Hunger

by Roxane Gay

  In the corner of my bedroom sits my recumbent exercise bike. When I am feeling particularly motivated about losing weight, I will ride the bike for up to an hour a day. It’s a good time to sweat and catch up on reading. I own a few hand weights that I’ll flex and curl when I remember to. I have a large inflatable ball upon which I sit to do abdominal exercises and squats and the like. I do not suffer from ignorance where exercise is related. I suffer from inertia.

  Over the years, I have joined countless gyms. I have worked with personal trainers, though grudgingly, given that I hate being told what to do and that hatred multiplies when I am told what to do by someone who is thin and impossibly fit and usually gorgeous and charging me a significant amount of money on an hourly basis.

  I have a membership to Planet Fitness, though I have never visited the local facility. Basically, I donate $19.99 a month to their corporate existence and the idea that I can walk into a Planet Fitness, anywhere in the country, should I feel like working out.

  I have worked with personal trainers off and on over the years, recognizing that perhaps the support of a professional might help me improve my physical fitness. These days, my trainer is a young guy born and raised in Indiana named Tijay. He is short and compact and has an unbelievable body. His whole life is fitness. He literally glows with youth, health, and the vigorous enthusiasm of having the world as his oyster. He is a big advocate of chicken breasts as a source of protein and mustard as an accompanying condiment because it is fat free and very low in calories. Not a session goes by when he doesn’t mention some aspect of his diet that makes me so sad for him and his palate. I worry he doesn’t know about spices or flavor or anything that makes food delicious.

  Tijay never seems to know what to make of me because I do not glow and I am not young and I am not cheerful. He runs me through my paces, always offering me encouragement. He is not a nightmare trainer out to break my soul. He is genuine and kind and dedicated and I suppose I am his albatross. I am his project. He’s just so cheerful. He is a true believer in the benefits of a “healthy lifestyle.” He makes it all seem so easy, as I pant and sweat and ache. I want to murder this man when we work out. I am generally terrified I will drop dead at any moment, my heart pounding in my chest as I struggle to catch my breath. Sometimes, when he asks me to do something that seems well beyond my big body’s abilities, I want to scream, “Don’t you see that I’m fat?” I once asked this very question and he said, very calmly, “That’s why we’re here,” and I walked to my nearby water bottle, drank freely, muttering, “Fuck you,” under my breath.

  In truth, I curse at him frequently and he takes it all in stride. Each visit, he adds an exercise or intensifies an exercise we have previously done. Each visit, I stumble to my car with rubbery legs and wonder how I will find the strength to return. I sit in my car, sometimes for up to ten minutes, drenched in sweat, drinking water. I take selfies that I post to Snapchat with angry words about how much I hate exercise, and when I share these selfies on Twitter, people offer encouragement and advice, even though I am looking for neither. I am just sharing my suffering. I am looking for commiseration.

  When I go to the gym on my own, I always feel like all eyes are on me. I try to pick times when there won’t be many people around, partly to protect myself, partly out of self-loathing. My self-consciousness magnifies at the gym. There is something about actively using my body that makes me feel even more vulnerable. And there is, of course, the self-doubt, the nagging sense that I shouldn’t even bother, that I don’t belong in the gym, that any attempt toward fitness is pathetic and delusional.

  I know how to use most of the equipment, but I always get nervous when I am mounting the treadmill or an exercise bike because I feel like that equipment isn’t meant for people like me. I hate how other people will see me, this fat person working out, and offer unsolicited encouragement like, “Good for you,” or “Keep it up,” or “You go, girl.” I don’t want encouragement. I am not interested in anyone’s opinions about my presence in the gym. I do not require the affirmation of strangers. Those affirmations are rarely about genuine encouragement or kindness. They are an expression of the fear of unruly bodies. They are a misguided attempt to reward the behavior of a “good fat person,” who is, in their minds, trying to lose weight rather than simply engaging in healthful behavior.

  When I am at the gym, I want to be left alone in my sweaty misery. I want to disappear until my body is no longer a spectacle. I can’t disappear, though, so either I have to be graceful in the face of this unsolicited conversation or I have to ignore it because, if I allowed myself to lose control, I would let loose so much rage.

  47

  This one time, many years ago, I went to the gym and five of the six recumbent bikes, my equipment of choice, were occupied by gorgeous, extraordinarily thin women, predominantly of the blond persuasion, who arrived and staked their claim just before I did. I looked around, wondering if a movie was being filmed or if it was Sorority Workout Hour. I was unable to deduce the exact reason why these young women were in the gym at the very time I chose to exercise, but it was clear they were working out together. I became irritated and downright angry as I always do when I see exceedingly thin people at the gym. It doesn’t matter that they are most likely thin for this very reason. I feel like they are mocking me with their perfect, toned bodies. They are flaunting their physical blessings and discipline.

  There is a smugness to how they use the exercise equipment, programming the computers for the most challenging levels. Their placid facial expressions say, “This is hardly bothering me,” their bodies glowing with a thin patina of perspiration rather than the gritty sweat of serious exertion. They wear their cute little outfits—shorts so short that the material is more a suggestion than an actual item of clothing and narrow tank tops with the scooped shoulders designed to reveal as much surface area of their perfect bodies as possible. They know that they work hard and look good and they want everyone else to know it too.

