The Hungry Mirror

by Lisa de Nikolits

  I am about to jump up and apologize for my frivolity when he squeezes a spot in between Indira and Meg.

  I sigh again.

  “No, we are talking about the book, Messages from the Body.” Indira shows him.

  He laughs. “Oh right, this is the one that’s going to explain my carpal tunnel syndrome?”

  “Yes.” Indira says. “You see, I remembered to bring it in this time.” She opens the book, which is a thick, Kinkos-bound set of photocopied pages.

  “Hang on a sec,” Brit says. “First explain where this book comes from and who wrote it, and why, if it’s so famous, I’ve never heard of it.”

  “A friend of mine in LA had a copy,” Meg says. She turns to Indira. “I’ve looked for one ever since, but I haven’t been able to find a copy, not online or anywhere. Where did you get it?”

  “I copied it from a friend’s copy.” Indira is vague. “The book was written by a famous Eastern guru called Dr. Narayan-Singh,” she says importantly, to Brit. “And it begins by saying:

  As a person thinketh, so they shall be. Every condition in our lives exists because there is a need for it in one way or another, either on the time-space level or on the soul level or both. The symptoms or reactions or conditions are the outward effect of the inner condition of the individual.

  She stops reading and looks around.

  “Carry on,” Kenneth says.

  A specific sickness is the natural physical outcome of specific thought patterns and or emotional discharges. They are coded messages from the body to the effect of what is happening and what needs to happen. In effect then, illnesses and ailments teach us, expands us and move us on, if we can understand them and heed them.

  “So Kenny,” she says, furiously flipping the pages. “Here we go, carpal tunnel syndrome.”

  Kenny? I am glad to see their working relationship is such a professional one.

  “It’s got that?” Brit, meanwhile, is incredulous. “An ancient Eastern mystical text has got a passage on carpal tunnel?”

  “It’s got everything,” Meg says.

  “Yes it does,” Indira agrees. “So here it is:

  They are handicapped by a sense of learned helplessness and feel powerlessness in the face of the difficulties of the world.

  There is a lot of anger and frustration at life’s seeming injustices, deprivations and degradations. It’s a God-is-Al-Capone distrust of the Universe reaction. They have the profound conviction that anything they want will be taken away from them or that it will lead to a punishment/attack of some sort.

  I am sure Kenneth will dismiss this New Age hocus-pocus but he rubs his face and looks intrigued. “Very interesting,” he says, thoughtfully rubbing his chin.

  “Oh poppycock and cat grass,” Brit exclaims. “Even the way it’s written is bizarre. It needs a good editor if you ask me.”

  She looks sly and shoots a quick glance at Meg. “Here’s a good one for you then, Miss Mystic,” she says to Indira. “Try bulimia, I’ve got a good friend who’s a sufferer.”

  I am sure Kenneth will leave with that as the chosen subject but he seems perfectly content.

  I, however am not happy, at all. I am careful not to look at Meg, but to my surprise, I sense she doesn’t seem too concerned. She leans forward in a relaxed way, as if we are talking about last night’s TV shows.

  “Bulimia,” Indira reads, “is just under bubonic plague and just above bunions and burning anus. Here we go:

  It is compulsive food bingeing and then vomiting. They have a hopeless terror of life, along with a frantic suffering and purging of self-hatred and self-disgust. It was generated by a horrifyingly dysfunctional and rejecting family who assiduously disguised their hatred with seeming lovingness so that the individual took on all their hatred and rejection as deserved punishment.

  They are a profoundly, self-rejecting “love-aholic” who has no hope whatsoever of ever getting the love they need for reasons they can never fathom. They are suffering from a deep depression and desperation. Theirs is a “magical misery tour” and a ‘nameless terror of which they dare not speak’ experience of life.

  So they turn to self-solace in the form of controllable love-substitutes in the form of food binges. But then their self-hatred surfaces again and they “punish” and “purify” themselves with purging, which is also a way of keeping their terrible secret.

  She stops. I feel as though I have been hit in the solar plexus with a sledgehammer. I can hardly breathe.

