Getting Waisted (22 page)

20

He Cooks, I Eat

Diet #23
Fitness equipment and private trainer

Cost
$1,100

Weight lost
F
at–Yes

Weight gained
Muscle–Yes

I was in love, not just with Gilles,
but also with every dish he put in front of me. He was handsome, French, and he could cook. The irony of being married to a man who looked at food as if it was a gift from God was wreaking havoc with my diet-conditioned brain. I wanted to please him, so I ate and I loved every morsel. I wanted to eat the way Gilles did, with gusto and with pleasure, but I was faking it. I had struggled so long with my weight that the soundtrack that continuously played inside my head whenever I ate was turned up to full volume. “You will pay. You are growing as you chew!”
Of course, it was unfair that my man could eat three trucker-sized meals a day and then have endless coffee breaks, always accompanied by some sugary treat. He must have a cheetah’s metabolism; I, on the other hand, have a garden slug’s.

The thing I loved best about Gilles, and there were so many qualities to choose from, was something we had in common. We both loved to celebrate: any holiday, anybody’s birthday, any occasion. When we passed each other on a bathroom break in the middle of the night, it presented as an opportunity to twirl each other in an impromptu dance before returning to bed to dream. We shared great joy in making every event special and unique.

One Valentine’s Day weekend we were housesitting for friends who had a temperamental dog that was only happy in his own surroundings. The house was a rustic but romantic cottage tucked into one of the many canyons that run through L.A. There were deer in the garden in the early mornings, yet we were only ten minutes from Beverly Hills. I had gone to get Gilles a Valentine’s card and a box of chocolates and when I made the drive back up the winding canyon toward the cottage, I saw giant red banners strung high across the road at at least a dozen intervals, and each one was painted in white with funny and touching messages. I could never have imagined they were for me until I turned into the driveway and saw there was one more, but this one had both our names emblazoned in a giant heart
. I bought him a heart-shaped box of candy. How did I get this guy?
For a moment I was worried my entire relationship was like that season on
Dallas
, when it turned out it was all a dream. But then Gilles stepped out of the gate with a cat-swallowed-the-canary grin. I threw myself at him in a move intended to replicate a romantic movie-moment where the girl jumps into her man’s arms and he twirls her and then they kiss. In reality, I flew at Gilles and knocked him and me into a bottlebrush tree. The red spiky brushes broke off and showered us in leaves, red filaments, and dirt. But it did affirm that our relationship was no dream.

After some time, a friend suggested it was time for me to spread my wings and get a high profile Hollywood agent and he recommended me to a well connected someone he knew. A dose of reality jackhammered me when I dipped into my closet looking for something professional but easy to wear for my first meeting with the big and powerful Hollywood agent. My closet looked like it belonged to a schizophrenic: thin clothes, fat clothes, and the I-must-have-been-on-drugs-when-I-bought-those clothes, given the entire section of skimpy, vividly-patterned, and sleeveless flotsam that could only have looked good on a twenty-something who was size “zippedy-do-dah.” A wave of depression washed over me. I had no idea anymore what I looked like. I had been on every diet known to mankind; low carbs, high carbs, and no carbs. I had played the yo-yo game like a gambler with an ever-full bucket of chips, and had lost and gained weight so often that when I passed my reflection in a store window I had no idea who I was looking at. I had lost sight of me. When I would pass a woman of some physical girth, I asked friends, “Is that what I look like?”
They shook their heads, sure that I was fishing for something, not that they had a clue what it was. If I was having a
really
bad day, I pushed my imagination envelope and convinced myself that I looked like that 600-pound woman on the eleven o’clock news who needed to be carried on a double garage door by eight sweaty firemen after they knocked down the wall to her bedroom where she had survived on Cheetos for the last twenty years. Let me be clear, I
hate
Cheetos.

I pulled on my go-to stretchy jersey layers and tossed on an expensive and fabulous scarf, a pair of great boots, applied some hot lipstick and pushed all my self-loathing onto the back burner. Big girls usually put their money into the best accessories, because they always fit.

There is no more thrilling drive than Sunset Boulevard, passing one fabled mansion after another, each one seemingly replicated from the owner’s favorite vacation destination: English Tudors, C
ô
te d’Azur chateaus, Tuscan villas, Mexican haciendas, all competing for the most
oohs
and
aahs
. I never get over the staggering amount of tropical vegetation that lines the road before hitting the Strip, with its gigantic hand-painted billboards and iconic neon signs fronting music clubs, seen by the world through decades of movies. I was high on my own amazement that I lived there.

