No one pays me any attention, so I start picking at the sores around my mouth, but then the phone rings, the exercise therapist goes to answer it, and Suzanne—reluctantly, it seems—comes over to me. We’re on our way out when I hear someone call my name. I ignore it, a familiar hallucination (it happens all the time, doesn’t it: you hear your name called, as clearly as if someone were right next to you, but there’s never anyone there). I hear it again and ignore it again, but she nudges me (unnecessarily hard, startling me).
“What?” I say.
“Answer when someone calls you.”
“Where?”
Climbing on to one of the exercise bikes is a pudgy blonde I’ve never seen before, dressed in gray sweats like mine (except hers are much snugger around the hips). She waves and calls again. “Josie! Hey, Josie!”
I glance at the nurse, unsure. Why is this stranger calling me? How does she know who I am? Instead of explaining, my jailer tilts her chin and cocks an eyebrow in the direction of the bikes, implying that I should go over there. I don’t want to but I do.
There is something familiar about this face, after all (a fugitive taste of honey, almonds). It’s puffy and bloated, with chipmunk cheeks and pouchy eyes, but memory, trawling, stops at the mouth. A wide mouth, a mouth that might eat everything in sight.
She has, by the looks of her.
It’s Cathy.
So this is her, without make-up, with her hair grown out to a nondescript dirty blond. Fat, grotesquely fat, deformed by a thick new deposit around her waist. Where she used to be slinky, now she’s all pumped up, every part of her: her neck, her wrists, her ankles, each porky little paw.
They let her eat. They let her eat everything she wanted, and this is what happened.
This is what will become of me.
This is what could have become of me then, in the terrible years. Some mornings I—someone else—would wake up with the mania upon me. I never knew when the disease would strike, the urge to gnaw, to cram, to rend; I would only know that it had struck, as soon as I opened my eyes, as soon as consciousness infected me again. (Why? The bitter afterlife of a dream? The body’s rage at being alive again?)
I knew if I ate anything I’d eat everything so I ate nothing and sat at my desk staring at words. It would be worse to go out, with the world reduced inside me to a radar display, glowing and flashing where danger lay in the form of food. Desire gradually took over—not simple need, like hunger, but a taut, elastic compulsion. It took all my energy to withstand it, this urge to ravage, to tear with the teeth, to devour and destroy, to stuff the hollow skull. I knew I was lost; the only question was how long I could postpone my convulsive capitulation.
By this time, I lived alone in a small studio apartment because it had become too difficult to maintain my regime in the dorm, where I had to eat and even use the bathroom in public, where people had begun to whisper about me.
No one ever spoke to me, and I, unreal in my glass case, never said anything to anyone. It never occurred to me, and, besides, I needed all my concentration just to make my way through space. One day the Resident Assistant, a chunky, officious girl of the type I loathed most (sporty, “bubbly,” with shiny brown muscular legs), took me aside and—touching me for some reason on the triceps— asked if I was “OK.”
“OK?” I asked.
She gestured in my direction, and mumbled, “Well, you know . . .”
I didn’t. So I lied to my parents, telling them I’d lost my room in the housing lottery, and got their permission to move off campus. They didn’t care, because it was cheaper.
Finally I could organize my life the way I wanted it.
I decorated my room with nutrition charts, collages from Bon Appétit, swimwear spreads from Vogue (lean, golden, toasty), and a hefty collection of cookbooks, though I never cooked (The Cake Encyclopedia was my favorite, with color photos so luscious I sometimes touched my tongue to them—feeding on images, the only food I needed).
I kept my refrigerator near-empty, so that on those days when, defeated, I abandoned my desk and headed for the kitchen, I knew exactly what I’d find: nothing. I never kept anything in the house that I really wanted to eat—only cottage cheese, squeakily repellent to the palate, lettuce (I could sometimes eat a whole head, slathered in mustard), and a carrot or two. Ranks of Tab and mineral water occupied the rest of the cold space; I’d feel unbearably anxious if I didn’t have at least six bottles of each on hand at all times.
