This wasn’t me. My identity had been temporarily suspended. Until I became myself again—empty and immaculate and controlled—nothing mattered, none of the usual rules applied.
“Tell me more about him,” she says.
Him? I’ve just finished telling her the most shameful experience of my life—haltingly, painfully, leaving most of it out, admittedly—and she says, “Tell me more about him.”
“Who?”
“The guy whose apartment it was—how you felt about him.”
Felt? Don’t make me laugh. (When did I last laugh, spontaneously, joyfully, for the sheer hell of it? A half memory flits through my brain—Styrofoam cup, dark glass, wild cackling—and evaporates, leaving an aftertaste of shame.)
Felt? How can I make her understand that I haven’t “felt” anything for years, numb and vacant behind my wall of glass? I’ve told her everything I can remember about him—med student, skinny, head cocked (could it have been his, I suddenly wonder, the broad, bruised mushroom?). I don’t recall his name or if I ever saw him again, but I can still see every box on his shelves, every stalk on the wallpaper, every last lettuce leaf.
“Felt?”
“Yes, felt,” she repeats (a little defensively, wouldn’t you say, doctor?). “Don’t you think there might have been some connection between your feelings for him and your sense of being out of control the next day?”
I snort. “Spare me the cheap psychoanalysis, Suzanne. I get enough of it from the doc.”
She stands up and starts gathering my empty glass, my crumpled napkin, so she can take the tray away. I had finally forced down three forkfuls of cake: by then, it tasted only of tears.
I don’t want her to go.
“I really didn’t feel anything,” I say quickly (offering, for once, what I think is the truth: I have no way of knowing. I remember things as if they had happened to someone else, unfolding at a great distance on a cold, mute star).
“I know,” she says, stopping, studying my face, “I know.”
For a moment, I think she does. Then she takes the tray out, leaving me, as I lie back, to grip my belly’s distended drum.
When I left his building (a once beautiful brownstone, ruined now beyond repair) the first thing I noticed was the word DONUTS. Suddenly the world had split into two categories: the edible, and everything else. This made it much easier to negotiate, as if, in this bipolar field, I too were magnetized. There were no decisions to make, no choices, no resistance. I found myself walking through the DONUTS door and approaching the counter, as serene as a somnambulist on the rooftop, oblivious to the waking mind that signals wildly behind soundproof glass.
It had been so long since I had bought a doughnut that the sheer variety overwhelmed me, paralyzing me in the gaze of the pink-uniformed pubescent who waited, jiggling, for my order. Eventually, out of pure self-consciousness, I mumbled the first kind listed, Apple ’n’ Spice, but as soon as I named it, I knew it wasn’t what I wanted (no fruit, nothing remotely natural, nothing that resembled anything I might otherwise eat), so I whispered the next item on the alphabet.
“What?” she said, loudly.
“Bavarian Cream,” I whispered again.
She threw the doughnuts into a bag, I paid for them, and was on my way to the door when I realized I couldn’t wait until I got home—at least a fifteen-minute walk. But could I really eat these lewd-looking pastries, powdered like a plump woman’s flesh, in public? It was hard enough for me to eat anything, even a celery stick, in front of other people. How was I going to cram these obscenely sweet and oily concoctions (250, maybe 300, calories apiece) into my mouth without causing everyone to turn and stare?
I made a quick survey of the doughnut shop’s other clients: a stained septuagenarian, immersed in his tabloid, and a chunky young woman with a frizzy perm and sneakers in place of the pumps she prudently carried in a plastic bag. She was smoking and staring vacantly at the wall. Neither of them paid me the slightest attention. I decided to risk it: the clamor of my mouth, my tongue, was too strong. I took a seat with my back to them and, reaching blindly into the bag with both hands, shoved the Bavarian Cream into my mouth.
The rhythmic, mechanical act of chewing helped soothe the almost unbearable anxiety it produced.
