Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist's Quest to Discover if Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, or Why Pie Is Not the Answer (12 page)

“Nice one!” We exchange a quick high five. “The best part is how people say it like maybe you didn’t notice you had great cheekbones
and
a huge ass. Or flawless skin and a handful of back fat. I wonder if people think weight is like a piece of spinach caught in our teeth and we wouldn’t have known about if they hadn’t been kind enough to inform us.”

“Nothing would surprise me.” Stacey gets serious for a minute. “Listen, I take total responsibility for my weight. I love food. I love movement a whole lot less. I’m well aware of who I am and what I look like, and I’m happy with the whole package. I have a great life, and I’m thankful for it. I work out with a trainer, but mostly because of how it makes me feel. Yet I admit it can be like a knife to the chest when strangers define me based on digits on scale.”

“Amen,” I exclaim, accidentally spitting out a Raisinet. I pick up the chocolate with a Kleenex and stuff it in my purse. Ten bucks says a month from now I’ll have forgotten about it and will finally have said feared heart attack when I assume a rat shat in there. “I have to say, though, if someone gave me a pill tomorrow that would make me an instant size six, I would stomp through a meadow full of puppies to get it.”

“Then you couldn’t write a book about losing weight the hard way.”

“True. And I am perfectly fine with that.”

She gives me a sidelong glance. “Yeah?”

I grin sheepishly. “No, not really.” We sit for a moment in companionable silence. Stacey appreciates exactly how much I want the challenge of working on a new book. Being able to sit down and put thoughts on paper, knowing these thoughts will be out there for others to read, is the most joyous feeling in the world.

If my proposal sells, this time it won’t just be about writing. Writing this book means I’ll be obligated to change my entire life, and I’m conflicted. I want to change my life . . . except I sort of like it. I mean, I couldn’t be more delighted every Monday night after Fletch goes to bed when I come downstairs, pull up
The Bachelor
on TiVo, drink Riesling, and eat cheddar/port wine Kaukauna cheese without freaking out over fat grams. I’m perpetually in a good mood because I do everything I want. I love having the freedom to skip the gym to watch a Don Knotts movie on the Disney channel without a twinge of guilt. I’ve figured out how to not be beholden to what other people believe I should be doing, and when the world tells me I ought to be a size eight, I can thumb my nose at them in complete empowerment.

And yet a good part of me wonders if I’m not completely full of shit.

If this book gets green-lighted, I won’t have any more excuses not to make the kind of grown-up modifications to my lifestyle that I should have made years ago.

And that’s terrifying.

And exhilarating.

But mostly terrifying.

TO: angie_at_home

FROM: [email protected]

SUBJECT: Help!

The Food and Drug Administration announced they’re going to ban over-the-counter sales of ephedrine-based diet pills, which . . . DAMN.

Now what the hell am I going to do for a Plan B?

TO: angie_at_home

FROM: [email protected]

SUBJECT: Never mind

I just heard that Pfizer is coming out with a doggie diet pill to help combat obesity in overweight pets. Maisy would TOTALLY be eligible for it.

Plan B is back, baby!

CHAPTER TEN

Careful What You Wish For

We’re on our way back from the grocery store, where we spent the whole time arguing about how much cheaper food is in the suburbs. Fletch argued the pros of moving to the suburbs, and I argued how the cost of food wouldn’t matter because I’d bake my head in the oven like a Butterball turkey if forced to move there. Give me Libertyville or give me death? I choose death.

As we pull down the alley, Fletch nudges me. “Check it out.” He doesn’t open our garage door two lots down. Instead, we idle behind our new neighbor’s house.

“What am I supposed to be looking at? The car? It’s been up on blocks since the day they moved in.” I shrug. Fine, maybe people don’t put their cars up on blocks in swankier suburbs like Naperville, instead opting for the garage. Which is exactly what I would do. With the motor running.

“Look closer. I’ve been meaning to show you this for a couple of days, but we kept driving down the alley the other way.”

“Their dog can’t be out, because there’s no barking.” Our new neighbors have a small white dog that looks like a Muppet. We don’t know his name, so we call him Little Dog. He’d be cute except he’s outside all the time, so he barks All. The. Time. Normally this would simply be an annoyance—hardly surprising for this ’hood—but this month has been bitterly cold, and his constant exposure is dangerous. Since Fletch and I are home during the day, we’ve been calling the Anti-Cruelty Society every time he’s out for more than twenty minutes. Last week we watched the Anti-Cruelty van pull up to their house and we quietly cheered while the animal control people talked to the residents. Lately, they’ve been good about leaving the dog outside for reasonable amounts of time.

“Guess again.”

“Rats? Are there more rats? At this point I’ve seen so many that unless they’ve got top hats and have formed a kick line, I can’t even muster up the interest.”

“Check out the box in the garbage.”

I squint out my darkened window. “Torro Electric Snow-thrower. They bought a snowblower; what of it?”

“Jen, don’t read it—just look at it.”

“Am I looking for the price?”

“Nope. Look again.”

“Make and model?”

“You’re going micro—think macro.”