  On that day, I was forced to use the bike I hate the most—the one closest to the entrance to the cardio/weight room, so that my sweating and huffing and puffing and personal tics would be on display for each and every person coming and going through the adjacent doors. I settled in, programmed the machine for sixty minutes, knowing I would stop at forty but giving myself some room to push myself if I wasn’t dying by then. I glanced over at the girl next to me. She had been on the bike for about two minutes longer. When forty minutes passed, my legs were burning fiercely. I looked at my neighbor and she looked back at me. She had been eyeing me the entire time, wondering just how long I was going to last.

  After forty-five minutes, I locked eyes with my neighbor/nemesis again and saw a glint in her eyes. I knew what was going on. She was challenging me. She was letting me know that however long I lasted, she would last longer. She would not be bested by a fat ass. At fifty minutes, I was certain that a heart attack was imminent. I was dizzy, faint, legs trembling, but death was preferable to losing to that young upstart, that hussy. At fifty-three minutes, she glared at me, leaned forward, and grabbed the handles of the bike. I turned up the volume on my music and started bobbing my head to the beat. At fifty-four minutes, she grunted and tried to stare through me. Finally, she stopped and I heard her say, “I can’t believe she’s still on there.” Her friends nodded in agreement. At sixty minutes, I calmly stopped pedaling, peeled my shirt away from my skin, wiped the bike down, and slowly exited the room because my legs were rubbery and weak. I was trying to project poise and strength. I knew she was watching. I was smug and temporarily triumphant. Then I stepped into the bathroom and threw up, ignoring the bitter taste at the back of my throat as I embraced a hollow victory.

  48

  I have many athletic friends, and because I am active on social media, I often see them posting pictures of their physical accomplishments. They wear their shorts and Under Armour shirts, molded to their incredibly fit bodies; their hair, damp with sweat
, is plastered to their faces. They hold race numbers triumphantly in the air. They proudly display medals from finishing 5Ks and 10Ks and half marathons and whole marathons and sometimes races that are even more absurd, like Tough Mudders and triathlons and ultramarathons. They use apps that post athletic progress to Facebook and Twitter: “I ran 6.24 miles.” “I biked 24.5 miles.” Or they personally post a little update: “Just climbed a mountain and enjoyed a picnic from the summit.” The pictures accompanying these updates reveal people glowing with health and vigor.

  They are, rightly, proud of what they have done with their bodies, but when I am at my pettiest, which is often, it feels like gloating. Or, if I am being honest, they are bragging about something I might never know, that kind of personal satisfaction with and sense of accomplishment provided by my body. I get angry as I see these updates because these people are doing things I cannot. They are doing things I hope, so very much want, to someday be able to do in theory, even if I won’t actually do them given that I am not at all interested in sports or the outdoors. I am not angry. I am jealous. I am seething with jealousy. I want to be part of the active world. I want it so very badly. There are so many things I hunger for.

  49

  I am self-conscious beyond measure. I am intensely and constantly preoccupied with my body in the world because I know what people think and what they see when they look at me. I know that I am breaking the unspoken rules of what a woman should look like.

  I am hyperconscious of how I take up space. As a woman, as a fat woman, I am not supposed to take up space. And yet, as a feminist, I am encouraged to believe I can take up space. I live in a contradictory space where I should try to take up space but not too much of it, and not in the wrong way, where the wrong way is any way where my body is concerned. Whenever I am near other people, I try to fold into myself so that my body doesn’t disrupt the space of others. I take this to extremes. I will spend five-hour flights tucked against the window, my arm tucked into the seat belt, as if trying to create absence where there is excessive presence. I walk at the edge of sidewalks. In buildings I hug the walls. I try to walk as quickly as I can when I feel someone behind me so I don’t get in their way, as if I have less of a right to be in the world than anyone else.

  I am hyperconscious of how I take up space and I resent having to be this way, so when people around me aren’t mindful of how they take up space, I feel pure rage. I am seething with jealousy. I hate that they don’t have to consider how they take up space. They can walk at any speed they want. Their limbs can spill over armrests. They can dawdle and stretch and shrug, no matter where they are. I rage that they don’t have to second-guess themselves or give a moment’s thought to the space they fill. The ease with which they take up space feels spiteful and personal.

  I am, perhaps, self-obsessed beyond measure. No matter where I am, I wonder about where I stand and how I look. I think, I am the fattest person in this apartment building. I am the fattest person in this class. I am the fattest person at this university. I am the fattest person in this theater. I am the fattest person on this airplane. I am the fattest person in this airport. I am the fattest person on this interstate. I am the fattest person in this city. I am the fattest person at this event. I am the fattest person at this conference. I am the fattest person in this restaurant. I am the fattest person in this shopping mall. I am the fattest person on this panel. I am the fattest person in this casino.

  I am the fattest person.

  This is a constant, destructive refrain and I cannot escape it.