The doughnut was soon gone, untasted: all I could think about was what people watching me would think. Perhaps they would assume I was one of those naturally thin types who could eat anything and therefore did, with complete insouciance. Gobbling frenziedly, I tried to look insouciant. I moved on to the Apple ’n’ Spice, preoccupied with what I was going to eat next.
Something savory: I was sick from sugar. But on the way out, afraid to stop even for a few minutes, I bought another doughnut—Choc D’Lite—and, abandoning shame, ate it as I walked, smearing chocolate on my face and hands like shit.
“We’re not going to give you a laxative, and that’s all there is to it.”
“But I’m in agony. I haven’t . . . been to the bathroom for days.”
“I know,” she says. Naturally she knows: not only does she stand outside the toilet stall while I sit there with the door ajar, vainly straining, but she’s the one who flushes the toilet. No wonder I can’t produce anything: my sphincter shuts down from sheer embarrassment.
Meanwhile, all this waste accumulates within me and compacts: I’ve become a human trash compactor. My belly is hard and bloated; perhaps if I pressed hard enough, it would explode, firing its contents at her in a hail of hard, stinging pellets (I see her running awkwardly from the room, grunting in alarm, one arm raised to shield her face).
“Why not?” I whine.
“You know very well why not, Josephine,” she says (my mother’s intonation exactly). “You’ve probably used enough to last you a lifetime.” Keep in mind that pounds leave the body two main ways—bowel movements and urination. The more time you spend on the toilet, the better.
I don’t know how she knows about that. I’ve never told her.
There’s no privacy here, none at all: I’m the Visible Woman, with all my veins and nerves and guts on display. What goes in, what comes out, even what stays inside me is everybody else’s business. To them, I’m merely an intestinal tube on legs.
Maybe they’re right. Maybe that’s all we are, a twenty-eight-foot tube from mouth to anus, a tube of variable diameter, coiled like sausage links, but—if you think about it—“inside” us only in the sense that the hole is inside the doughnut.
The Choc D’Lite lasted me as far as Supreme Pizza, where I bought a Mushroom Slice with Extra Cheese, sprinkling it thickly with hot pepper flakes, folding it lasciviously in half, and tearing off huge dripping hunks with my teeth.
Nobody paid me any attention, even though it was only 10:30 in the morning. I suppose people eat pizza all the time. I would have ordered a second one, but I was afraid of what the pimply boy behind the counter would think.
Anyway, what I really wanted was something to drink and then something dry and crisp and sweet.
Milk.
Then cookies.
I can’t go on with this.
Let me just reiterate: three doughnuts, a slice of pizza, a glass of milk, most of a package of chocolate chip cookies, a bag of Doritos, a glass of orange juice, an English muffin with butter and jam, another, a large dish of coffee ice cream with chocolate chunks, more cookies, pretzels, a bowl of Raisin Bran—which returned me, as if in an infinite loop, to the episode’s starting point.
This was the worst thing that had ever happened to me.
Eventually, it had to end (if I’d learned to void myself, it could have gone on forever). My frenzied travels were over: my stomach, pressing painfully in all directions, could hold no more. I needed to collapse. Belching in rancid, vomity bursts, oozing oil from my pores, heavy and numb with self-hatred, I made my way home—if that narrow, sterile space could be called home. Avoiding the mirrors, I pulled off my clothes, releasing an unrecognizable belly; my waistband left a vicio
us red stripe, but I looked only once.
You may feel nauseated, mildly or enough to vomit.
Indigestion and constipation may occur.
Your breasts will probably swell.
Your feet, ankles, fingers, hands, and even your face may swell.
Your waist becomes thicker, your clothes no longer fit.
As your abdomen grows larger, the skin over it will stretch and lines may appear, pink or reddish streaks.
It becomes increasingly uncomfortable for you to lie on your stomach.
You may feel constantly tired.
Throwing on an old, oversized T-shirt—the only thing that would fit—I flopped onto the bed and covered my face with a pillow, welcoming annihilation.
Perhaps that’s why people do what they do to excess—drink, drugs, food, sex. All produce a brief but predictable coma.
