by Liz Astrof
I found my father, screaming through cupped hands, “If anyone asks, you’re obese!”
“Am I obese?” I shouted back.
“No!” he hollered. “But Doctor Berman wrote ‘obese’ on your record to get me a tax break on camp—see you when you’re thinner!”
He, Cathy, and Jeff went back to their car. I got on the bus with my new identity, a revised permanent record, and the kind of ruining of a future that therapists can retire on.
The Kids in the Orange Shirts
* * *
I loved it when my kids were at that fun age where they were old enough to hold a conversation and wipe themselves pretty well, but still young and innocent enough where I could lie to them and they’d believe me.
“If you don’t go to bed, night monsters will eat you!”
And:
“People who whine don’t go to heaven!”
And:
“Mommy will always be thirty-three!”
The most egregious of all the lies, however—the one I was about a year from getting caught in—was the first one I told them, from the time when they first came out and their brains were still soft and most impressionable:
“Get over Disneyland, because we live too far away to ever go there. We’re never going. Ever.”
We live in Southern California, and Disneyland is a breezy forty-minute car ride, with traffic, at most. I’m pretty sure my street name means “Not too far from Disney” in Spanish.
But I will never go to an amusement park. Not to be confused with a waterpark. They are completely different in my mind. Because of Wonderland in upstate New York. Where I sustained permanent injury. On an emotional roller coaster.
• • •
IT WAS DAY 42 of fat camp, and my whole bunk at Camp Sha(m)e woke before reveille, which had never happened in the history of any fat camp ever. But today was the day we were going on an off-site trip to Wonderland, a Westchester County amusement park with five roller coasters, six water rides, go-carts, live entertainment, and both haunted and fun houses.
Of course, the inmates of Camp Sha(m)e didn’t give a shit about any of that. We’d woken up before dawn because Wonderland also boasted fried dough, pizza, fudge, popcorn, cotton candy, pretzels, donuts, hot dogs, hamburgers, French fries, and ice cream, and at this point I would have done pretty much fucking anything for a Klondike Bar.
It had been forty-one days of living on a diet of steamed vegetables, skinless chicken breasts, water, and the occasional half-banana.
Forty-one days of running the length of the soccer field six times in 90-degree heat before playing an actual soccer game. And doing wind sprints on the tennis court before playing an actual match.
Forty-one days of countless laps in an Olympic-size pool where, after each lap, they would make us get out of the pool without using the ladder, our wet bodies slapping the ground, knees scraping on concrete, and heave ourselves up before running to the other end of the pool to do it again.
Forty-one hungry days of step aerobics, calisthenics, and power walks. Of sweating, chafing, bleeding, crying, and starving.
• • •
TIME BEHIND BARS had hardened me. I may have been into food back home, but deprivation of my only source of comfort had turned me into a steely-eyed, opportunistic addict who thought of nothing but her next fix and how to get it.
And today—day 42—was the day of my next fix.
With money we kept rolled up in socks, in the soles of our shoes, and in our asses—not really, but a little really—my compatriots and I were going to take Wonderland for every last crumb. But we didn’t talk about it openly. That was too risky. The consequences of getting caught for what we had planned were horrifying. Terry, our large and androgynous head counselor with forearms like calves and calves like tree trunks, had proved as stealth and cunning an adversary as I would ever encounter—and I work in television. At the first sign of so much as an unaccounted-for ketchup packet (did you know that in the right stage of deprivation, it tastes like maple syrup?), Terry’s full wrath would surface until, like the victim of a psycho camp counselor in urban legends, the culprit would be found the next day . . . on a hike.
The energy in the air as our coach bus struggled down I-90 that morning was . . . different—primal subtext churning beneath the almost humane, and oddly sad, surface. We talked and laughed and sang happy camp songs like normal kids. Our counselors had morphed from prison wardens into real people, and we went from being prisoners to being free. Or nearly free, with the exception of the bright orange T-shirts we were sporting for identification. We were still “camp kids,” but we were “normal camp kids,” if only for one day.
It felt fantastic.
We were allowed to walk around the park with a buddy without adult supervision because it was a simpler time, when people didn’t worry about kidnappings, pedophiles, and mass shootings. My friend-cellmate Marni Shapiro and I had decided to be buddies and pooled our money together the night before. We had sat on her top bunk under her Holly Hobbie blanket by the fading glow of a flashlight, snacking on toothpaste, whisper-counting out our twenty-seven dollars and eighty-seven cents.
As we pulled into the parking lot, Marni bent down to tie her shoe and snuck a five-dollar bill into my sock.
“Just in case we get separated,” she whispered. Marni had her shit together. I think she might be a senator now.
The bus doors opened, and a sea of kids poured out. From above, in our two hundred bright-orange “Camp Sha(m)e” T-shirts, we must’ve looked like a giant orange ball pit.
Right away, we were slammed with the smell of fried dough. At once, all two hundred double chins pointed skyward to get a whiff, pulling in what we’d been missing.
The counselors passed out money to be used “for diet sodas.” The fact that they trusted us was very flattering. Almost touching. And stupid. This money went straight into the cheating kitty.