I pulled up in front of a cold but imposing office tower, handed my car off to a valet, and headed up the stairs to my future. I was about to enter the lobby that was the first line of defense to a fiefdom of power-brokers-to-the-stars, when a tight-limbed woman in a plaid miniskirt, thigh-high boots, and cascading blonde hair moved past me. I knew it was someone famous. Maybe Darryl Hannah? She stopped to put on a pair of giant sunglasses. I was sure she overheard my gasp! The woman, maybe someone famous in another life a long, long time ago, was ancient, and yet not. Her face seemed to be made of borrowed parts: lips that once belonged to a puffer fish, giant almond-shaped eyes that wouldn’t close—the kind we had seen on renderings of imagined aliens. Her skin was so shiny; it was like a helium party balloon. I had seen so many of these new faces layered on those old faces; I had come to believe Los Angeles was the birthplace of a whole new tribe—never really younger, just bizarrely different. I hurried toward the security desk and signed in. I didn’t want to have that image seared into my brain for another second.

I pressed the button for the elevator and was about to step in, when a trio of big-haired, overly protective she-beasts all dressed in black, pushed me aside so a very skinny giraffe carrying a giant purple purse could enter.
I had already seen enough weird to make that image seem real.
The three Meanies who were clearly there to protect the giraffe-like woman from any harm looked me over with disdain; my breasts were bigger than their heads. The giraffe backed up as if to get away from them. I stepped into the elevator and shrank into a corner, but with a quick glance, I saw it wasn’t a giraffe. It was Margaux Hemingway. I waited for the coven and their charge to settle and I pressed the button to my floor. We rode up in interminable silence. Thank God. My floor. I stepped out and smacked straight into a teeny, perfect Drew Barrymore. She was the size of a teacup. I hurried down the hallway filled with framed photograph after photograph of famous faces: all frozen foreheads, strange lips, and blindingly white teeth.

I pushed open the gold-lettered door to an intentionally imposing office and was greeted by a scrawny frosted-haired, fierce-eyed banshee of a woman wearing a cashmere bandage dress thingy. She held out what might have been her hand but looked far more like a claw to me, and then she retracted it as she gave me the once-over. I knew instantly I was doomed. Disappointed that she had wasted her time, she cut to the chase, and in a hardened, fast-talking New Jersey accent she said she would not be representing me, despite being sure I was a very talented person. Then, lasering me with her cold fish eyes, she added,“This is million dollar pearls so listen very carefully. You should go back to wherever it is that you came from; lose forty, fifty, maybe even sixty pounds. Bleach those teeth, lighten and brighten your hair. And let me wrap up by saying again, go home, lose the weight. This is no place, no matter how talented and I’m sure you are, for ‘big’ girls.”

I smiled and thanked her for her time and such valuable advice, but when I got to the door, I turned and said, “I hope to prove you wrong.” I wish I’d had the presence of mind to say, “What difference does my size make? I’m a writer!”

As I hurried away toward the elevator, I saw a stairwell. The sign said, “Roof.” For a very brief moment I thought about going up there and throwing myself off. This was Hollywood and ooh, big surprise, I had once again broken the law against fat people. There was probably a special task force that wrote tickets and stuck them on our asses.

I arrived home spent and shriveled like an old balloon. The witchy-agent had made it abundantly clear that I wasn’t welcome in Tinsel-Town. Whatever confidence I had built up from having the best, most amazing husband and some success as a writer and actress, was now shattered. I took all my pain out on Gilles. I was a short, fat troll and he was my pusher. The man was skinny but he kept bringing me croissants and apricot jam-filled baguettes. I knew I should say no.
Do I look like someone who knows how to do that?
He cooked all the time, and not a slab of chicken followed by boiled string beans; instead he made golden brown, butter-infused chicken with an au gratin, orgasm-inducing potato side dish. If its scent was wafting under my nose, of course I was going to eat it. I was weak. My will power only existed when our fridge was empty. “Stop cooking!” He looked at me as if I had slapped him. I tried to explain that I couldn’t continue to be held hostage by food. He said he wouldn’t cook for me anymore. Neither of us was happy. But I was determined to beat the odds even if I had to nail my mouth shut. I could see Gilles was worried about me but he knew when I was in this kind of place, it was best to keep
his
mouth shut. If only I could do the same.