Honestly, I couldn’t raise my eyes, I just could not bring myself to do it. I stared at my own meal, cut a piece of steak, and then took the first bite.
I had already sensed trouble long before our lunch reached the table. My husband, friend to all men, embracer of all cultures, had done a stupid, stupid thing. As the waiter at my favorite soul food restaurant was about to take our order, he mentioned that the special that day was chitlins. I passed over that information with a stern grimace, and delivered my choice of chicken-fried steak. My husband then told the waiter that he would like pork chops, and then paused.
“On second thought,” he said as he looked off into the distance, “I think I’ll have the special.”
Now, if my life was a comic strip instead of the senseless repeatings of tragedy and disappointment that it is, the next frame of this scene would illustrate my husband and me sitting at our table, the waiter smiling slightly, and a lighted sign above my husband’s head—all in red letters—that read “ONE DUMB HONKY.”
Instead, the waiter took on the sly smile and went back to the kitchen.
“Are you crazy?” I shot at my husband. “Chitlins? You ordered chitlins? Do you have any idea what that is?”
“No,” my husband admitted. “But I think it might be part of a neck bone.”
“I don’t,” I replied. “I think it’s skin. Little chunks of pig skin all fried up and fatty.”
“Well, I’m adventurous,” my husband continued. “You know I like to experiment with food.”
Oh yes, I knew that part quite well. I’ve seen his examples of food research on numerous occasions, like the time he dumped an entire sleeve of saltine crackers into a glass of milk and produced glue strong enough to hold up drywall; gobbling up Dinty Moore beef stew or chili cold and right out of the can; the regular habit he had during his bachelor days of preparing a box of “economy” mac and cheese by forsaking the milk and butter and simply using water to mix the sauce instead; and another favorite meal of his that consisted of boiling some macaroni until limp, squirting a packet of Taco Bell hot sauce on it, and proclaiming it “mighty good eatin’.” All of those occasions, however, were rather innocuous compared with this one. At least during those times, we knew what part of the animal the food came from, and how many months a normal person would have to go without sustenance before he actually considered eating it.
“I bet that you’re going to get a plate full of nothing but boiled lips and assholes,” I predicted in a whisper, adding, “Cracker!”
I think it’s safe to say that the aroma of the chitlins arrived at our table before the vision of it did.
I shot my husband another look, as if to say, “I told you, no more farts in public places,” but I was wrong.
Boiled, gray, and piled up real high on that plate was a heaping helping of intestines.
That’s what I said.
Guts.
Now, I really don’t want to criticize the delicacies of a heritage that isn’t my own, but my mother used to make something similar called tripe, and I can say confidently that it looked equally obscene and smelled just as bad as my relatives gobbled it up. As a child, I just stood by, imagined a peaceful place and the wish list of toys I hoped to get on my next birthday in my head, and did the best I could to suppress the impulse to gag.
I put those childhood tools back to work.
“Want a bite?” my husband said as he chewed his first mouthful.
“Honestly,” I said without a pause, “I’d rather harvest my own eggs and make an omelette with my toenail clippings than sample your lunch.”
After the second bite, my husband said he was full, so we paid the bill and headed home.
Three hours later, as the memory of the chitlin smell was beginning to pass, my husband burped.
“Oh, that was bad,” he related as he fanned the stink my way.
I felt my stomach flip.
“Oh,” he continued, “God. That’s just reminding me how rough it was on one side and kind of slimy on the other.”
My stomach did a back flip and nearly dismounted.
“Please,” I said as I headed toward the bathroom. Resist, I told my stomach, lie back down. Flowers and grass, I smell flowers and grass and the smell of Bubblegum Bonnie Bell Lip Smackers—
“Jesus! Wooo!” my husband exclaimed. “It was really slimy—”
“I said please stop,” I pleaded.
“—and it felt a little chunky as I chewed it . . .”
