Ironically, I became extremely in tune with my body as it broke down, noticing every pang, jab, and gurgle. So when the blackouts would start, I would quickly tell the pianist to please go over “I Feel Pretty” with the cast, and I would hurry myself to the bench behind the theater, the one I was sure nobody knew about, where I would wait out the blackout. The dark blotches in my mind’s eye became bigger, and the time frames when they appeared, longer. Though on some level these blackouts frightened me, I became remarkably Zen about them—allowing them the space to have their moment. Disturbingly, in retrospect I think I found the blackouts to be somewhat gratifying—a telltale sign that I was winning, even though I’m not sure I knew what game I was playing.
Of course, my physique began to change drastically, too, and at one point, the camp nurse—whom I had never previously spoken to—pulled me over to the side to ask me what was going on. I was floored by the compassion and concern in her eyes. “I’m just on a bit of a diet,” I said. And she left me to my devices.
Nancy noticed, too, and was somewhat in awe of my noticeably thinner self. We sat behind the cabin and she told me I looked good in shorts and wondered if maybe she should wear shorts, too. “You should,” I told her. “They’d look nice on you. And besides, it’s so hot out these days.”
“You just look really good in shorts,” she reiterated—more fascinated with my weight change than concerned by it.
She took another puff of her cigarette and we just sat there, staring at the woods and at the water just beyond them.
Soon my hunger disappeared, and my body seemed to find a new normal in its starvation mode. When I wasn’t rehearsing or preparing for the play, I would find a quiet place to sleep—I was so extraordinarily tired all the time. I basked in my sleep, though, and was grateful for the opportunity to stop the world from spinning.
“You look like you need a break,” the camp director told me one day, just before West Side Story went up.
“Nah, I’m good,” I told him—keenly aware that I had large bags under my eyes and that, despite the unrelenting sun, my skin was still chalky and pale.
But he insisted that I take a day trip of my choosing and told me of a bus that went directly into Boston. I decided I would go, rationalizing that my clothes were swimming on my new body and I could stand to get one or two things that fit.
At Boston’s Quincy Market, I popped into a store, eyeballing some jean shorts. When the woman working there asked me my size, I realized I had no idea. My unintentional uniform had become shorts or skirts with drawstrings, and large T-shirts. She looked me up and down, then suggested I try a six. I stared at her, waiting for her to add the teen—“six-teen.” But she didn’t. And when a six indeed fit me, and the woman assured me that their pants ran true to size, I was as excited as I was scared. Since I’d been a kid, I’d always been above a size twelve. It seemed impossible that I was suddenly a six.
I wrote to my mother, told her I’d lost some weight and could she please send me some of her clothes to borrow? The one pair of pants and one pair of shorts I’d bought in Boston didn’t seem like enough. About a week later, a box of my TM’s old clothes arrived in the mail, and as soon as I put them on, my new, thin body was as apparent to me as it was to my colleagues, whose comments about me seemed to fade as their curiosity bubbled—or perhaps I just didn’t care to notice anymore.
One day, as I was gathering my things together in preparation for leaving camp the following week, I came across my box of tampons and realized I had not gotten my period since the first week of camp. That same day, as I was brushing my hair, a half-dollar-sized circle of hair—a huge chunk!—came right out, down to the scalp. It was just above my forehead, and to the right, and it was extremely obvious. I stood facing the mirror in my cabin, holding this very long, thick hank of hair that resembled a horse’s tail, and I was terrified. I hid the hair in some tissues and pushed it down to the bottom of the garbage, afraid someone would find it. I fiddled with the rest of my hair and changed the part—figuring out how to wear it so that the new bald spot would not show.