  “What about anorexia?” Kenneth asks. Startled, we all look at him. He shrugs. “Not me obviously,” he says, and he laughs and pats his generous belly.

  “‘They have a great deal of anger and frustration about life.’” Indira reads. “‘They are deeply distrustful of the Universe due to a painfully, paranoid household.’ Oh shit, no wait, that’s anorectal bleeding. This is it:

  Anorexia is self-starvation and they are suffering from extreme fear, self-hatred and rejection. They feel it is completely unsafe to be themselves.

  They systematically deny themselves the right to life. They have episodes of intense desires to die, due to their utter self-disgust, severe emotional deprivation and emotional starvation.

  They have a desperate need for emotional nourishment, unconditional acceptance and loving affection that is creating a severe emptiness inside that is demanding satisfaction. They are attempting to “starve the emptiness” in the hope that it will go away and demand less. Their emotional needs are experienced as just too great to live with.

  They feel nagged at, crowded in on, and disallowed their own identity. Their mother made it crystal clear that any form of neediness or self-commitment, self-development and self-empowerment would lead to ultimate and lethal abandonment.

  They are therefore trying to prevent sexual maturity and growing up and they demand exaggerated control of events. They are trying to be “pure,” non-physical, strictly mental and ethereally spiritual, in a systematic refusal to grow up.

  She stops once again.

  “Man, they don’t beat about the bush,” Kenneth comments.

  I am speechless with horror at this hellish rabbit hole I have fallen down.

  “Oh really, I can’t believe you are all taking this seriously,” Brit says. “What if something happens that’s just an accident, like a tree falls on you or a bee stings you – is that a message from your body?”

  “Yes, it is,” Indira skims through the book. “Okay, here we go:

  Bee stings, bumble bee, honey bee, hornet, wasp, yellow jacket. It is reflective of guilty self-attack for “having the nerve” to step out on their own in the direction of self-manifestation, essence expression and or destiny development in violation of their intense “keep them around the old homestead” programming.

  They experience it as a “betrayal” and as a destructive attack on the family at the subconscious level. See the body part affected for more information.

  “So even where you are stung is a message, on top of the message of being stung?” Brit is still skeptical.

  “Yes,” Indira says.

  “Oh, God, I forgot, I’ve got a meeting with the publisher and I’m late.” Kenneth looks at his watch and jumps up. “Indira,” he whispers, peering around. “Make me a copy of that book.”

  “What, here? At work? Kenny, it’s like 475 pages.”

  “Stay late and do it when everybody has gone home,” he says as he rushes out. “I’ll give you my office key. You can come in late tomorrow to make up for however long it takes you tonight.”

  “Can you make me a copy too?” Meg asks.

  “Oh, you people are hopeless,” Brit says, getting up.

  I am already back at my desk. “Make me one too,” I call out suddenly, startling myself and the others. “There are lessons to be learned from all things,” I shrug.

  “Hopeless, hopeless all of you,” Brit grumbles. “Kenneth’s wrist is sore from typing all day with that stupid angle of his keyboard and if you
get stung by a bee, you just get stung by a bloody bee. Stuff and nonsense I say, stuff and nonsense.”

  “Who are you,” I ask smiling. “Alice in Wonderland? She said that a lot.”

  I am surprised that Brit is so opposed to Messages From the Body. I would have thought it would be right up her alley.

  “Hey Brit,” I say, inspired, “that’s what we need – little cakes and bottles and mushrooms that say Eat Me and Drink Me that makes us bigger or smaller whenever we feel like it.”

  She laughs. “Those things didn’t make her thinner silly, just miniaturized or bigger. Anyway, I have to tell you, my body does that anyway, the shrink then bloat then shrink thing. It’s tuned into some evil magic of its own that I have no idea how to tap into or control. I can literally change sizes in a day.”

  I want to tell her I can relate, hence all my flowing clothes, but I can’t make that admission.

  The next morning I find my copy of Messages From the Body on my chair. On it is a yellow post-it note with a happy, smiley face.

  Later that day, Indira appears at my desk, red-eyed and sniffling.

