Milk Fed

by Melissa Broder

  No, that wasn’t true. I’d sensed the demon in me all along, waiting for the right moment to open my mouth, suck the world down my throat. All of my restriction, my efforts at control, as I tiptoed daily around the edge of hunger, were enacted in the name of keeping that demon shut up: sleep late to delay calories, write everything down, eat ice, avoid friends. But in all that busywork, I’d forgotten what made the demon space so dangerous in the first place. When you were in it, it felt fucking great.

  On the way back to the office, I stopped off at my car in the parking garage. I opened the trunk and rifled angrily through the trash bag of clothes where I’d dumped the sculpture I made in therapy. Fucking Mahjoub. I’d show her honoring the work! I pulled out two black dresses, a dirty black T-shirt, and a pair of old Nikes. No sculpture. I took out a black blouse with a hole in the sleeve, a bralette, one black patent leather high heel, a black skirt. Now the bag was empty. Still no sculpture. Maybe it had fallen out of the bag and gotten loose in the trunk?

  My trunk was filled with so much shit. The thing could be anywhere under all of that crap! I began pulling items out and placing them on the floor of the parking garage: sunglasses, a box of broken planters, my college diploma, a case of Coke Zero, wiper fluid, a spare tire, my missing copy of The Fran Lebowitz Reader, three empty cans of Coke Zero. No sculpture. It was gone.

  CHAPTER 15

  We were invited to a party for the cast and crew of Breathers, to celebrate their second season renewal. I dreaded these kinds of events. The rooms were always filled with the professionally skinny, the skinny-for-pay, the ultra-ultra-skinny. I knew it would be impossible to shrink myself down to that next tier of skinny without suffering more than I was already suffering. On the suffering scale, I was currently at about a seven-point-five. I felt unwilling to go up to a nine or ten. But when I observed the ultra-ultra-skinny, I forgot about that suffering and saw only the ways they appeared to be protected—cocooned by an absence of flesh—from judgment, hurt, or shame. When I looked at the ultra-ultra-skinny, I thought: safe.

  Ofer acted like he was doing me a favor by bringing me along, as though I actually gave a shit about this circus. Once we arrived, he was in full networking mode and had no use for me. I tracked his bald head as he made his way around the room, sniffing out the dissatisfied talent: the actors and actresses whose managers weren’t doing enough for them—their eternal cry.

  I was starving. I feared that at any moment my hand and mouth could form a secret shared alliance, wherein my hand would unconsciously reach out and make a grab for the butlered hors d’oeuvres: the pigs in a blanket, chicken-and-waffle bites, and small rustic pizzas that mined the whole room. I had my protein bar stashed away in my purse, ready to safeguard me from hunger. But I couldn’t just whip it out in the crowded room when there was so much other food available.

  I would have to consume the bar in the bathroom. I had no qualms with eating in bathrooms, really. If given the choice, I’d much prefer to eat a protein bar alone on the toilet than do cocktail hour under the watchful eyes of others. At least a bathroom was a room of one’s own.

  Unfortunately, this bathroom had two stalls. Another woman already occupied one of them. I entered my stall, sat down, and waited. I wanted to hold off until she left in case my chewing made any noise. The protein bar was soft, consisting of whey proteins, not loud like a granola bar, or anything in the crunchy family. Still, I craved total privacy.

  When the woman finished peeing, another woman came in and took over her stall immediately. When that woman finished, a third woman entered. This third woman made no noise. She simply sat there silently for a very long time. I knew she was waiting for me to leave so she could do her business. We were locked in a stalemate, and neither of us was moving.

  I was starving. It was now or never—I would have to let her win. As quietly as possible, I took the protein bar out of my purse. The wrapper made a loud crinkling sound when I opened it. I hoped that my neighbor would think it was a tampon wrapper. Gingerly, I took a bite and tried to chew quietly. The saliva in my mouth made juicy, squelching noises. It was time to just say fuck it and surrender. I took my next bite with more gusto, chewing heartily.

