Leith, William

by The Hungry Years

  I never wrote the article about fat guys. But I noticed something about Michael. He was beginning to get fatter. He put on 10 lbs, 20 lbs, 30 lbs. I remember one particular lunch we had in an Italian restaurant. I had a mixed salad. That was it. Just a mixed salad. Michael had a starter with bread rolls, a pasta dish, a pudding, wine, and coffee. I remember this meal because I had to leave early; I was on my way to France.

  `Send my best to Anna,' he said.

  Later, he broke his ankle in a fall and put on another 20 lbs. One day, he told me that he had decided to write the article about what it was like to be a fat guy. He'd had photographs of himself taken with no clothes on. They looked gross, he said.

  Michael told me that he wasn't going to write the article for a while. What he was going to do was this: he was going to lose weight. And then he would write the article.

  And Then, Click

  When it happens, when the terrible thing happens, it arrives quietly, surreptitiously, like the sort of storm that kills sailors because they can't see it coming. You see the clouds on the horizon, you notice the water getting choppy. But you press on regardless. You press on blithely. Blithe: showing a casual or cheerful indifference considered to be callous or improper. It's a pretty good description of the state of mind of the person who embarks on an eating binge.

  One minute you're fine, and then, click: you're in a different world. You might be walking along, more or less absolutely certain that you will not have any fries, will not duck under the golden arches, will not walk across the floor, smelling the oil and mechanically recovered meat smell, will not take in the dinky, bright-coloured tables and semi-comfortable chairs, will not approach the counter, will not look at the guy behind the counter, will not look up at him and smile. And while you're pretty certain you will not do any of these things, you allow your mind to dwell momentarily on the prospect. That's all it is. You sail towards the storm, and there's a moment when you can't quite walk along the deck with your usual assured swagger, because the boat is beginning to pitch a little, to yaw a little. And you tell yourself you're fine. And there's another moment when you have lost all radio contact. That's what it's like, inside a binge. It's like losing radio contact. It sounds silly, doesn't it? But that's what it's like.

  One minute you're fine, and then, click.

  A Time of Great Uncertainty

  The first time I had an eating binge, I was seven years old. It was the summer before we moved to Canada, the summer before I came into contact with shopping malls and fast food, with roadside diners and drive-in movies and drive-thru burger bars, with the soft, sugary, oily sensation, in the mouth, of the burger itself.

  The burger.

  The fries.

  Before Canada, food came in two categories food you had to eat and food you wanted to eat. Canada would make me believe that the food you had to eat could also be the food you wanted to eat.

  We were flying out in the next few days. It was a time of great uncertainty. The family was staying in my grandmother's house, talking about what life would be like in Canada. There would be bears. There would be lakes and forests. Snow. I could play ice hockey. I could have skates.

  My grandmother always made this same apple pie with very thin pastry. She made it in a large, shallow baking tray, with the thin pastry on the base, about an inch of stewed apple, and more thin pastry on top. You waited for the pie to get cold, and cut it into slices. Then you poured cream on the pie, and ate it on a small, chintzy plate.

  I can see myself, sitting at my grandmother's dining table. I eat a slice of pie. Then I eat my traditional second slice, for which I receive my traditional volley of approval and praise. My third slice is not quite as good as my second slice. I take my fourth slice on the quiet, after the pie has been moved into

  the kitchen. I cut it myself. In the tray is the rest of the pie, not cut into slices. Six of us have eaten half of the pie. Half is left. Nobody will notice. I cut a bit of the pie away. Eat it. Now the pie looks untidy. I chop a bit more off. Eat it. Still untidy.

  Chop another bit.

  Eat it.

  And then, click.

  What Do You Think I'm Doing, Mum?

  Four years later, I'm standing on a street in a seaside town in Sussex, looking at the shop across the road. I was fat when I came back from Canada, but I'm not so fat any more. Still, I'm not quite right.

