to get the key in the lock, lifting her shoulder to her neck to keep the bag from slipping off her, she could feel that she was about to drop the stack of flyers any second.
Just before all was chaos, Jason opened the door for her. She was immediately enveloped by the smell of dinner cooking—garlic, onions, and fresh herbs filled the kitchen.
“Thank you so much,” she said, setting her keys and the flyers down on the counter and letting all her bags tumble to the floor. “Are you cooking dinner?”
“Spinach risotto and salad.”
“You are a good, good man, Jason Hess. Thank you so much.”
“You don’t always have to thank me so extravagantly. I like to cook, we need to eat—it’s a simple system really.”
“It’s just that I love home-cooked meals . . .”
“I know, I know, because you never had them growing up. What do you have there?” he asked, indicating the flyers.
“I made posters for our show.”
“They look really good. Did you go to Kinko’s?”
“Are you kidding me? Color prints like this would cost about four zillion bucks. I used the laser copier at work. Marketing is the only department that has a color printer. So at least one good thing has come of me becoming a marketing slut.”
“You used the copier at work? Don’t you think that’s a little unethical?”
“What do you mean?”
“Using company supplies, don’t you think that’s unethical?”
“Jason, I don’t mean to alarm you, but it’s becoming evident you’ve gone completely mad. Look, I know you work for an impoverished school district and probably buy supplies for the school yourself, but I work for an evil corporate empire. You were the one who told me that the average American executive makes like four hundred and forty times what the lowest employees on the corporate totem pole make. All those execs selling their stocks before the crash, while their employees lost all of their 401Ks, all their savings? Sound familiar? You ranted for like two weeks straight about how unjust it was that GE was paying for their former executive’s eighty-thousand-dollar-a-month condo plus his golf club membership and football tickets and God knows what else in addition to his nine-million-a-year-severance pay. If companies are giving execs who don’t even work there anymore millions a year, don’t you think it’s fair that a little person makes a couple copies at work? I mean as if that would even come close to closing the inequity gap.”
“Executive compensation is a serious issue,” Jason agreed, “but that doesn’t mean we should be greedy just like they are. How is your stealing office supplies any different than GE paying for Jack Welch’s condo each month?”
“I’ll tell you how it’s different. Jack Welch gets nine million dollars a year for DOING NOTHING. He can afford to make his own damn mortgage payments. I, on the other hand, get paid squat, and can’t afford to buy a house, take a vacation, or, for that matter, buy new socks. But since the big wigs of the world won’t share and pay us reasonable salaries, I’m taking matters into my own hands. Think of it as a holiday bonus they were too greedy to give me so I took it myself.”
“Don’t you see how unethical behavior is like a virus? You’re excusing your behavior by saying that other people do it. The Jack Welch’s of the world say it’s okay to do what they’re doing because other people are doing it. See?”
“But other people ARE doing it! EVERYBODY steals office supplies. It’s our only sad pathetic way of getting back at the monolithic corporations that underpay us, treat us like crap, and fire us without warning every now and then to improve stock prices for the stockholders.” Ana sighed deeply. “I don’t want to talk about this right now. When is dinner going to be ready?”
Ana wanted to be a good, ethical person, she really did. But she couldn’t start now. Not until she’d gotten some food and sleep. A month or so straight of sleep. Jason’s values and morals were one of the reasons she liked and admired him so much, but right now his belief system just seemed too exhausting for words.
26
Personal Ghosts
Nick was throwing his annual Halloween party. The First Annual Halloween party was held at Nick’s three years ago, shortly after he and Ramiro started dating.
They had met when Nick was on a blind date. The blind date was a friend of Ramiro’s date, Bryan. Ramiro and Bryan had only gone out a few times before, and Ramiro was not at all happy about sharing his night with a couple he didn’t know and who didn’t know each other. The first few dates were hard enough without adding more tension to the fray.
But it soon became apparent over dinner and the subsequent numerous rounds of drinks that Ramiro and Nick hit it off completely, and their dates hit it off with each other.