Afterwards, how hard to resume consciousness, what hard work to be alive: everything puffy and sodden, the eyes piggish in a bloated face, heart black and leaden with self-loathing. That’s when I started cutting class, canceling appointments, staying home to starve myself. I wouldn’t go out in public until I could see bones in my wrists and cheeks again, until I could fit a flat palm between belly and waistband.
I stopped going back to my parents’ house for the summers, too, and for Thanksgiving, because I couldn’t trust myself around all that food. I lied and said I had a job, an internship, a research project. They seemed relieved and so was I, never knowing what would possess me on any given day. How could I appear among people as the ravening monster I truly was—huge, with a crammed, bloated maw, hands full of food, half-chewed matter drooling from a never-empty mouth, lumbering insatiably towards everything, everyone, in my path?
Godzilla, King Kong, a mutant monster from the sewers.
After trying almost everything on the breakfast tray (except the butter), I feel, for the first time, that I could keep going, eat more. But surely I must be full by now?
“Suzanne,” I ask, terrified, “how will I ever know when I’ve had enough?”
* * *
DIAGNOSTIC PROFILE
BEHAVIORAL HISTORY
Have you ever engaged in binge eating, i.e., the consumption of excessive amounts of food in a short time, accompanied by feelings of being out of control? Yes
If so, where? Here
Can you describe your feelings before, during, and after these episodes? No
Have you ever purged yourself of food by vomiting or taking laxatives? None of your business
Did any particular events in your life trigger this behavior? List as many as applicable:
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“OK, JUST EXTEND your arms all the way but don’t lock the elbows. That’s good.”
It’s ridiculous. I’m standing here with my arms out like a scarecrow. They’re still sticklike enough to qualify (I think—or have I lost all perspective during these . . . weeks? months? of being fattened like a beast for slaughter?).
“Now just gently circle them, slowly now, deliberately.”
So I do, as if signaling in some kind of semaphore (help me, please, help me, I’m being held against my will).
“The other way, now, for a count of eight.”
This is supposed to be exercise. I used to work out with weights for two hours at a time—I could bench-press my own weight—and she calls this exercise, standing here, open-palmed like a supplicant, twiddling my deltoids.
“Excellent. Now let’s move on to the next one. You start with your hands by your sides and slowly raise them as far as they’ll go. Imagine you’re cutting through cheese—that’ll give you a sense of resistance.” (Cheese: note the subliminal suggestion.)
Resist, she says. Stop resisting, says the shrink. I wish they’d make up their minds.
This morning, before we set off for Physical Therapy— our current exercise in futility—the nurse brought me a brand-new set of gray sweats. I immediately checked the label to see what size they were.
“Size five!”
“That’s the smallest size we have. Don’t worry, they’ll look fine.”
“Size five!” Size one used to be too big; sometimes I had to shop (proudly) in the children’s department. But I was relieved to see that these really were too big and that I had to fuss with them, rolling up the waistband, winding the drawstring around, folding back the sleeves. Then I was worried that my stomach looked grotesque where the pants bunched up, so I undid them, pulled them lower on my hips, and rearranged the gathers behind me, where I still feel relatively flat. Then my stomach looked even worse without camouflage, so I untied the pants again and tried to redistribute the gathers more evenly. But when I rolled up the waist, they ballooned out over my potbelly; looking down, I let out a bleat of helpless misery.
It’s a familiar routine.
In ballet class every day, everywhere, the women walk into the studio, put their dance bags down, and head straight for the mirror, where they make some anxious or reassuring adjustment. Some are more subtle about it than others, sneaking a sidelong glance and a quick tug; the rest, like me, are so mesmerized by the horror of what we see that we abandon shame, turning helplessly this way and that, pulling and yanking at our practice clothes.
Everyone has her own gesture: tugging at the bottom of a T-shirt, looking over a shoulder to hitch tights up and leotard down, pressing a palm against a tummy glimpsed in profile, rearranging a neckline to show clavicles or cleavage. Everyone has her own costume, ritualistically designed, a palimpsest in whose layers you can read the history of that body’s imperfections.