  “I’ve come to say goodbye,” she says and tears fill her eyes. “You know that meeting Kenny had with the publisher yesterday? Well the magazine isn’t doing too well and somebody has to go and it’s me.”

  “I am so sorry Indira.” I get up and hug her. Her body was is shaking and I feel really bad for her.

  “Oh well,” she says, disentangling and blowing her nose. “I was trying to earn some money to go travelling but you know what? I am just going to leave sooner than I had planned and work harder when I get there that’s all. I met Kenny at a rave, him and Nieve, and I thought this could be fun and it has been, but it’s time to move on I guess.”

  She already looks more cheerful.

  I try to picture Kenneth and Nieve at a rave and fail. Somehow though, I am not surprised they are into that.

  I hug Indira goodbye again and she promises to email me from around the world.

  “Be safe now,” I say, waving at her tiny, vanishing form.

  I sit down and wonder why I get so sad when total strangers leave. I have hardly known Indira; it’s not like we we really bonded.

  Why is no one allowed to stay in my life? I think. Why am I like the gatekeeper? Here, let me get that door for you while you go. Everybody leaves, no one stays. Except Mathew. He and I are married, we are okay, but everybody else leaves.

  I sit down, despondent.

  Meg and Brit arrive back from the caf.

  “Indira’s gone,” I explain.

  Brit sniffs. “Just as well,” she says. “She did nothing, that girl. She and Kenneth just chatted all day.”

  Meg laughs and nods.

  “And anyway,” Brit says, “she’s such a fake. She makes out like she’s this organic mystic and guru of all things Zen who hasn’t got a cent but her name’s really Harriet Dunmore and she comes from a long line of old money. She doesn’t have to work. All she has to do is flit about and play.”

  “Sounds nice,” I say, trying to imagine it. “How do you know?”

  “My roommate Chris told me,” she says. “He knows everybody. By the way, he’s a very good stylist if you ever need one for a shoot.”

  “Her name’s Harriet?” Meg laughs. “No wonder she lied. Oh well, born rich is nice work if you can get it,” she comments. “So she’s going on holiday while its back to the grindstone for me. No rest for the wicked. I am glad though that I got my copy of Messages.” She disappears into her office and Brit sits down at her desk.

  I still feel sad.

  I eat

  I GO TO COLLECT MY LAYOUTS from the printer we share with the Namaste magazine girls: the two Miss World Contenders, Thin Lisa, and the art director, whose name I discover is Amanda, as well as Fat Janet.

  To accommodate their arrival, Pablo had Brit’s and my office sectioned in half with makeshift partitioning. Now we’re all so close we can practically hear each other think. I see the Miss World Contenders are sitting across from Janet, chatting. It’s not unusual for Janet to be holding court, either about the diet she is on, or the car she is buying, or her upcoming wedding, or something. I pick up my printouts and realize they are talking about jeans.

  “I’ve got a pair,” Fat Janet says, “and I know I am about the right weight when I can wear them. I could get into them about two years ago and now I can sort of get them up over my knees, which is better than it’s been. I should be able to get into them soon although actually doing the zipper up will be another story.”

  “I don’t have a nice loose pair,” Miss World One, Thin Lisa says. “I have to admit that I find jeans very uncomfortable, the fabric is so harsh.

  “I agree,” I say, speaking before I can think not to. “I am really not a jeans person either.”

  “You know,” Amanda, Miss World Two, a gorgeous, skinny girl who drives a big Mercedes Benz, directs a comment in my direction, “now that I think about it, I have never seen you in jeans. In some very loose trousers, yes, but never jeans.”

  Loose trousers? What’s she talking about? “I have two pairs of trousers,” I say. “And neither of them is very loose. There’s the black pair and the brown pair.”

  She looks confused. “No,” she persists. “They are very loose.”

  I suddenly feel very thin. The trousers that I thought looked fitting, if not tight, were not figure hugging but loose. I go back to my desk and feel really good.

  The news that perhaps others didn’t see me looming quite as large as I feel cheers me greatly and I decide that maybe I shouldn’t eat for the rest of the day.