The grocery cupboard was equally sparse—Mother Hubbard’s dog would have been long dead. Some coffee filters, a few cans of tomato paste (why?), and a bag of flour, alive, on closer inspection, with swarming brown specks. That didn’t stop me from taking a handful and cramming it, choking, into my mouth; in this paroxysm, I would even eat weevils.
One recent estimate of the amount of protein contributed to the Aztec diet from wild sources comes to, on the average, about one slice of deer meat, two small fish, three-quarters of a duck, and a sackful of worms in a year.
But weevils couldn’t feed the need, so I’d be driven out into the streets, in dread and relief, looking for something to consume. Not just anything, the right thing—but what that was, I never knew. So I had to devour everything in hopes of discovering what I wanted.
Roaming in desperate agitation, my sole purpose was to postpone, preferably forever, the moment my mouth would be empty again. Perhaps a similar hunger drives men in search of sex—the difference being that my frenzy led me to seek something to cram into myself, while they crave something into which to cram themselves.
“I don’t really see that it’s any of your business,” I say, after a pause, and he leans back in his chair, where he had been pressed forward, tensed in the effort to probe me. My body used to be the boundary, but now that it’s been taken over, I’m concentrating my self inside my skull. Today he wants to talk about sex (why doesn’t he call an “adult” phone line if that’s what he wants?), and I don’t have the stamina to convince him that nothing could be more beside the point. (Just as I can’t make Suzanne understand that none of this is about appearance.)
“And anyway,” I say, “most of the time, I never give it a thought, never did.” This is intended to shut him up; it’s also almost the truth.
So take your theory of transference and stick it, I add mentally, though at that moment (by coincidence) a sick sensation seeps through me that I thought I had staunched.
I don’t know why he of all people penetrated the fog that enveloped me. But suddenly, in my junior year (eighty-three pounds), I was besotted with him. There was nothing—I thought—that he didn’t know, and every time he looked my way, ants swarmed inside me with ticklish feet.
Twice a week, before his seminar (Theory of Scarcity), I spent two and a half hours in front of the mirror. I was always perfectly prepared but wore an air of ennui designed to unnerve him, opening my mouth only to make brilliant remarks I’d rehearsed the night before.
Towards the end of the term, shortly after I’d handed in a forty-three-page paper that even I thought was good, I passed him on my way into the library, as he was on his way out. He did a double take and turned to look back over his shoulder at me with a delighted grin. I had, it seemed, succeeded in attracting his attention—but even at my most feverish I couldn’t imagine a situation in which anything might come of it. For the first time ever, I besieged my numb slit nightly before falling asleep, but my imagination, a literalist, drew a blank: it balked at the earthquake scenario, the car crash routine (his wife and children wiped out, I happen to be in his office when he receives the news), even the accidental encounter in a bar (what would he be doing there alone; what would I?).
It turned out to be so much simpler. The Economics Department held an informal wine and cheese reception for majors who were considering grad school; faculty members were there to “mingle and answer questions.” Abandoning my usual prohibition against wine (150 calories a glass), I went and drank and stayed until the
end. Everyone drank too much because the department secretary, overestimating the number of interested students (or perhaps in a fit of Schadenfreude), had ordered extravagantly from the liquor store. I avoided him all night, but by the end so few of us were left that we gathered into a single knot.
I began sending him psychic messages to glance at his watch, look casually about, and say “I should be getting on home. Anyone need a ride?” I knew where he lived (I knew everything about him that was on the public record), and it was in the right general direction. But instead an officious little adjunct instructor picked up the radar, peered at the clock, drew her crocheted shawl around her, and, looking straight at me, said, “I should be getting along now. Anyone need a ride?”
“Which way are you going?” I mumbled.
She launched into an elaborate description of her route, but when I named my street, began fretting about where the nearest gas station was and how late it stayed open and how much cash she had on her.