We know each other’s bodies better than lovers do.
I used to wear a black leotard with black tights and an oversized T-shirt with the neck cut out. Over the tights I wore a set of woolen warm-ups, rolled down at the waist, and over that a pair of short, baggy nylon parachute pants and a pair of slouchy leg warmers. If I felt particularly distended, I added a sweatshirt and ballet skirt. Sometimes during class I would catch sight of myself in the mirror and want to run screaming from the room.
When she returned this morning, I was back in my robe, ripping my hair. The sweats were on the floor.
“I can’t wear those,” I said. “This robe is the only goddamn thing that fits.” I didn’t know I was going to cry until I did.
“Why won’t they fit?” she asked, gently.
It was too hard to explain, so I just made a gesture, as if cupping a football, above my gut.
“But when you’re wearing the sweatshirt, that part doesn’t show anyway,” she said.
“I know,” I said, “but it does.”
Somehow she convinced me to dress again, the sweatshirt first this time and then the pants. She tied the drawstring herself, so decisively that I didn’t resist. Standing there with arms raised over my head while she adjusted the waist and tied a tight, crisp bow, I imagined that next she might hand me a bright lunchbox and walk me to school, holding my hand in the traffic. That might be Physical Therapy, that safe, warm grasp.
Instead she escorted me (untouched) to this pitiful gym.
We’ve done our Five-Minute Warm-Up on the Exercycle, our Warm-Up Stretches, our Deep Breathing, and now we’re Circling Our Arms and Cutting Cheese.
“This isn’t much of a workout,” I say. I’m bored. I feel ridiculous. I also feel tired. The idea, explains the dykey-looking instructor, is not to overexert ourselves but to Reconnect with our Bodies.
This isn’t my body. If it were, I’d be horrified at how hot and bulky it feels, how sluggish and stiff, how wobbly the thighs, how tight the hamstrings when I try to bend down. I used to press my palms flat against the floor, now my fingertips dangle helplessly six inches above.
My body is an impeccable machine. This, therefore, cannot be my body.
My toe shoes are very shiny, my mouth blood-dark. Masked like a harlequin, I pick my way over broken glass. The aroma of rosin sickens me; the lights are blindingly hot and white; beyond them, a hostile buzz. I tr
y to unfurl a leg, but something is wrong, I can’t balance, my arms flap like fins. I want to run offstage, but the music commands me to stay, to give the audience what it paid for. I know I can’t make it, but, grinning desperately, I go through the motions, trying to hold out until the end. I almost do, but as I recoil for the final leap, an ankle folds under me and I stumble instead, landing on hands and knees, gravity’s pied fool.
“It’s OK,” she says. “You’ll get used to it.”
“I never will,” I say. “It’s a deformity.”
“Josie,” she says, “it’s flesh—normal, human flesh. It’s what we’re made out of.”
Not me.
I wish they would leave me alone in this Physical Therapy room, with all its racklike contraptions. I could design myself a workout that would rid me of this tumorous belly, these jellyish thighs, this loose wad of flab on the upper arm.
I could, but the thought of so much effort, constantly renewed, exhausts me.
I could design myself a workout that would rid me of all flesh forever. I could do Hanging from a Bar. (A cartoon: a doctor’s waiting room, a skeleton in a chair. “The doctor will see you now.” No need: all aches already cured.)
The exercise session or whatever it’s supposed to be is over, but the nurse is lingering to talk to the crew-cut instructor, out of earshot, in the far corner where she’s putting the mats away. Perhaps, it suddenly dawns on me, the nurse is a dyke, too; that would explain a lot (the constant touching, the tenderness). The coyness about the boyfriend. Meanwhile I’m standing here propped against some kind of massage table, not knowing what to do with my hands, so I start pulling at my hair to see if it’s still falling out. It is, especially when I pull at it, but perhaps not as much as before. I pull harder.
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