It was finally the end of the summer. West Side Story was going up the following day. The camp director decided to take all the specialists out for pizza to celebrate camp being over, and I had no choice but to join. It had been a while since I had been around food, except for in the camp cafeteria. The toasty smell overtook the restaurant as we sat at the long table—me at the end. The director ordered a bunch of pies for everyone, but I didn’t take any. And as my colleagues around me ate their share and likely mine, laughing and joking about campers and summer memories, I felt a stomach pang again. “I’m going to get some air,” I said, with nobody noticing—and I went outside, in the summer evening, and found a bench.
But I quickly realized that it wasn’t the familiar pang of starvation I was feeling—it was dejection. For the first time since I’d arrived, I was able to see myself as an outsider would. Something about being in the pizza place, amid happy people and hearty food, made me feel completely alone. I had protected myself—or so I thought—by alienating myself from the others’ gibes, and I had pushed my body to its physical limit.
I suddenly recalled the pizza I shared with my TM when I was a kid, and the warm memory made this moment sting worse. The people in my life who loved me—my grandmother and mother at the top of the list—would feel shattered if they knew what I was doing to myself. The realization that they would want me to eat the pizza broke my heart. I felt as though I was somehow letting them down. The love I knew they had for me from afar, as I sat weeping on a bench in front of a pizza place in some tiny town in New England, burst my facade and my bubble. I knew I was sick.
West Side Story was completely fabulous. The kids cried with excitement when the first curtain call brought down the house. As they bowed, they put their hands out toward me, begging me to join them on the stage, but I shook my head no and kept applauding them instead. It was their moment. I did not want to be seen.
Just after the final curtain call, as the kids were hugging their kvelling parents, I grabbed my duffel bag and left camp for good. I needed my life back.
NINE
sell a story and play a part
New York City was waiting for me. It was the tail end of summer, and the humidity stuck to my body like wet glue. When I walked in the door of my apartment in Washington Heights, my roommate’s jaw dropped. “Holy fucking shit,” she said. “What the hell happened to you?”
No longer surrounded by my controlled environment, I started eating again—but my period did not yet return. My hair, however, started to grow—first a soft fuzz, and then, eventually, the spot was hidden by a dark covering that, although very short, effectively hid the baldness much more efficiently than my weird, uneven part. And even though I had been so sick and knew that what I had done could have eventually killed me, I still could not help but bask in my newfound thinness. And the knowledge that I had the power in me to stop eating—to cease a completely necessary bodily function—reinforced for me that I could do absolutely anything I wanted, as long as I put my mind to it.
That, after all, was my superpower.
—
As I started to eat again, my weight, naturally, shot up. Anytime someone transitions from complete starvation to eating anything, that is a given. Add to that the fact that the food I was eating was anything but wholesome.
That fall, my obsession became how to make the perfect grilled cheese sandwich. I glopped on enough butter (to both sides of the bread) to oil a car, and then experimented with various types of cheese, finding ultimate satisfaction in good old American—my childhood go-to. In between sandwiches, I snacked on cheese and crackers and rarely if ever consumed a vegetable.
My body and brain were so relieved by eating that my mental and physical addiction took over everything once again—they were driving the bus, and any glimmer of hope for balance didn’t stand
a chance. I justified all this by reminding myself how traumatic my summer of starvation had been, and how much I deserved this grilled cheese sandwich with the perfect ratio of butter to cheese to happiness.
And so it’s no surprise that very quickly I had to donate my new “thin clothes,” and within just a few months I had put on fifty pounds. At the time, I knew that I was getting fat again, but I was in absolute denial as to how much. I simply could not keep up with my body, and just as I hid my dark moods with dark eyeliner, I hid my expanding body with an expanding eccentric wardrobe. Eventually, I went on the birth control pill in order to jump-start my period. I had outgrown (so to speak) my role with the AIDS-awareness theater company, and thrust myself back into a world of auditioning and scheming how to become the actress I had always wanted to be.