Before letting us loose, Terry announced that in two hours, a boxed lunch would be available in some designated picnic table area. No doubt a mayonnaise-free lettuce-wrapped turkey sandwich. Even the counselors didn’t look like they meant it. I imagined that deep down, they knew we were going to treat ourselves to something verboten and they could look the other way, because this was practice of being fat people in the real world.
Once inside the gates, I saw in the distance a small white cement structure, covered on the front with vibrantly painted pictures of delicious junk food. On top was a giant slushy spinning on its axis like a magical, colorful cross, tolling its intent to all who worshipped there. Oh, Concession Stand, I thought, how I missed thee.
Light-headed, I walked closer to get a better look. From ten feet away, I could see a box of individually wrapped candy and a plastic case holding soft baked pretzels. Through the window, I could faintly make out a grill roasting the hot dogs and hamburgers, a fryer filled with greasy French fries as comforting as my blanket back home. A cotton candy machine spun blue and pink sugar into fluffy swirls of delight.
I had forgotten how beautiful life was on the outside. I decided then and there to be a concession stand operator when I grew up.
I was almost there when Marni yanked my arm.
“Zimbo,” she snapped.
It was the code word we came up with for when we saw a counselor. Her idea. I told you she was a genius.
I followed Marni’s alarmed gaze to see Terry striding toward us, hands on hips, taking in the park. Oh noooo. I froze. I hadn’t done anything wrong, yet. But still, I felt like I had the words “I’m about to go off my diet” written all over my face.
Marni and I found temporary asylum in the funhouse, where we planned to wait until the coast was clear. We paced back and forth at the entrance. The smell of the grill was killing me, and I left Marni to hide farther inside.
Wandering through the cheesy corridors, I spotted a lanky girl out of the corner of my eye, a girl with light brown hair wearing a bright orange shirt looking at me.
What the fuck was she staring at? Hadn’t she ever seen a fat kid waiting for her androgynous head counselor to wander off, so she could eat real food for the first time in forty-two days? Of course, that agony would be foreign to her, because she was skinny. Lucky, skinny bitch. I haaaated her.
But when I finally stared back at her in defiance, I realized I had been looking at my own reflection in one of the skinny mirrors, my body stretched from head to toe.
I stepped closer. She got taller and thinner. I got taller and thinner. I look like the popular girls in school, I thought, forgetting that I already was popular. I looked like what my father and Cathy thought a popular girl looked like. What everyone thought a popular girl was supposed to look like.
I looked like I didn’t have a care in the world. Like I could wear designer jeans and short sweaters and my ballet costume wouldn’t have to come from a separate company in a slightly different shade of pink because they didn’t make my size in children’s. Like I wouldn’t be embarrassed to change in front of the other kids in the locker room, expertly hiding my stomach rolls with one arm and my upper thighs with the other. Like I could walk by a group of boys without bracing myself for pig noises and name calling. Like I wouldn’t have to make people laugh so I could distract them from my weight or thank God for the days the boys in my class forgot the nicknames Liz Fatstrof and Liz Fat-ass-strof.
I looked like a girl who didn’t need a special camp.
I looked like a girl whose father would say was “adorable.”
In the mirror, I was “normal.”
The weight of the world literally lifted off my shoulders.
Marni popped her head out from around the corner. “We need to make a move.”
The moment I’d been waiting forty-one days for had come. Everything I had been dreaming about was just outside that funhouse. Yet I stood there, captivated. Because at that moment, even more than food, I wanted to be that girl in the mirror. I could be that girl. I just needed to be “good.”
I’d lost 8 pounds. I’d taken 2 inches off my thighs and 3 from my waist. I was feeling proud of myself after the weigh-ins, and my shorts weren’t cutting off my circulation quite as much. I needed less and less baby powder between my legs before and after running.
I felt the beginnings of a collarbone. A rib had started to make itself clear. On my body. It had been alarming at first, because I thought it was a tumor, but it was ultimately exciting.
Did I really want to throw all of that away on food?
Of course I did.
But did I really?
Yes.
I tilted my head to each side, as if to shake the desire to be “good” out of my ears like water. I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to have doubts.
Marni was shouting for me to snap out of it and move my ass. “What are you waiting for?” she asked desperately.
“Maybe we should go on one ride first,” I suggested.
“Liz!” Marni snapped. “If you’re not going to eat with me, then fuck you. And give me my five dollars back. I’ll walk around with Heather Gelfand.”
I jumped back like she was hot-wired and apologized, the smells from the concession stand entering the funhouse from the back entrance right behind me ending my inner conflict.
We bolted for the concession stand, on high alert for counselor traffic. The line was short. I watched the rides while Marni covered the bathrooms.
With one person ahead of us, I looked at the menu, poring over the food listings like the Torah. We didn’t want to spend all of our money in one go, so we had some big decisions to make.
We had tentatively decided that the first course would be cheeseburgers, French fries, and pizza. That would leave us money for dessert on the other side of the park. In between, of course, would be our boxed lunches—we weren’t going to not eat them.
“I’m getting nachos,” Marni said once we got close, throwing our plan out the window.