Even though I was picturing flowers and grass and a Barbie town house fully furnished, it was too late. Way too late. I don’t even believe if a Barbie town house had materialized right before my eyes I could have stopped it. It was out of my hands, and I leaned forward and barfed straight into the toilet.
“Looks like that chicken-fried steak didn’t agree with you,” my husband said as he handed me a damp cloth. “Maybe you should have ordered what I did.”
Grin and Bare It
I already know I’m not Playboy material. I’m a mess.
Aside from an episode of Forced Nudity while trying on wedding dresses, I haven’t been completely and voluntarily naked since I was four, and besides, God didn’t intend for me to be a Playmate when he made me. I don’t run, I gallop. I don’t walk, I trudge. I’ll eat lunch and talk to five people afterward before I realize I have refried beans on my cheek. I once flossed my teeth with a strand of my own hair. Each of my hips has more shelf space than my refrigerator and freezer combined.
But there I was, sitting in a villa at the Biltmore Hotel, wrapped in a thick, thirsty white bathrobe with a bunny embroidered on the lapel, filling out an application for the Playboy Playmate contest.
It wasn’t really my idea, honest. I was sent to cover the contest for a feature story, and was interviewing the photo editor, Kevin, when I decided to put him on the spot and ask him what he thought my chances were of becoming the centerfold of the new millennium.
“You should try out,” he flattered me. “You never know when we’ll want to do a spread with reporters and writers!”
“Well, If you pick me, you’ll have to pay for my liposuction,” I mentioned. “I’ve got enough lard in just one of these cheeks to make tamales for every man, woman, child, and wild dog in the state of Oaxaca!”
“You should do it,” he urged. “How else can you write about what the tryouts are like?”
He’s kind of right, I thought, and hell, I’m always up for a humiliating experience that leaves me feeling entirely inadequate and rather hopeless, kind of like coming home from a great date only to discover that on the side of your nose, there’s a whitehead the size of a marble.
Surrounding me was a room full of mutants, genetically blessed creatures that had no business calling themselves human, clad in bikinis, high heels, and robes swinging wide open. One of them didn’t have a single freckle on her entire body, and another one had what I can only assume were the bones of her pelvis poking out so far they nearly broke her skin. I looked down at my own arm, sprinkled with enough spots and dots to make their own constellation, and thought, Man, the next time someone sees the bones of my pelvis, it will be at my autopsy!
There were so many boobs in that room—I mean, they were everywhere—that the only thing that popped in my head was “Got Milk?” There was one endowed lady who was so . . . bountiful that I couldn’t figure out how she even managed to brush her teeth, and that’s when I realized I was staring at THEM. At her. I felt like a guy, but I couldn’t help it. They were circus big, and defied gravity so devoutly I was positive the implants were reinforced by magnets.
“How many payments do you have left?” I wanted to ask her, but was afraid that she’d hit me with one of them and knock me out cold. So what if my “best feature” touches my lap when I sit down, so what? I reminded myself. At least they don’t accrue an annual percentage rate on my Visa.
I took a deep breath and settled down to fill out the application form.
Height,
the application requested.
“5′6″,” I fudged.
Weight. “N/A,” I wrote.
Hair. I thought a moment. “Clean,” I jotted. “AND strong enough to dislodge a particularly stubborn piece of corn!”
Special Achievement. “In 1994, I quit smoking,” I scribbled, “gained forty pounds, and got a guy to marry me anyway.”
I signed the model release just in time for David, the photographer, to tell me that he was ready for me.
“Okay,” he said as I entered the bedroom they had set up as a studio, “you can disrobe now.”
I untied the robe and stood there.
“Um,” he said, looking at me, still covered in my gray jumper, black shirt, and tights. “Didn’t you want to . . . change?”
“If I take any of this off,” I said kindly, “waves of horror will burn your corneas to a crisp, and you’ll probably grab the nearest utensil to claw them out yourself. Really, I’m acting in your best interest.”
David nodded. “Okay, well, then, lean on the bed over here and kind of shake your hair with your hands,” he instructed me. “Now smile!”