When callbacks remained stale and my career stagnant, I decided to enroll in a monologue class taught by a quickly up-and-coming casting director—a short and fiery thirty-something who spoke her mind, but who sometimes didn’t realize just how powerful words can be. When Goldie walked in the door on that first day of class—her gait faster and her focus more intense than even most New Yorkers’—I was instantly smitten. Though she stood at only five foot one, her small shoulders were held perfectly upright, her chest wide, and her pointy chin was angled straight out and slightly up—as if she was constantly trying to smell something cooking in the next room—giving her both height and at least the illusion of confidence. Goldie looked like a stylish, prettier version of Velma from Scoobie-Doo!—who, admittedly, had always been my favorite. Her short brown hair curled under that determined chin, and she had the captivating closed-mouth grin of a woman who was always plotting. Though not your classic definition of beautiful, I found her quirky and completely adorable, and felt the familiar pang of my teacher-worship begin to surface.
The other five students and I fixated on her as she practically jetéd across the room, stopped beside a little wooden stool that inexplicably commanded respect, and then turned around to take each of us in. She hadn’t put her bag down yet, nor had she said a word. The first thing out of her mouth was a question, aimed at the whole group. “Do you want to know why you’re not getting cast? Why you have the time to take my class?”
We just sat there silently, looking at our teacher, unsure whether we should love her, fear her, hate her, or all of the above.
She didn’t give us a chance to decide whether we wanted to answer her question. Instead, still holding her large shoulder bag, balanced impeccably on her small frame, she addressed each of us individually, telling us—based on her first impression of our appearance—precisely what stood in the way between ourselves and our respective Tony Awards. Red Beard Guy needed to shave. Purple-Haired Crew-Cut Girl needed a dye job, “at the very least,” Goldie added. Mom Jeans Lady needed an updated look.
I suppose I knew, on some level, what was about to be hurled at me. But even though I had my suspicions, when Goldie stopped at me, not missing a beat, pointing her finger in my direction and saying, “You need to lose weight,” a knot I had only then realized was forming in my stomach was tugged tighter, causing me to jut forward a bit in my chair, feeling both humiliated and defensive.
“I just did,” I bravely replied, referring to my summer of not eating—leaving out the part where I’d gained most of it back.
“You need to lose more,” she retorted, surprised that I spoke at all. (Fat girls don’t speak!) She put down her bag with a clunk, then looked back at me. “A lot more.”
And with that, my new acting class began.
Two hours and ten minutes later, after class was over and I no longer had to pretend that what had just happened didn’t affect me—I stood tucked under a store awning on the corner of Forty-fourth and Sixth and wept. Once again, my size was betraying me. Proving that my worst fears were true, Goldie saw me as nothing more than a walking blob of fat and would never give me a chance to wow her with my ability to sell a story and play a part. My role, she had decided already, was that of a fat girl whose body was holding her back from getting cast.
And the sad thing is, I have no doubt—nor did I then—that Goldie was right. She was simply the first person in my career to tell me the unvarnished truth, even though I had known it all along.
The following week, I found myself in the elevator with Goldie, on the way up to class. She looked as though she was happy to see me, like she had something burning to tell me. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said, touching my arm and sending surprising, unwanted tingles up to my chest. “I wanted to tell you that I do Weight Watchers on Tuesdays before this class, and—forgive me if this is forward—but I wondered if you might be interested in joining me?” (Forgive her if this was forward?)
Did my acting teacher seriously just invite me to lose weight with her? This was definitely not the conversation I’d anticipated having that day, nor had I considered ever rejoining Weight Watchers. I associated it too closely with my TM, who was still—all these years later—in a cyclical, nonmonogamous relationship with Weight Watchers, going back every few months to lose the few pounds that drove her batty.
And yet, I was oddly moved by the invitation, and intrigued by the idea of spending “alone time” with Goldie, whose brain was fascinating to me, and—despite her insensitive streak—whose effervescence was not lost on me.
I acted unruffled. “Yeah, that would be great,” I said, surprising myself with my (admittedly feigned) imperturbable attitude, and she told me she’d e-mail me the information about the meeting.