  Suddenly, I heard a series of farts erupt from the stall next door, then the sound of shit plopping, unmistakably diarrhea, then more farts. I wondered if the woman felt ashamed, knowing that I was there to hear it. What an exciting feeling! I was happy not to be the one who was ashamed for once. Then the smell hit me. I didn’t know what to do. Should I finish the bar, steeped in diarrhea smell? Should I go back to the party light-headed with low blood sugar? As more shit fell, I was unable to continue eating. I swallowed my bite, put the bar in my bag, and flushed even though I hadn’t peed.

  I washed and dried my hands, then took the remainder of the bar out of my bag, unpeeled it, and shoved the rest in my mouth. I swung open the bathroom door, mouth full of bar like a chipmunk.

  “Hi, Rachel.”

  It was Jace Evans. There was no way I could open my mouth. I already felt a little puddle of drool forming in the right corner of my lips. I gave him a little wave and tried to keep walking, but he stopped me.

  “Is anyone in the women’s room? Some guy locked himself in the men’s for the past ten minutes,” he said. “I have to talk to media, but I really gotta go.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” I said, lips still clenched and bulging like I had a mouth guard in. I held up two fingers to indicate that there were two people in there.

  “Oh, okay,” he said. “You all right?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” I said again, trying to suck the giant ball of bar farther back in my mouth. There was no way I could swallow it without choking. It had the consistency of a Tootsie Roll. Instinctively, once it reached my molars, I started chewing.

  “Do you always eat in the bathroom?” he asked.

  CHAPTER 16

  “Where’s Adiv?” I asked, as Miriam greeted me at the counter with a big smile.

  “Packing his stuff,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “He’s going back to Israel. Basic training. He’s going to be serving in the IDF.”

  “Oh.”

  The IDF?! The situation was more alarming than I’d imagined. Maybe it shouldn’t be surprising. Adiv did seem like the “follows orders” type. He took commands well with a yogurt machine at least, which was more than could be said of Miriam.

  “Listen,” I said, before she went over to the machine. “I only want the yogurt to the top of the cup, no higher.”

  I said it firmly and solemnly.

  “Okay,” she said, shrugging.

  She filled the cup, exceeding the rim by a few centimeters—probably out of spite.

  “What toppings do you want?” she asked.

  So we were still playing this game.

  “I don’t want any toppings,” I said.

  “Didn’t you enjoy the sprinkles last time?”

  Oh, I’d enjoyed them, all right.

  “They were fine,” I said. “But I prefer it plain.”

  “Maybe try a different topping this time,” she said.

  “No, that’s okay.”

  “How about this? Why don’t you let me make you something special? If you hate it, I will just give you your plain cup to the rim, exactly the way you want it.”

  This was coercion, intimidation by butterscotch. I wanted to tell her to go away, that she was ruining something secure and delicious in my world. But another part of me —that same wild part that had lapped up the sprinkles, the demon of my old insatiable hunger—felt liberated by her enthusiasm.

  I opened my mouth and said, “Okay.”

  And when I said, “Okay,” Miriam said “Okay” too.

  She gave me a huge smile, her face flashing like a candle. I felt my anxiety dissipate. Gone was the fear that she was out to ruin me, the suspicion that she wanted to disappear me from myself, to make me hate myself, to send me spinning out into infinity, a nothing, a blob, so big I cou
ld be seen only in fragments, so unwieldy I could never be held, just an overwhelming void, just devastated, just dead. I looked at her smile, and I thought: love.

  She moved silently to the toppings bar in her long blue dress, the same dress she wore the first time I’d seen her. I traced the many curves of her body around and around all the way to the floor. I wondered what she was going to do. I was scared. How many times had I made sundaes in my mind, never thinking the fantasies would actually be realized? I’d never even wanted the fantasies to be realized. I’d thought it was safe to fantasize, because my inner wall was so strong. My wall was thick, under my control. But now she was lifting the metal lid off the hot fudge with her pale hand, this sorceress at the cauldron, and not a low-calorie cauldron either, but regular hot fudge. She was taking up the ladle.