“I’m going that way,” he interrupted. “I could take, ah, Josephine.”
“Never?” he asks, his voice quavering in exaggerated disbelief.
“Never,” I repeat, making a slicing gesture to illustrate my point.
He folds his hands in his lap, looks across at me, unfolds them, and shrugs. I shrug, too, blank-faced. No sex talk today, doc.
Drunk and reckless, for once, I decided to seize the moment. As his silver Toyota drew up outside my apartment building and paused, idling, for me to get out, I took a deep, dizzying inhalation.
“Would you like to come in?”
“What for?” he replied, taken aback.
“For whatever you like,” I said, significantly, and then repeated: “Anything you like.”
The nature of the invitation seemed pretty clear.
He hesitated.
“OK,” he said, “a cup of tea would be nice.”
As a rocket-burst of elation exploded inside me, my brain made a quick inventory: yes, I did have tea; the apartment, of course, was neat—so neat I wished I had a moment to run in and scatter some newspapers around for a less pathological effect; he might think the pictures on the wall were weird, but I’d keep the lights low; my underwear was passable, but my stomach and thighs were a flabby disgrace.
Too late to do anything about that now.
He settled awkwardly into the only chair, looking around for something to read while I made tea. I tuned the radio to a classical music station, and he surprised me by identifying the Bruckner violin concerto that came on. To me, music was indistinguishable noise, but other people seemed to hear something more.
Neither of us had the faintest idea how to proceed.
Should I perch on the edge of the bed and chat about economics?
Should I launch myself upon him as he sat there, looking as inscrutable and self-contained as he did in the classroom, a slim, soft-spoken man with hooded eyes?
He resolved the problem by setting his mug down carefully on the floor, looking straight at me, and asking, in his measured way, “May I spend the night with you?”
Equally calmly, despite a seismic jolt of disbelief, I answered, “Sure.” Then, putting my own cup down, I added, “Just let me go to the bathroom first.”
He’s clearly embarrassed but decides to persevere.
“Have there really been no, uh, sexual experiences that you would describe as pleasurable?”
Her body: lean, golden, toasty.
“No, not really,” I lie. “Anyway, I just don’t see that it’s any of your business.”
Perhaps I should invent a sexual fantasy, just for him. Oh, doctor, I’m so ashamed—before I go to sleep, I dream that you cram your doughy dick into my mouth. What on earth do you think this could mean?
I found out afterwards that his wife and children were on vacation, visiting her mother. At the time, I didn’t ask any questions.
We went to bed, where he performed with solemn concentration.
I was drunk enough to believe I was enjoying it.
The next morning he showered and dressed before I was properly awake, said good-bye, and slunk out looking shifty and self-satisfied. With his wet hair plastered down, he resembled a water rat.
I closed my eyes and dozed, feeling battered and sleep-deprived, as if I had been in a train wreck. Stray images from the night revisited me: a hand placing a mug, very carefully, on the floor; the slight tripping movement he made stepping out of his pants; the stretched-out elastic on his underwear; his small, skewed, but willing cock; the crumpled skin around his eyes; his graying beard slimed with my secretions.
After tossing for a couple of hours in a bed that smelled of rotten mushrooms, I got up and wandered shakily into the bathroom, not knowing what to do next. I had missed my morning run, my morning calisthenics. I consulted the mirror. A pale, unclean-looking person looked back, with wild hair, aubergine eye sockets, and dark, gnawed lips. A violent pimple was about to erupt on my chin. I looked and felt like a hallucination.
Tensing over the toilet, I took out my diaphragm. (The pill, of course, was out of the question: weight gain.) Its folded cup came out resistantly, dripping on my hand and releasing an odor of rubber and vinegar and raw meat. Mucus clung to it, some viscous, some gelatinous; I couldn’t tell which was his, which mine, and which the goo from the tube. As I began rinsing it, nausea rose in my throat.