—
Walking into Weight Watchers was a strange experience. Even though it had been a lifetime since I last was a part of the program—added to the fact that this time I was an adult in New York City, not a brooding suburban teenager—the setup was remarkably similar to the community center basement where I had gone as a kid. Inside an unused room in an office building, I first walked in to a “pop-up store” of sorts—where I found all the Weight Watchers brand granola bars and other snack foods displayed, along with the attributed amount of “points” for each item. Just beyond the packaged foods was the receptionist, who still doubled as the person doing the weigh-ins. And hanging out near her was the group’s leader—a bubbly aspiring opera singer named Cadence.
After I was weighed in and given my start-up materials, Goldie and I sat together in the last row and chatted, waiting for the meeting to begin. She had apparently successfully lost sixty pounds on Weight Watchers—a fact that surprised me not only because she was so thin, but because she moved and behaved as though she always had been. She appeared to lack both hesitance and self-doubt. I decided I wanted to be her.
As I got to know her over the next few weeks, I was surprised to realize that I didn’t just idolize Goldie, but I actually really liked her, too. We started to spend time together—I would stop by her office in Midtown for lunch; we would pop into the produce market Stile’s, simply because we heard the fresh figs there were perfection; and, on my twenty-fourth birthday, she took me out for an electric night of dancing and drinking (we didn’t count points for the drinks that night). It seemed inexplicable to me that she was hanging out with me and seemingly enjoying it, and I basked in this new friendship—deciding that my ensuing weight loss would be an extension of that friendship, a way I could prove to her how serious I was about both my acting career and my devotion to her.
So I lost weight, yet again. I counted points and dutifully wrote down everything I ate in my tiny journal that was full of attempted inspiring quotes and sentiments such as the thought-provoking “Never give up!”
Once my class came to an end, Goldie was no longer able to make our Tuesday night Weight Watchers meetings—so I started to attend solo. One day, on the way to my meeting, I had to run into the drugstore that was just next to the building that housed my Weight Watchers group. I grabbed the eye makeup remover I had stopped in for and, on the way to the
checkout line, became distracted by a row containing shelves of large bags of Snickers, Three Musketeers, and wrapped caramels. I had barely eaten that day—on weigh-in days, I ate very little for fear of a last-minute gain or a full colon that would throw off the numbers on the scale. Since my points for the day were unused (and plus, post-meeting time is “free time,” right?), I took a deep breath and bought several bags of candy. I pushed the candy down to the bottom of my bag and headed to my Weight Watchers meeting, where I was cheerfully told by the receptionist that I was down one and a half pounds. I grinned as I sat in the back of the meeting a few minutes later, knowing that my evening was going to be orgasmic—complete with the buttery grilled cheese sandwiches I’d make when I got home and the bags of sweet candy secretly hidden in both my bag and my consciousness.
At home later that evening, I treated myself to a binge and felt, once again, the tingling satisfaction that started in my throat and moved its way to my extremities—circling around my body and then finally landing in my stomach, where my fullness gave me comfort and security. It was my free time, and I indeed felt free.
I continued this ritual week after week—not consuming much of anything on the Tuesdays of my Weight Watchers meetings, and then binging on sweets that evening. The rest of the week, I remained married to my “rules”—the Weight Watchers guidebook that dictated how many points and what size portions to consume, how often, and with what diversity, was my bible.
Meanwhile, I continued to audition—getting small roles here and there, in plays that nobody talked about and that weren’t particularly good. In the evenings, I babysat, and I had a roster of odd jobs that would keep me busy, but my income needs were far from being met. This floundering was juxtaposed by the success I was having at Weight Watchers, even despite my free time excesses, and so one day it occurred to me to apply for a part-time job there. I was, after all, a “success story” for them—I had lost weight and, though not at my goal weight, I had once again become a “normal-sized girl.”
Always Too Much and Never Enough Page 12