  I phone Miranda who is fast becoming my ex-best friend. You see, all she can tell me lately is how she doesn’t eat. She’s still not pregnant, she’s still sleeping with the married lecturer, and she’s still insisting Nate stay with IT. And through all of this, she doesn’t eat, not a thing, according to her.

  Meanwhile, I spend my every waking (and most likely sleeping) moment being aware of what I eat, so it would not be true to say of me that I don’t eat because all I do is think about eating. And then there’s all that stuff I wish I could eat, that I dream about eating but can’t have.

  So I am sure you will agree with me when I say, I do eat. All the time, in my head.

  But Miranda doesn’t.

  I was on the phone to her the other day and she was in mid-sentence when I heard someone call out to her.

  “Yes, Wendy,” she said, “is it about Saturday? Well, don’t worry about food for me; as you know, I don’t eat.”

  It turned out that Wendy, whoever she was, had not the slightest interest in the food for Saturday and I could hear Miranda was a bit embarrassed, as she should have been. She is always trying to ram down my throat how she doesn’t eat and I was glad that in this instance she was made to look the fool. You see, she knows I eat and that I can’t help it and yet she constantly feels the need to tell me how she doesn’t.

  You can see how I can’t stay friends with her for much longer. Never mind her immorality or her amorality. She is becoming a trigger for me and I worry she’ll spark off a binge every time I talk to her, because she gets me all confused and upset.

  When I get home I am thinking about the loose trouser thing and I suddenly realize what Amanda of Namaste was talking about. I have a pair of very loose, incredibly wide, black vintage pants.

  So, she wasn’t telling me I was thin at all and she wasn’t talking about my standard brown or black pants. I feel like such an idiot. I try to remember the conversation word for word to assess the level of disaster, and I recall that I did look foolishly pleased when she said they were loose, but maybe, hopefully, she just thought I was enjoying the conversation or something.

  I realize there are times when I don’t react normally to things in conversations and that makes me a bit nervous to ever talk to anybody.

  We are going to a movie tonight, Mathew and I. I would love popcorn but it’s simply unthinkable
. Besides, Miranda and the cuckolded Nate will be joining us and she and I agree that it’s totally disgusting the way people stuff their faces the entire way through a movie. Can’t they even watch a simple bloody movie without feeding? It’s really not necessary to eat all the time.

  I have to admit though, even while I agree with her, I would love a box of popcorn tonight.

  So you see, I do eat.

  Gay boys dress straight girls

  I AM LEANING ON THE LONG desk in the photocopier room waiting for my pages to finish collating. Brit and I have been talking about people at work. The conversation is general, and I had to admit that talking to Brit isn’t the usual torment it is with most other people. That is, until Brit suddenly starts telling me how her roommate, Chris, the stylist, likes to dress her in the mornings.

  I am a little taken aback by this. I imagine big, tall Brit resting her hand on his shoulder while he stoops down on one knee, pulls up her tights, tugs down her dress, and fits her feet into her shoes; just as I would picture dressing a three-year-old. I want to say she’s a bit old for that surely but, of course, that’s not what she means at all.

  “He lays my outfit for the day out on the sofa in my room,” she explains. “And he’s always collecting bits and pieces that he thinks I’ll like, tops, skirts, shoes, you name it.”

  “So he puts everything together for you everyday?” I ask, still preoccupied by the image of him actually dressing her while she stands still, with the vacant, distracted stare of a child.

  “Yes,” she says. “And as you can see, he’s very into plaid right now.” She is wearing a short plaid skirt, a cream blouse with fabric-covered buttons that strain over her ample breasts, Argyle knee-high socks that match the plaid and cream patent leather Mary Janes. She also wears a coffee-coloured small scarf, more like a bandanna, knotted around her neck in a twist. Thick plastic bangles jangle as she works, while her right wrist sports a large silver watch with a square face and a broad white leather strap.

  “Does he do the accessories too?” I ask.

  “All of it,” she waves her hands to indicate top to toe.

  “Uh huh,” I say. “That’s…” I am at a loss for words. Is it good? Is it weird? Is it the start of a new trend for stylists? I have no idea. Personally I can’t imagine anything worse but then I am hardly the norm.