I decided to shower but instead found myself in the kitchen measuring out a bowl of cereal. After I’d eaten that, standing up, I measured out another one. After I’d eaten that, I poured out all the rest, drowned it in milk, and ate that. Then I combed my hair, pulled on sweatpants and T-shirt, hid my face behind dark glasses, and walked to the corner store, where I bought a bag of blueberry muffins, another box of cereal, several bars of dark chocolate, a bag of potato chips, and three liters of Tab.
I ate until I was unconscious and finally slept.
When I saw him in class the following day, he ignored me. He ignored me the next time, too, though I never took my eyes off his face. He pretended not to see me when we passed on the stairs.
I understood what the problem was. The problem was my body.
Naturally he was disgusted.
If you make a pig out of yourself, you will become one.
It was time, I could see, to take matter in hand.
I decided to limit myself to two slices of bread a day, one in the morning and one at night, plus a green apple every other day, at noon (though some days I would forgo that too). I increased my evening swim from forty-five minutes to an hour and added another fifteen minutes of abdominal exercises. But no matter what I did, my belly still looked enormous to me, soft and full, overripe. Despite the frantic sit-ups, I could never get warm after swimming, and my skin stayed puckered, purple and parchment-colored. Down grew all over me but I shaved it off.
Inside, an icebound emptiness opened up. I would find myself staring at something—a knot in the tabletop, the colophon of a book I’d opened—and have no idea how long I’d been sitting there, propping up my head with my hands. At night, in Arctic dreams, fierce penguins lumbered toward me with bloodstained beaks.
After a month or so, he telephoned late one evening (11:18 P.M.), unnaturally emphatic, as if he’d been drinking. He asked if he could come over, and I said yes—panicking because when I put down the phone I’d have to rip the Saran Wrap off my thighs and the ankle weights off my wrists and jump in the shower to get the Clearasil off my face and the Vaseline off my feet (cracked soles).
He arrived clutching a paper bag. It was a bottle of Scotch. We each drank about two inches without ice and then went to bed; this time, I noticed, he carefully placed his watch right side up on the nightstand. Concentrating hard, he achieved his spasm, dozed heavily for ten minutes or so, woke with a jolt, rolled over to read his watch and left, splashing around in the bathroom first to purge himself, I presume, of any whiff of me.
Thus began our two-year affair.
For the firs
t year, the pattern was invariable. Once a week, in the late afternoon, he’d drive me home from school, drink two inches of Scotch—he kept me well supplied, I will say that for him—take me to bed, check his watch, wash his dick, and leave in time for supper. He had two children, aged eight and eleven, and prided himself on being a good father. Sometimes, in my arms, he’d repeat my name—as a mnemonic device, I assumed.
I prided myself on making no demands.
I just kept myself available and in shape.
I thought I was happy.
One afternoon several months into the affair, as we lay together after having sex, he said to me, “I know you’re faking it, you know. But it doesn’t matter.”
Was I? I didn’t even know.
DIAGNOSTIC PROFILE
SEXUAL HISTORY
Sex: Being wielded by a large, hairy person in the grip of an inexplicable frenzy
Have you ever engaged in sexual intercourse? Allegedly
Have you ever been sexually abused or assaulted? --
Sexual preference: None
16
I WAKE UP hung over from a bad dream—dark, cavernous spaces, inexhaustible weeping—and it takes me too long to remember where I am, to reinhabit this dying animal. While I’m still trying to sink back into my skin, she bursts through the door, whistling, with a tray.
“Pancakes!” she says. “Apple pancakes!”
320 calories.
A deep exhaustion drains me out again through the spaces in my self. Every day the same story, the same futile repetition: feeding the carcass, forcing it to live, keeping it going until one day it just stops.
I’m too heavy, too blurred, to do anything, so I just roll over and curl up again, folding my hands under my chin.
“Uh-uh-uh, madame,” she says cheerfully, “it’s time to rise and shine.”
This is how she speaks. Rise and shine.
“Sit up and eat your pancakes now, so I can take you for a shower before we do your hair.”
“Do my what?”
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