  I watched her spoon three large puddles of fudge on top, the yogurt plateauing beneath the warm sauce, the sauce dripping down the sides, wildly volcanic. After each ladle, I thought she was going to stop, but she did not stop, she added a fourth, then a fifth ladle of fudge, the yogurt going totally Vesuvius. She paused for a moment, then dusted the entire thing with a layer of chopped peanuts. I was stunned. Never in my topping daydreams would I have thought to incorporate a peanut. She finished with whipped cream—just a dollop—and then a drizzle of strawberry syrup on top of that.

  Miriam had made me an ice cream sundae. It was the perfect sundae you might see at a 1940s soda fountain or in a vintage housekeeping magazine. It was a throwback, food of another era, time-traveling to the Yo!Good counter. There was an innocence about it, a childlike quality. It was a treat that a child would receive from a caring older person who wanted to reward them just for existing.

  When she handed me the cup, our hands touched. Her fingers were incredibly soft.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  I didn’t know what to do. I had forgotten how to say no, but I had also forgotten how to eat. I felt my hand tingling; the yogurt was heavy. I was unable to move the cup closer to me or farther away. Her hand touching mine had somehow paralyzed me. Maybe she’d cast a spell that was conveyed through touch.

  Spoon, I thought. Get. Spoon.

  I saw myself pick up a pink spoon from the dispenser on the counter. Stiffly, I lifted it up, then plunged it into the sundae. I penetrated the whipped cream and fudge down to the yogurt below. I wanted to taste all of it at once: yogurt, fudge, strawberry sauce, whipped cream, and peanuts. I brought the bite to my mouth. My mouth knew what to do. It opened. I shoveled the bite inside.

  The taste was orchestral, so many different flavors in one. First the nuts blended with the strawberries, à la a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Then the fudge cavorted with the nuts to create a candy bar essence. The whipped cream and strawberries were their own heaven: a strawberry shortcake of pleasure. I tasted them all in unison, but also separately. They coexisted in harmony, while each ingredient maintained its own identity.

  “Good?” she asked.

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  I took another bite, savored it, then swallowed.

  “I love it,” I said. “You’re really good at making sundaes.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “When you work here, you start to know which flavors taste really good together. Next time you come I’ll make you my personal signature. I call it the Peppermint Plotz.”

  “Yeah, that sounds really great,” I said.

  Then she pointed to her mouth and said, “You have a little chocolate on your lip,” and giggled.

  I admired how pale pink her lips were, like the pastel nonpareil white chocolates sold as toppings. When I wiped the chocolate off my lip and said “Thanks,” I realized that my messiness caused me no embarrassment. I hadn’t been propelled back through the portal from pleasure to shame. I felt like an innocent, a little girl who had done nothing wrong. I was cute in my joy and mess.

  When I said goodbye and walked out, I already knew what was going to happen next. There was no way that I could calculate however many calories were in that sundae. I could get close, but the strawberry syrup and chocolate fudge and peanuts made it difficult, if not impossible, to discern quantities. I had crossed a line, if only for today, and there was no point in turning back now.

  I would give myself just this one day to eat everything I wanted: all the things I had deprived myself for years. The day had already been claimed by the sundae, and the only logical next step was to bury it under more food. It would be like cutting off my head because of a headache. But I was so tired of my head.

  CHAPTER 17

  The first spot I hit was Immaculate Confection, a bakery I passed on my way to and from the office. I went inside and bought a slab of chocolate mousse cake covered with dark chocolate fondant, a slice of carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, an M&M cookie, a yellow cupcake with chocolate frosting, a chocolate chip cookie the size of my face, and a lone cannoli. It all cost $34.20, but I felt so proud to be a skinny person ordering all this cake—some fucking wonder of nature who ate and ate and showed none of it on her body—that I paid happily.

  I brought the bakery boxes to my car, deep in the bowels of the parking garage. Then I got in the driver’s seat and turned the heat on blast. I opened each of the boxes, waving my fingers like a pianist. I stuck two fingers in the carrot cake icing, then licked. I began mixing and matching, dunking and shoveling: the M&M cookie in the chocolate frosting, the chocolate chip cookie in the cannoli cream.

  “Hrrrrrrrrrrrm!” I made a sound as I jammed the baked goods in my mouth, feeling loose and primal.