  It's mid-morning, and I'm aware that I'm not supposed to be outside the school, but hell, nobody much notices what I do. I wonder what my family are doing, my mother and father and younger brother. They're in Germany. I envy my brother. Even though he's only four years younger than me, he doesn't have to go to boarding school; he's just taking time out, doing whatever. They send me letters. Like the letters are going to improve my situation or something. My father will be at work, probably. It's June, and probably a nice day where they are, which is Konstanz, on the Swiss border, near the Alps.

  Later, I've got games, but before that, Maths and Latin, both of which I hate, neither of which I can concentrate on. This evening it's bath night, when I will be bathed by Danielle, the assistant matron, French.

  What I think about is my mother and brother, probably

  going up a mountain in a cable car or something, or taking a boat across the lake, and then later, when my father comes home from work, they'll eat something, and then just more or less do what they want. I got a letter a couple of days ago, and my mum goes, write and tell us what you're doing. What do you think I'm doing, Mum? I'm going for some nice walks around the lake, and sometimes I travel through the dormitory in a cable car.

  The best thing, really, is to just think about them for a short time, and then try to stop thinking about them, like they didn't exist or something. I mean, for all I know, they don't. For all I know, they could have been in some kind of accident.

  I could just walk across the road here, I have the money, and buy a bag of lemon crystals, which is sugar flavoured with lemon, dyed yellow, which you're supposed to dip your fingers in. It makes your fingers yellow, like the fingers of the men who hang around the arcades by the pier. But I don't dip my fingers in it much. I just pour it straight down. It's amazing, it really is. It really sets you up. I could do it now if I wanted, just rush across the street and then just nip behind the wall.

  Anyway, I decide not to.

  And then, click.

  Would You Look at the State of That Cooker

  I'm 15 and I'm at boarding school and it's the middle of winter and my parents are in Canada again and I'm sitting in my study, wondering if this particular prefect is around,

  wondering if he'll come into my study, wondering what he'll do, if anything, the next time we come face to face. Last week I was sitting in my study with a guy called Templeton, drinking a cup of coffee, when this prefect came in, just burst in, he didn't knock or anything, and he mentioned the fact that there was a ring of milk around the edge of my coffee cup. When I say mentioned. He went wild. Then he trashed the room.

  Coffee's important in this place. We're allowed to make coffee in our studies. We have these things you plug in, like the elements from kettles, and you clip them to the inside of your mug, which you have already filled with water.., I suppose they're quite dangerous. And then you put in the coffee, and the sugar, and the milk. Except on this particular day, not every drop of the milk went into the cup.

  Templeton, he's an OK kind of guy, except for the fact he was one of the Three, or was it the Four, nobody seems to be sure, who were sodomized by a guy called Guppy who got expelled last term. This is all before my time here. But, see, I knew Guppy, from the school I was at before, and he didn't seem to be that sort at all, the sort who goes around sodomizing people at random. I say random, because Templeton, he's not a bad guy, but not the sort of guy you'd sodomise if you had any choice in the matter.

  In any case, I never would have expected it of a guy like Guppy. Of course, you get your frisky types, who will pin you down, say, and try to poke
their dick in your eye or whatever. Yawn.

  Guppy and Templeton. The whole thing made me curious. So when I asked Templeton about it, just a casual enquiry,

  this is my first week, Templeton says, hang on a minute, and asks me to step outside in the galley. The galley is where we're allowed to cook some of our own meals if we want. Big privilege. We cook Chinese food from dried ingredients, which come in boxes we call Vesta packs. That's the company that makes them. So anyway, I do what Templeton says, I step out into the galley, and he says, would you look at the state of that cooker. And I look, and the next thing I'm on my back, looking up at three or four people. Stevenson and Hughes and somebody else, and Templeton is crying. Hughes told me it's kind of a code of the Three, or the Four, or whatever. If anybody mentions Guppy, they mete out what they call Ultraviolence. Templeton just knocked me out. Just smashed me across the head, and apparently I landed badly, which made it worse.