  50

  I am terrified of other people. I am terrified of the way they are likely to look at me, stare, talk about me or say cruel things to me. I am terrified of children, their guilelessness and brutal honesty and willingness to gawk at me, to talk loudly about me, to ask their parents or, sometimes, even me, “Why are you so big?” I am terrified of the awkward pause of those children’s parents as they try to respond appropriately.

  I do not have an answer to that question, or I do and there simply isn’t enough time or grace in the world to offer that answer up.

  And so I am terrified of other people. I hear the rude comments whispered. I see the stares and laughs and snickering. I see the thinly veiled or open disgust. I pretend I don’t see it. I block it out as often as I can so I can live and breathe with some semblance of peace. The list of bullshit I deal with, by virtue of my body, is long and boring, and I am, frankly, bored with it. This is the world we live in. Looks matter, and we can say, “But but but . . .” But no. Looks matter. Bodies matter.

  I could easily become a shut-in, hiding from the cruelty of the world. Most days it takes all my strength and no small amount of courage to get dressed and leave the house. If I don’t have to teach or travel for work, I spend most of my time talking myself out of leaving my house. I can order something in. I can make do with what I have. Tomorrow, I promise myself. Tomorrow I will face the world. If it’s late in the week, there are several tomorrows until Monday. There are several tomorrows when I can lie to myself, when I can hope to build stronger defenses for facing the world that so cruelly faces me.

  51

  I have two wardrobes. One, the clothes I wear every day, is made up mostly of dark denim jeans, black T-shirts, and, for special occasions, dress shirts. These clothes shroud my cowardice. These are the clothes I feel safe in. This is the armor I wear to face the world, and I assure you, armor is needed. I tell myself this armor is all I need. When I wear my typical uniform, it feels like safety, like I can hide in plain sight. I become less of a target. I am taking up space, but I am doing so in an unassuming manner so I am less of a problem, less of a disturbance. This is what I tell myself.

  My other wardrobe, the one that dominates most of my closet, is full of the clothes I don’t have the courage to wear.

  I am nowhere near as brave as people believe me to be. As a writer, armed with words, I can do anything, but when I have to take my body out into the world, courage fails me.

  I am fat. I am six foot three. I take up space in nearly every way. I stand out when my nature is to very much want to disappear.

  But I love fashion. I love the idea of wearing color, blouses with interesting cuts and silhouettes, something low-cut that shows off my décolletage. I have any number of fine dress slacks, and I enjoy staring at them in my closet, so sleek and professional, so unlike me. I dream of wearing a long skirt or a maxi dress with bold, bright stripes. My breath catches at the mere thought of wearing something sleeveless, baring my brown arms. Fierce vanity smolders in the cave of my chest. I want to look good. I want to feel good. I want to be beautiful in this body I am in.

  The story of my life is wanting, hungering, for what I cannot have or, perhaps, wanting what I dare not allow myself to have.

  Many mornings, most mornings, I stand in my closet, trying to figure out what I am going to wear for the day. Really, this is part of an elaborate, exhausting performance in which the end result is always the same. But I have my delusions and I entertain them with alarming frequency and vigor. I try on various outfits and marvel at all the cute clothes I own. If I am feeling particularly brave, I take a look at myself in the mirror. It’s always surprising to see myself out of my usual clothes, to see how my body looks shrouded in color or something other than denim and cotton.

  Sometimes, I decide on an outfit and leave my bedroom. It’s a mundane moment, but for me, it is not. I decide, Today, I am a professional and I will look the part. I make breakfast, or get my things together for work. I feel strange and awkward. In a matter of moments, it begins to feel like these unfamiliar clothes are strangling me. I see and feel every unflattering bulge and curve. My throat constricts. I can’t breathe. The clothes shrink. Sleeves become tourniquets. Slacks become shackles. I start to panic, and before I know it, I am tearing the bright, beautiful clothes off because I don’t deserve to wear them.

  When I slide back into my uniform, that cloak of safety returns. I can breath
e again. And then I start to hate myself for my unruly body that I seem incapable of disciplining, for my cowardice in the face of what other people might think.

  52

  Sometimes people try to offer me fashion advice. They say there is so much out there for big girls. But they’re thinking about a very specific kind of big girl. There is very little out there for a very big girl like me.

  Buying clothes is an ordeal. It is but one of many humiliations fat people endure. I hate clothes shopping and have for years because I know I’m not going to find anything I actually want to wear. We hear the statistics about how obesity is a major problem in the United States, and yet there are a mere handful of stores where fat people can buy clothes. At most of those stores, the clothes are hideous.

  Generally, we can go to Lane Bryant, the Avenue, Catherines. Other stores—Maurices, Old Navy, various department stores—offer a small selection of plus-sized clothing. There are online purveyors of plus-sized clothing, but they are hit-or-miss. And there is this—most of these stores have nothing to offer for the super morbidly obese. Lane Bryant’s sizes generally go to 28, and the same goes for most other stores. The Avenue, more generously, offers clothing up to size 32. If you are larger than that, and I am larger than that, there are so very few options. Being fashionable is not among them.