I leaned on the bed, I lifted my arms up to tousle my hair, I smiled. Then I smelled bagels. Onion bagels. “You have snacks in here?” I asked, looking around.
“No,” he said as he clicked the first photo. “Turn your head more to the right.”
I complied, thinking him stingy not to share until I caught a really strong whiff of a Jewish deli and realized it was coming from my right armpit.
“Well, that’s enough of that pose!” I said, shooting my arms straight down to their sides.
David came over and positioned me for the next photo, turning me completely around. “Hold still,” he said as he backed away. “Hey, I think lunch is here. I smell onion bagels!”
I stood staring at the wall, and then it hit me. “You’re taking a heinie shot!” I cried. “You’re shooting my heinie?”
“It’s a big lens,” he commented. Click. “Okay, we’re done. You did VERY WELL.”
“You know my mother is going to make me go to confession for this,” I said as I handed him back the bathrobe and gathered up my stuff. “But if you choose me for a pictorial of reporters, the only way I’ll do it is if you put my nudie shots in between Barbara Walters’s and Helen Thomas’s.”
On my way out, I passed by the girl I had gawked at earlier. I smiled. She smiled slightly, sweeping her eyes over my jumper, and then sneered.
I stopped. “David said I did VERY WELL,” I mentioned. “But I think I’ll actually score a lot higher on the essay part of the contest.”
Her face dropped. “There’s an essay?” she said, shocked.
“Oh yeah.” I nodded. “With footnotes and everything.”
Visibly, her panic grew. “I can’t write with my feet!” she cried.
“Better start practicing!” I said with a tiny giggle before I headed out the door.
I Think at Night It Flies
It’s 2 A.M., and I’m sitting on my couch in the living room in the dark, wearing only a sweatshirt and my underwear. I have a stuffed, fleece alligator in my right hand, and am shaking it at the growling creature stalking my feet. Neither my husband nor I have had a full night’s sleep in a week.
It was completely our fault and we knew it. We bought into the dream, refinancing our patience and sanity to do it. When we spotted the puppy in a wet cage at the pound, she was soaked, crying, and shaking. As she licked our fingers through the wire, her coat dripping and matted, we knew we had to save her and take her home. After she had been spayed the next day, we went to retrieve her, and were presented with a sweet, lolling puppy and the words “Here’s your dog. Don’t wash her for ten days.”
“This is a good dog,” my husband said as we watched her sleep that night in her newly prepared wicker bed. We both marveled at how lucky we were to have such a calm, well-dispositioned puppy.
The next morning, however, my husband frantically woke me up. “I think there’s something wrong with that dog,” he said. “She’s showing symptoms I saw in Old Yeller. She keeps biting me and growling, I’m about to name her ‘Foamy’ and take her out to the barn to put her down.”
“That’s okay,” I said, getting out of bed. “She’s just coming around, getting used to us. All puppies bite and play.”
But when we entered the living room, it looked like a blizzard had struck. “This wasn’t here a minute ago,” my husband said, picking up a torn, shredded piece of toilet paper from the floor.
“It’s my fault,” I admitted. “I shouldn’t have left the roll on the coffee table.”
“Did you leave the Tootsie Rolls from Halloween out, too?” he asked, lifting up his foot, displaying the chocolate prize that had lodged between his toes.
“Do you want me to say yes,” I said slowly, “or tell you the truth that we didn’t have any left?”
That was when we realized that the puppy wasn’t GOOD when we brought her home, she was just SEDATED.
