I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight (14 page)

This story makes me think that, indeed, we are all beholden to karma, and payback is a bitch.

the "fuck it" diet

I
lost some weight, which set off a strange wave of paranoia among people who think I have either had my stomach stapled or rubber-banded, or that I'm on some freaky raw food diet or whatever.

What happened was, I was fucking sick and tired of dieting and working out. I was fucking sick and tired of my trainer and any type of exercise. I was fucking sick and tired of no carbs. I was fucking sick and tired of eating five to seven small meals a day. I was fucking sick and tired of thinking about food and not thinking about food at the same time. I was fucking sick and tired of buying clothes that were too small for me so I could "thin into them." I went to a nutritionist and lost a lot . . . of money. I never left his office without dropping at least a grand on bullshit. Pills, supplements, shakes, food substitutes, exercise programs. I said: "FUCKING FUCK THIS FUCK IT FUCK IT SERIOUSLY FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK FUCK FUCK IT!!!!!"

I stopped going to Fred Segal and buying the one thing in the whole store that fit me. I started buying clothes that fucking fit me. I put away all notions of what diets meant to me, what I was supposed to eat and not supposed to eat. I altogether lost the thought process that carried me through my life—my dieting and exercise regimen—and started thinking about the people I loved, hated, tolerated,
laughed at, laughed with. There was a lot of time to read. I wanted to watch old movies. I ate a lot of shitty food. I gained some weight, and it was scary. But it didn't really make a difference. Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it. I stopped exercising, and I started writing. I played with my dogs. I looked at shit on eBay. I started to eat what I wanted, and kept eating what I wanted. Not a food vacation, not a respite between diets; I just was going to eat eat eat eat eat eat and fucking eat some more.

Then I kind of started to get weirdly thinner. I get it now. Because I don't care about food, and it's there when I want it, I don't think about it and crave it. Since I can have everything, nothing is that important. I don't need to eat a whole cake because I can eat a whole cake every day at every meal if I want, and I don't care. I don't prepare in advance to eat because I might be hungry later and "they" won't have what I want. When I'm hungry, I eat. That's the weird diet in a sentence.

Here's what I usually eat every day. In the morning, I have a bowl of cereal, granola and Life mixed together. If I'm staying at a hotel, I have granola and yogurt, croissants, one chocolate and one regular, and then a large cranberry juice. I drink a lot of water, and a lot of lemonade, regular Coke—no diet anything ever. After that, I usually eat a peanut butter cup or something like that. Then I get to work—writing usually, recording sometimes, interviews, etc. I get hungry again in the early afternoon, and I eat what I think is a good thing at the moment, mac-and-cheese or maybe pizza. I eat as much as I want, but it's usually too rich to eat it all and since I'm not dieting anymore
and don't need to cram the forbidden food down before the diet starts up again, I eat as much as I feel good eating and leave the rest. I leave a lot on the plate because I don't need to clean my plate. Why? I don't have to. And the value of not having to finish all my food probably has contributed the most to my healing with food. I used to feel like I needed to eat it all—all and then some—but it actually doesn't feel good to do that. It doesn't taste good either. I can have more food when I'm hungry again. I eat dinner late, usually with friends. I like appetizers. I'll order three or four types, so I can enjoy a variety of edible treats instead of just one entree. If I wanted an entree, I would order more than one. I deserve to eat what I like. I never eat anything that doesn't taste heavenly. I never take anything home. I never eat leftovers. I never eat when I'm not hungry. I never let myself get too hungry. I never deny myself a fucking thing, because I have denied myself enough things for a thousand lifetimes and there is no more denying for me in the way I live. I deserve all the fucking mozzarella sticks, all the chocolate, all the pizza, all the chicken a la king, and I deserve to leave what I don't finish on the plate.

So there you have it. My big secret diet. Love. Love, and the audacity to actually waste food.

belly dance

I was dancing when I was eight,
I was dancing when I was eight.
Is it strange to dance so late?

I
think I might have stopped dancing when I was eight years old because my father told me I was fat. After that, you just have a hard time getting yourself off the ground. It was like I put on lead shoes then and didn't take them off for nearly thirty years.