  I lifted the cupcake, stuck my face in it like it was a pillow. Then a wave of nausea hit. I wished that for just this one day, I could have infinite room in my stomach. I wanted to take the memory of the day and put it in a snow globe full of frosting. Then, when I returned to my calorie-counting life, I could always recall this binge and revel in the magnificence of it.

  I decided I needed something savory to break up all the sweets. I put the half-eaten cookies and cakes in the boxes, then shoved them all under the passenger’s seat.

  “See you soon,” I said to the baked goods, licking my fingers a final time.

  I stopped inside Dr. Burrito. I had seen people eating burritos in there, so casually, and I wondered how they did it—just calmly ate something so fattening. The burritos always looked delicious, like warm babies swaddled up tight in blankets. I’d wanted to take a burrito and hold it to my cheek, or put it over my shoulder and soothe it.

  I ordered the verde chicken burrito: strips of pulled chicken simmered soft and juicy in green sauce, guacamole, sour cream, cheese, Spanish rice, and black beans. I wasn’t physically ready to consume my baby yet, so I decided to just carry it.

  “There there, sweet bundle of beans and cheese. You are wanted.”

  Two blocks from the office, a cheese pizza called out to me from a window.

  Rachel, said the pizza. We should be together.

  I went inside and ate a huge slice in a front booth. I wanted the other customers to see what I was doing. I was a pizza-eating woman who somehow stayed slender. I was an amazing creature, a miracle. The sauce was sweet, and the crust was crispy. But it was becoming difficult to swallow. I felt like a landfill. Everything I’d consumed—the yogurt and baked goods and pizza—were piled on top of one another, teetering toward my throat.

  I thought about ancient Rome, how they supposedly made themselves throw up so they could make room for more feasting. I had tried to purge many times, particularly when I was young and bingeing, but I’d never been successful. I’d jam my fingers down my throat and bring on tears, spit, mucus, a red face, the sensation that my head was going to fall off into the toilet. I’d come out with a few coughs into the toilet water, maybe a wet burp, but my guts refused to budge. Once a morsel of food made its way down my esophagus, my body took it prisoner and refused to surrender.

  I’d been more successful with laxatives. I’d eat them just before bed at night, the choc
olate-flavored ones, a hint of cocoa melting on my tongue as I eased into sleep. Then, in the morning, my ass would sound an alarm. I’d race to the bathroom still half-asleep, awaken fully on the toilet shitting forth streams of fire. For the rest of the day I’d be out of commission, hopping from toilet to toilet like a manic toad. Laxatives were a major time commitment, a second job, and the effort was never worth the payoff. I’d lose half a pound of water weight, only to gain it back the following day. In the end, I quit the purging game—revisiting it only very occasionally with diuretic pills or a lone secret suppository.

  I was feeling sick. I threw away my paper plate and gathered up my burrito. But instead of returning to work, I found myself standing inside a candy store called Yummies.

  I’d been there once and allowed myself exactly 180 calories’ worth of candy. Now I dove in without counting: jelly beans, Hershey’s kisses, candy corn, laissez sweets! I was exuberant in the Cadbury eggs, wild with the Haribo cherries.

  I lingered over a bin containing little white and purple discs, chalky and nickel-size. The discs had appeared in a movie I’d once seen about a boy who was dying of a terminal illness. I’d forgotten what illness he had, but I remembered clearly the way his mother snuck the discs into the hospital to try and get him to eat.

  “I brought your favorite cahndies,” she said, pronouncing it like that, cahndies. Was there a more melancholy way to pronounce anything?

  As a child, I’d seen a wide range of nonterminal illnesses amongst my young friends, as well as the delicious food cures their mothers provided. I’d prayed that I would contract tonsillitis (ice cream), a stomach virus (ginger ale), chicken pox (oatmeal bath), the flu (chicken noodle soup), swollen glands (lollipops), tooth pain (Popsicles), the common cold (more chicken noodle soup), strep throat (raw honey). But I was cursed with perfect health.

  I made retching noises in the bathroom, choked on faux phlegm, blew empty air into a tissue, clutched my throat.