  Anyway, the second bad thing that's happened to me since I got here was this thing with the milk. The prefect just said, and I knew he had this bad reputation, but he just said, you fucking dirty little bastard. He put his finger in the ring of milk and wiped a smear of milk across the desk. Then he pulled out my desk drawer, and tipped the contents on the floor, and he emptied every one of my cupboards, again tipping the contents on the floor, all my clothes and the stuff from home, and he overturned my armchair, and grabbed the milk bottle, and tipped the rest of the milk over everything. Then he stalked out, saying he'd send one of the other prefects to inspect me in half an hour, and if the whole place wasn't perfect, I'd be on drill.

  This place makes me hungry. Today I've eaten: two rashers of bacon with tomato and fried bread, three slices of toast

  with marmalade, two more slices of toast and marmalade smuggled out of breakfast folded over in my pockets, two cups of tea, one cup of coffee. That was breakfast. During chapel and the first two lessons I eked out a packet of Mint Imperials. Third lesson was a barren desert. Nothing. At break I had two egg-mayonnaise sandwiches, a cheese roll, a packet of Quavers and a Mars bar. I was too hungry to do what I normally do, which is to put the Quavers, crispy cheese-flavoured corn snacks, into the egg sandwiches.

  Lunch: sausage, beans and chips followed by chocolate pudding, which we call moonbase, because of the little craters it has in the crust. I had it with not-too-runny chocolate sauce. It's 5.30 p.m. High Tea, in an hour, seems aeons away.

  And so, just for something to do, I take a teaspoon of this coffee creamer I bought the other day, and eat it. And God, it's ... lovely. It melts in my mouth. I hold the jar up in my hand. And I stare at the jar. The jar is three-quarters full of this lovely white powder.

  And then, click.

  Nuances of Hurry

  And here I am again, twenty-two years later. 215 lbs. Waist size 34. I'm in a taxi with Sadie, on the way to a station. We are running late. We're sitting next to each other in the taxi, although we do not acknowledge each other's presence. I dare not look at her. Sitting next to Sadie, I can feel her aura, a force field of anxiety and menace. We are not getting on. Outside the station, the taxi judders to a halt.

  Through the window, I look at the station clock. The train leaves in seven minutes. Sadie gets out of the car, a neat exit, and stands on the pavement, cocking her head, smoothing her skirt. For a while I flounder in the quicksand of the taxi's back seat, digging through my pockets, hurting the ends of fingers, my stomach a dead weight in the centre of my body. I feel sick. I feel hungry. Things are spilling from my pockets bright little bits of confectionery wrappers, a blister-pack of ibuprofen, an ibuprofen tablet that has popped out of the pack, a blood-hardened wedge of tissue paper, and finally my wallet, fattened with a dense wedge of restaurant bills. I am slipping, slipping.

  Outside the car, Sadie says, 'What were you doing in there?'

  At the ticket machine, we do not say anything to each other. As my turn approaches, I have a vision of myself poking limp paper money at the slot, and the money reemerging, rejected. But in the event, there is no problem. My money, stiff and crisp, glides in, the tickets and change fall down, and I'm done, with I look up at the clock three minutes to spare. I can see Sadie's shape approaching, closing me down.

  My blood sugar is painfully low. I cast my eyes around, and see, to my right, not in the direction of the platform, the answer to my problems. A strip of food kiosks. The kiosks are subtly different, catering to nuances of hurry. Sadie moves ahead of me, walking with predatory vigour. I look at Sadie at the neat skirt, the tights, the sensible boots which also manage to be sexy. And then I look at the food kiosks. Bagelmania. Upper Crust. Burger King.

  And then, click.

  78

  Peanut Butter

  The day before yesterday I opened a jar of peanut butter and ate a spoonful and screwed the lid back on and put the jar back in the cupboard and washed the spoon up and put the spoon in the cutlery drainer and walked past the cupboard again and opened the cupboard and decided not to eat any more peanut butter.

  And then, click.

  Who Did This to Me?

  Click.

  What happens next? You know you shouldn't do it, you know it's not right, you know you'll regret it, but you go ahead, you move forward, because it's suddenly too late. The decision has already been made. As you look at the pie, or the sweet shop, or the jar of creamer, or the burger kiosk, or the peanut butter, or the golden arches, you may believe you are still in possession of judicial powers. But you are not. At this stage, you only have executive powers. Your status as the master of your own destiny is entirely ceremonial. For all the world, it feels as if you are enacting the orders of a higher authority.