Exercise for me always meant suffering. Punishing my body for not being thin, or for eating too much, or for not eating at all, or for not exercising the day before or not exercising hard enough, or whatever whatever whatever. There was never a lack of reasons to hate myself, to hate my body. I decided to give it all up entirely, all physical activity. I did it out of protest, because I didn't wish to punish myself any longer. I wanted to get out of the prison of my own flesh. Yet complete motionlessness was not the answer either. My limbs began to atrophy. I began having problems with my joints. My wrist would pop and crack after using the computer. My back was caving in on itself. I absolutely had to do something, but what? I knew that yoga would help, but any form of exercise for me was a slippery slope emotionally, a direct route back to the self-loathing I had just extricated myself from. What to do?

The Cairo Carnival was being advertised locally, and my husband and I felt compelled to investigate. We are great lovers of anything from Africa and the Middle East. For us, they are the absolute source of much of the beauty in the world. The history, culture, religion, art, music, literature, food—our mutual appreciation is one of the things that brought us together. It's odd how belly dance escaped us.

The Cairo Carnival is the big belly dance festival in Southern California. We walked into a glitterdome, a wondrous parade of beautiful women, all in sequins and rhinestones, dancing their hearts out. The audience was practically all women. I had this notion that belly dance was strictly for men, like strippers, but I couldn't have been more wrong. There were women of all ages, all shapes and sizes, dancing for each other and having a blast. I've never seen a more accepting environment for women's bodies. It blew my mind. Here, what is considered excess flesh by mainstream Hollywood standards is considered beautiful. In fact, it's better to have some weight on you if you want to shimmy properly. Women were moving their bellies, popping them out, popping them back in. Undulating. I had never seen women celebrate their stomachs before, ever. The stomach had always been a shameful thing for me, the dead giveaway that I was never going to be the ethereal love object, the chic and popular model, the movie star's girlfriend, but merely a fat and unchangeable human being. In ballet class, I was always admonished for not pulling my stomach in tight enough. In the gym, I was screamed at because I could never do enough crunches. I didn't even like to drink water because it made my belly bloat. These are the reasons I just stopped
working out. I couldn't take all the dehydration and self-hatred. At the Cairo Carnival, my belly was free. Cairo—a name that conjures up the desert—ironically is the one place I finally felt safe to drink. Drink in the joy of women enjoying their bodies, loving each other and themselves.

I bought a necklace, an unusual one, which hung low in front. It became a belly chain. I loved it, and wore it so much that I decided I needed more chains. The vendor from the carnival agreed to come over and show me what she had left. She showed me all the lovely styles, and she said, "When you dance, you can just wash them off afterward." She thought I was a dancer! I was immensely flattered, and decided that I couldn't just appreciate belly dance from afar anymore. This was some kind of calling. I started taking classes from Princess Farhana, aka Pleasant Gehman. She's beautiful, an incredible dancer, the best teacher and a good friend. After taking her class, women just glow. She helps them to feel really good about themselves. It's a ministry. I dance every day if I can, and I watch lots of others belly dance.

When you go see a belly dance show, if you look around you see that a lot of the women are crying. Tears for a million different reasons. Because they can't believe how beautiful the dancer is; because that beauty is something that is reachable, accessible, not something that is elusive and distant. Because we've all wasted so many years hating ourselves for how we look and not appreciating ourselves for what we can do. Because we've sucked in our stomachs since we were children and now our backs are racked with pain. Because we have criti
cized our bodies for so long and have only now begun to feel what its like to compliment them. Because we have wasted so many years longing for something that didn't really exist but was sold to us by movies and fashion magazines. Because, for many of us, we could never imagine wearing something that exposes the midriff and now it's all we wear! Because as belly dancers we are never too old, too fat, too ugly, too anything like we are in the real world.