All night, Nick and Ramiro were cracking each other up. Ram would have never pegged a finance guy to be so funny, but while Ramiro was sharply sardonic, Nick had a quieter way of observing the humorous things in life.
While they each left with the dates they’d come with, when they parted ways, Nick told Ramiro if he ever wanted to meet to discuss the investments or financial planning that they’d talked about, here was his card. They hadn’t talked about investments or financial planning as Ramiro had no money with which to invest or for which to plan for, but Ramiro graciously accepted his card.
Ramiro never called Bryan again, and apparently the split was amiable, because Bryan never called him, either.
Ramiro did call Nick the next day, however. “I hoped you could help me make some decisions about my money,” Ramiro said. “I’m either planning to invest in a nice restaurant downtown or in a bar on Broadway in the very near future.”
“I’d have to recommend that you diversify your investment.”
“Sage advice. When would you say a good time for me to invest would be?”
“I think tonight. Say eight. Market’s looking good.”
“Doesn’t it though?”
And they’ve been happily ever after (mostly) since. Their differences complemented each other well—Nick’s ability to plan and save and look to the future was great, but he had a tendency to take things too seriously and get stressed out—Ramiro’s relaxed attitude and sense of humor helped Nick relax. But they were similar enough in areas that really counted—they were both intelligent, they both loved to read, they both laughed and/or groaned at the same places in movies and TV shows, and they both were secretly addicted to American Idol, and yet had managed to keep each other’s shameful secret.
For their Halloween party tonight, Ramiro went as Ponch from CHiPs. Nick was a magician, wearing a black magician’s hat and a purple velvet jacket and pants. He’d taken a pink rabbit stuffed animal and cut off its head, then glued the head on his hat so it looked like the rabbit was peeking out the top. Jason and Scott went as pirates, with costumes that were remnants from their days as the Iron Pyrits.
Marin went as Cinderella after she’d killed herself from boredom in her “perfect” marriage. She’d gotten the silver silk gown when she was a bridesmaid in her cousin’s wedding. Ana actually thought the dress was pretty, though Marin had a point about the way the dress puffed out at the waist in the voluminous manner of a Southern Belle, which in fact, Marin’s cousin was. Marin also had a tiara from a tongue-in-cheek award she’d gotten in her senior year of high school. All
the graduating seniors had been given plaques predicting what kinds of roles they’d go on to play. Marin had been named “Most likely to play a beauty queen.” (Others had “won” awards like, “Most likely to play a drunken, abusive father”—he’d been given a fake bottle of liquor—and “most likely to play a nerd”—he was given a broken pair of black plastic glasses with masking tape holding them together.) Then Marin had painted her face gray, and tied a rope around her neck, noose-style, with about two feet of extra rope draped over her shoulder like a scarf. She’d pinned a sign on her chest that read, “What happens when fairy-tale endings are so damn boring you lose the will to live.”
Ana was a Viking. Her mother was half Norwegian and half Czech. She knew absolutely nothing about the Czech Republic, but she did know about the Vikings’ history of raping and plundering. On the plus side of her heritage, Ana thought the Vikings had a remarkable fashion sense. The pointy-metal hats were simply inspired, and Ana appreciated that Halloween gave her the chance to pay homage to the fashion mavens of yore offstage and in something like real life.
Ana and Marin stood by the punch, drinking large glasses of it and people watching. Nick had used dry ice to make it look like steam was pouring out of the punch, which was deathly delicious. It tasted like Kool-Aid, so unwitting party-goers would drink it as rapidly as a glass of water, only to find that after a glass or two, they’d have to be collected off the floor where they’d passed out and carried off to a bedroom so as to keep foot traffic flowing smoothly.
A woman dressed as Frida Kahlo, wearing a black wig and a long strip of black felt for her eyebrows and a shorter strip of black felt on her upper lip, poured herself a glass.
“Your costume looks great,” Marin said.