The commercials for Puppy Chow don’t show this part of dog babyhood on TV, I learned over the next couple of days. They don’t show that after spending forty bucks on puppy toys, her favorite playthings will actually consist of an empty toilet paper roll and a plastic tampon applicator she wrestled out of the box. They don’t show the puppy lunging for my ears like Mike Tyson, or her miraculously producing two sounds at the same time, a growl and a primal scream, like a Tibetan monk. They don’t show the already existing pets in the house ducking for cover under beds, in closets, and behind bathtubs, fearful that their private parts will be mutilated by puppy teeth, the only part of them she can reach. They don’t show that new puppy parents should always wear hiking boots, or face the wrath of those same teeth gnawing at their ankles like a paw stuck in a trap. They don’t show that she will try to claw her way to freedom via your recently refinished wood floors, or that you will smell doody everywhere, but won’t find it until it’s attached to you. They don’t show that she doesn’t even like Puppy Chow, and prefers to fish her meals out of the deposits left in the kitty box.
I think that someone should have the responsibility of telling you this before you get a new puppy, because people forget. It’s been eleven years since the last time I brought a fuzzy creature home, the same creature who is now a graying, chunky old lady that looks at me from behind the pillows on the couch with disgust out of her one good eye.
“How could you have been so stupid?” she seems to be saying to me. “I thought you guys were being ‘careful.’ I don’t know how this happened. I sleep at the foot of the bed and I’m with you ALL THE TIME. Now I’ve got this dog that wants to nurse on me, and I’m seventy-seven years old! Look at you, you’ve got a smashed Tootsie Roll stuck to your shoe.”
The cat’s sentiments were easily as hostile. “I hate you more now than I did yesterday” was the message he sent me. “I’m going to pee on something you just bought!”
They were right. We had lost complete control of our house, relinquished it to a three-pound hairball of terror that caused my husband to speculate aloud, “I think at night . . . IT FLIES.”
How were we supposed to know about the dangers? There certainly wasn’t a sign posted outside of her cage that read, “This puppy will cost you 742 hours of sleep, six fights with your spouse, the respect of your other pets, $3,000 to repair valuable antiques, and will think for a very long time that ‘no-no’ means ‘Good girl! Do it again!’ ”
After taking her to the vet and confirming that she was not rabid or an infant grizzly bear left at the pound by mistake, my husband decided to try his own method of reclaiming control.
“GRRRR! GRRRR!” he mimicked as he played with the puppy on the couch.
“I don’t think you should do that,” I snapped. “You’re teaching her to be vicious!”
“Don’t pick at your ankle scabs. The smell of fresh blood excites her,” he whispered back. “GRRRR! I’m teaching her that I’m in charge. I am th
e alpha dog!”
The puppy backed down for a minute, rolled onto her back, and grew quiet.
He looked up and smiled. “See?” he said.
“Well, then, I’m not going to bother making dinner,” I said. “The cat just had a bowel movement big enough for the both of you.”
“GRRRR,” he said, lunging for my ankle.
Sweet Ride
The key was gone.
It was GONE.
It had been looped around my finger the second before, and now it had vanished. I was in big, BIG trouble.
The first thing I did was leave my groceries in front of the checkout and I ran as fast as my two-ton legs would carry me.
Oh God, oh God, I kept thinking as I felt my fat, and particularly my two most prominent abdominal tubes, bounce up and down as I gathered all of the energy I had been storing for the past fifteen years precisely for an emergency just like this and RAN.
I ran out of the store like a quarterback, complete with noises. I didn’t really care. I just needed to know if I was going to live to see another day.
I ran into the parking lot, stopped short, and skimmed the horizon. Red roof, brown roof, truck roof. BING! Silver roof, black louvers on the back window of the 1984 300ZX, she’s safe.
I breathed a sigh of relief. She’s safe.
My mother’s car was SAFE.
I was already back in the store when I realized that although the car was still there—no one had stolen it—I still couldn’t get in it. The key was mysteriously gone. Vanished.
I have nightmares about things like this, stress dreams that cause me to wake up in the middle of the blackness, clawing at my own skin. In these dreams, I have my mom’s car, and I have eaten the key. Or I have fed it to my monkey-baby. Or have traded it for a fifteen-year-old Monte Carlo with a chain steering wheel and a barely clothed, abundantly endowed, and lust-absorbed Viking maiden painted on the hood.
Autobiography of a Fat Bride Page 8