  And then you step inside the binge, and, for a brief moment, it's a wonderful place to be. Inside the binge, you are outside yourself. It is as if the air is filled with static. You are in the psychological zone that Shelley Bovey recognises as neither her public nor her private self. When you step inside a

  binge, you have waltzed into a gap in your own mind. You have fallen down a hole.

  And, for a moment, it's wonderful. Here, objects are sharper, more clearly defined. Your hunger is bigger; the objects of your hunger look smaller. The binge state itself is like a drug. As James Frey in A Million Little Pieces says of the binge state, 'It flows through my veins like a slow, lazy virus, urging me to do damage.' As Don Delillo's character, Jack Gladney, the antihero of White Noise, says, 'I began to grow in value and self-regard. I filled myself out, found new aspects of myself, located a person I'd forgotten existed.' Frey is telling us about losing control and harming himself actually ripping at his own flesh. 'The Fury is within me,' he tells us. 'Feed it pain and it will leave me,' he says. 'Feed it pain and it will go away.' Delillo is writing about losing control in a shopping mall.

  Inside the binge, you are pure hunger pure aspiration. Nothing else. You have created a time zone more present than the present. You know you shouldn't do it, you know it's not right, you know you'll regret it, you know it will degrade your self-esteem, but none of these things matter, because you are hoping for this degradation inside the binge, your degraded self-esteem is a ticket to freedom.

  The hole you have fallen into is deep.

  In this new world, hunger is a state you cherish. You yearn for more hunger. You do not want your hunger to be satisfied. Eating is a response to hunger; eating, therefore, reminds you of hunger. So you continue to eat in the hope that eating will keep your hunger alive. You search for food in the hope that it will make you hungry.

  80

  In the deep, dark hole you press on, blindly, full of optimism.

  It's always the same. Every binge is like the one before, and every binge is like the one that will come after. When I had that first binge, at the age of seven, I had fallen into the same hole I would fall into, over and over, for decades the same 'I'll just have another tiny bit,' the same 'I want another bit,' the same false hunger, the same false logic, the same vital miscalcul
ations, the same 'just one more slice', the same 'just one more drink', the same 'just one more snort'. The same idea that having a little bit more will solve things. The same 'No! Stop now, before you lose control!' The same 'What do you mean, before I lose control? I've already lost control!'

  And suddenly: 'Look, there's not much left.'

  And: 'They'll notice.'

  And: 'Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.' And: 'What's the point of putting half a bottle of wine back in the fridge?'

  And: 'Hell, let's just get it over with.'

  And: `I'll make a new start tomorrow.'

  And: `I'll do something about this.'

  And: 'I really will.'

  And: 'I'm feeling sick.'

  And: 'I'm feeling woozy.'

  And: 'I'm feeling wired.'

  And: 'What have I done?'

  And: 'What's the matter with me?'

  And: 'Fuck!'

  And: 'Is there anything else to drink in the fridge?'

  obese, angles towards me, and we collide, two big trucks touching bumpers, and both of my stomach magazines, which I'm carrying under my arm, slip downwards a notch, and I try to pin them to my jacket with my elbow, but it's hopeless, the angle is too great my stomach is too big and the stomach magazines spill to the floor, falling with a sharp cracking noise on the McDonald's tiles.

  LOSE YOUR GUT

  SHRINK YOUR GUT

  GET HER TO AGREE TO ANYTHING

  But the obese man isn't looking. He is in his own private world of unwrapping, of removing the outer, inedible paper layer of what looks like a Big Mac. He is two or three seconds away from smelling the fumes, no more than five seconds away from mouthfeel. His salivary glands are already producing a cocktail of enzymes to break down the first bolted bolus of cross-sectional Big Mac the pure beef patty, the salt, the sugar, the E282 calcium propionate, the E331 trisodium citrate, the wheat flour baked to perfection, with an unchallenging crumb structure and a soft, yielding crust. In three minutes he will be licking his fingers; in four he will want to eat them.