Perhaps I am idealizing, because I am still fairly new at belly dancing, but does it matter? I love it because I love the way it makes me feel; that's all that really matters, isn't it?

see me

T
he latest trend in South Korea is getting pubic hair transplants. One would think that it would be just the opposite, with salons all over the West serving up specialties like the "Barely Legal," removing all hair from the area to replicate the genitalia of an underage girl, as statutory rape seems to be all the rage; the "Playboy," a very clever strip of hair, like an arrow pointing down to the point of entry; plus a variety of novelty designs that can be pretty much anything you can make a stencil for, from holiday themes—jack-o'-lantern, turkey, Christmas tree, Easter egg—to one's own initials, from various allegiances to sports teams, even the @ symbol. You name it, you got it . . . on your pussy.

I once chose the Barely Legal, not to placate the pedophiles in my life but because I'm rather indecisive, and so if presented with a chart of pubic hair options, I might lose many valuable hours dithering that could be better spent writing or fucking someone with my brand-new bag. I had it done in Provincetown in the summer, where I make my makeshift seaside home, in a cabin in the woods of Truro where my Swiss Family Robinson drag queen relatives reside, the Trappin' Trannies.

The only salon offering the service then had only a male aesthetician, which didn't bother me but which may have been traumatic for him, since he was young, gay and a huge fan of my work. His hands shook as he applied the strips of waxy muslin, digging himself all the way to China, practically, because for some reason I am fur-lined. He sweat, and apologized profusely as he ripped them off, and nervously babbled on and on about the time he had seen me on
Sex and the City
. I'm altogether a fan of the discomfort of waxing the underworld, and the pain, excruciating and unbelievable, makes me very happy, and takes me to a place where songs from the film soundtrack of
Chicago
, such as "Roxie's Suite," could spring forth spontaneously without notice.

"Is everything okay?" he asks. "Do you need me to stop?"

"No, I'm fine. I'm just Roxieeeeeeeeeee . . . Hart."

"That's nice. Could you turn over for me now, please? I've never said that to a woman in my life."

He was very nice. But gossip is sometimes a little too good to keep
to oneself, and old gossip does no one any good, and so Provincetown was abuzz the next day.

"Did you see the new film
Notorious?
It's outrageous! She's fabulous!!!"

"Well, you didn't hear it from me, but I have from the most reliable sources that—leaning in—"she has the hairiest asshole!"

Many screams—loud, low, shrill, bass, alto—a veritable impromptu gay men's chorus around the brunch table harmonizes in a cacophony of abject horror and delight.

"Hm. It figures."

The ladies in South Korea ain't havin' it. They want the forest, and the trees. Perhaps they are just tired of combing it over. The Phytovolume just doesn't give it enough . . . body. Who's got the time to get a weave? Besides, it looks
so
fake. The pussy toupee, the merkin, will have your man smirkin', because it is held in place with a comb, which is impossible to explain easily when caught up in the rapture of lovemaking.

"Oh, I just, uh, I got it cut and didn't like it, so I'm wearing a fall until it grows out. Perhaps I should have mentioned it, but in our earlier conversation there never seemed to be an appropriate moment to bring it up . . . uh . . . the opportunity didn't present itself until now. So, there you have it. I'm wearing a piece. Is that a deal breaker?"

Rogaine isn't really effective down there; the vitamin supplements and the Knox gelatin just aren't rendering a crop worth waiting another growing season for—and so it's time for plugs. That's right.
The Hair Club. Sy Sperling, eat your hair out. The surgical procedure doesn't require a hospital stay, just a local anesthetic for your head and your hearth, and, like Robin Hood, the surgeons steal from the rich and give to the poor.

This is very familiar tale for me, for the women of my family, for my Old World posse. In the modern Korean diaspora of today, women are still invisible, so much so that they go out of their way to be noticed, like making themselves so thin through culturally sanctioned anorexia that it is impossible to ignore the disappearance of their bodies. The thinness promotes the invisibility. Girls become smaller and weaker—they shrink—and, ironically, are praised for the resulting dependence on others in order to survive. To please the patriarch-driven status quo, they have become an embarrassingly large and taxing burden, chewing up the scenery with starvation and silence, winding up in hospitals, force-fed directly into their stomachs, because their mouths refuse to open, to eat, to speak, to call attention to oneself, for it's considered highly unladylike. Femininity by any means necessary.