Nachos were two-fifty. I suggested we split them. “I’m not splitting,” Marni said firmly, her head on a swivel. An only child whose birth was a “miracle,” as her mom had one ovary, Marni was used to calling the shots.
“I’ll get a pretzel then,” I relented.
The midday sun was beating down on me; my mouth started watering at the sight of that giant cherry slushy spinning in the air above the concession stand. I couldn’t believe I ever doubted my original plan to stuff my goddamn face.
The people in front of us paid for their shit and moved off. We were up.
The stoned, greasy-haired, and acne-covered teenager behind the counter stubbed a cigarette out in a plastic soda lid and said the words I’d been waiting to hear for forty-two days: “Whattya want?”
“I’d like a pretzel,” I said the words, out loud. Smiling, I closed my eyes, overwhelmed with a feeling of freedom. The freedom to ask for what I wanted, out loud, and not be punished for it. I was entitled to a pretzel.
The kid shrugged. “Sorry—can’t.”
“Hot dog, then,” Marni chimed in.
“Can’t sell you food,” the kid said, nodding toward a flyer on the inside wall of the concession stand. We followed his eyes to a crude drawing of a fat kid with a giant orange triangle for its middle, an X marked through the figure.
Beneath it the flyer said:
DO NOT FEED THE KIDS IN THE ORANGE SHIRTS.
So much for freedom.
“We’ll just go to another stand,” Marni said to me.
“Don’t bother,” the kid told us, handing us two diet sodas. “Everyone knows. We can sell you the soda, though.”
We walked off, reeling, in shock. And livid—how could they not trust us? Even though, clearly, they couldn’t?
But that wasn’t what stunned me most.
It was the sign. Like the signs at the zoo telling you not to feed the elephants. Or the signs at the circus telling you not to take pictures of the side-show attractions. Our orange shirts didn’t just distinguish us from other kids or even other campers—they separated us from our species.
We were both too embarrassed to even look at each other, never mind talk about the fact that we were basically zoo animals. We’d been at the park for two hours, so Marni decided we may as well eat our boxed lunches and stormed toward the designated picnic area.
Halfway there, we saw about twenty campers in orange shirts huddled behind the haunted house. We went to see what was up.
I saw Heather Skovall. She was two years older than us, and even though she was a good forty pounds overweight, she went around telling people that she was allowed to go to “regular” camp but decided to come back anyway. It was a thing. She was standing with Tara Bernett, who was camp-famous, because she claimed to be a slut back at home. She even brought a picture of a boy she claimed she’d done it with. But the picture was taken from a far enough distance that convinced me she was lying. I asked Tara what was going on here.
“Robert Buffa’s getting us food,” she said breathlessly.
In the middle of the cluster of orange shirts, thirteen-year-old Robert—shirtless and glistening with sweat—was collecting balled-up wads of cash. Our fearless leader, athletic despite his unfortunate pecs and drooping stomach, radiated leadership, determination, and something very close to sexiness as he took up the cause of his fellow campers.
Our hero. To this day, my offer of writing a starring role for him stands. Robert Buffa, call me.
Eventually, three other boys and one girl went topless that day in a quest for amusement park food for all of us. I wish I could say I was one of them. I wasn’t. But I cheered them on and in that moment, I felt more a part of a community than ever before. Part of a movement. A slow movement, but a movement. I wouldn’t feel even close to this way again until the Women’s March in Los Angeles in 2017, and still the camaraderie would pale in comparison to those five kids taking one, shirtless, for the team.
The camp thought they had us fatsos figured out. They thought they were ahead of the
game. They thought we were predictable. They thought their flabby charges were incapable of thinking as a united collective.
But we didn’t get fat by giving up. Not at getting food, anyway.
We gave our money to the shirtless warriors and waved them off, then sat down with our boxed lunches and awaited their return.
Waiting for whatever melty square of fudge my five dollars would buy me, I thought about my funhouse reflection and how badly I wanted to be her. And eventually I would—not by the Camp Sha(m)e playbook, but by the way normal, non-orange girls kept their “adorable figures”: I’d like a boy and stop eating. I’d take up smoking and sugar-free gum, I’d start jogging obsessively at my own will and watch the pounds drop off.
I’d be her. Briefly. And then, food would win, I’d lose control and gain weight again. With fasts, fad diets, five days on a holistic retreat where I drank tea that tasted like dirt and got colonics, I’d make my way back to her. I’d go up and down like a yo-yo. A seemingly fleeting image in a funhouse mirror stayed with me forever.
On day 42 of Camp Sha(m)e, I met the person I wanted to be. But I wasn’t at Camp Sha(m)e because I had willpower. So, with the rest of the kids in the orange shirts, we fought our oppressors, and we fulfilled our plan to take Wonderland for every last crumb. And then we ate our boxed lunches. We weren’t going to not eat them.
Little Royalty
* * *
I stayed on the straight and narrow for a while after I was paroled from fat camp. Choosing fruits and vegetables, with proteins no bigger than a deck of cards, all washed down with water instead of an entire gallon of milk, I’d talk myself off a chocolate fudge cake ledge over and over, armed with my “Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels” mantra.