“Um . . . there’s a hole in it?”

“Yes! You’re getting warm.”

“I see some painter’s tape on it.”

“Uh-huh. Warmer. Keep going. What do you notice about the hole? What purpose is the tape serving?”

Am I this annoying when I make him try to guess things?
⁸¹
“The hole is . . . argh, I don’t know. Just tell me what I’m supposed to see, damn it.”

“The hole is cut in a perfect arch. The top of the box is notched, and the seams are covered with painter’s tape. Don’t you see what this is?”

“A snowblower box.”

“No! It’s a doghouse!”

“What?”

“Those idiots built a house for their dog out of
cardboard
. After Anti-Cruelty talked to them,
this
was their solution. To stick the dog in a damp paper box. Held together with painter ’s tape. During the coldest weather we’ve had in years.” Fletch shakes his head in wonder.

“According to that guy’s bumper sticker, he’s a union carpenter. Why wouldn’t he use wood? How is a paper box supposed to protect his dog from the elements? No one uses paper to keep warm—it’s a terrible insulator! That’s why buildings have fiberglass pumped into their walls, and not just old term papers.”

“Exactly.”

“And the roof on that thing is caved in—it must not have been able to withstand the weight of the snow.”

Fletch gives me a sly grin. “Perhaps he should have used load-bearing tape.”

“Their half-assed attempts at taking care of Little Dog are even worse than when they weren’t trying at all.”

“Yep.”

“Did you see they shaved Little Dog? First thing I thought was,
I guess someone got themselves into beauty school.
Then I got mad. It’s ten degrees below zero out here, so why is now the time to divest this creature of his only protection against the elements?”

“Obviously because they were building him a deluxe doggie palace—out of cardboard—so he didn’t need a fur coat.”

“I’ve seen them playing with Little Dog. They’re not vicious; they’re
dumb
. We have to call Anti-Cruelty again. This type of stupidity has to be noted.”

“Already did it,” Fletch says.

“Cool.” Fletch backs up to our garage. “I feel bad for the dog, but the doghouse is validating.”

“How so?”

“Everyone has a friend who consistently has the worst job ever. She has a terrible boss and terrible coworkers, and her assignments are terrible. So she quits and gets another job, and everyone there is awful, and the stuff she has to do is either too hard or too easy or too something. It’s like everywhere she goes, it’s always worst-case scenario, you know?”

Puzzled, Fletch replies, “Not really, no.”

I rub his shoulder affectionately. “That’s because sometimes that friend is you.”

“Hey—” he begins to protest.

I wave my finger at him. “Tut-tut, this isn’t a you-centric example. My point is, sometimes you look at this friend and think, the one common factor in all your terrible employment scenarios is
you
.”

Fletch says nothing, so I continue. “With me, I’m always complaining about the people we live around. When we were in Lincoln Park, I hated the drunk college students. In Bucktown, the yuppies made me nuts. In River West the fat girls and their bitchy boy companions made me want to take a hostage. And these were all entirely different circumstances, and the only common thread was me. Because of the law of averages, it’s almost impossible to believe that every single person who’s lived around me has been a moron, and that makes me doubt myself, especially when I still go around thinking every guy over six feet tall in the grocery store is you.
⁸²
But then I see this stupid paper doghouse and I realize, at least in this one instance,
I am not the idiot here
. And suddenly my world makes sense again.”

We finally pull in and begin to gather up bags. The message light is blinking on our phone. I listen to the message while Fletch doubles back to get all the heavy groceries, as I like to carry only the stuff that’s either paper or in a box.

Pink cheeked and ruddy, Fletch returns a few minutes later, laden with soup, spaghetti sauce, and soda.

My brows are knit and my mouth is pulled into a frown. “Bad news,” I tell him.

With a serious expression he asks, “What’s up?”

I point at the phone. “You got a message.”

“And?”

“Looks like you’re about to be the one common factor again.”

“I don’t follow.”

“I’m going to be grocery shopping alone.”

“You’re speaking gibberish again.”

I lose my frown. “Call your recruiter and start polishing your wingtips. You’re going back to work.”

And not a moment too soon.

Between the uncertainty of my proposal and worry about employment, I’ve been abusing controlled substances (that is, if you consider turtle cheesecake to be a controlled substance) .

“Did your celebration include a ‘special hug’?” Angie teases.

“You? Are
so
not funny,” I reply. My friends think it’s hilarious if they can make me squirm. Last time Carol was here, she and the rest of the girls talked about sex in a manner I found far too graphic.
⁸³
I threw such a fit, Carol finally acquiesced and asked if it would be easier if she simply referred to anything explicit as “that special hug married people do when they love each other very much.”

“We had celebration
cake
, thank you very much,” I retort. “With cream cheese frosting and little carrots piped on it. I got it at Whole Foods, and it must have weighed eight pounds.”

“When does he start?”

“Not for a couple of weeks. He’s still got to go through a drug screen and criminal check, but unless parking tickets or traces of boxed wine are felonies, he’s in excellent shape.”

“Did you tell your mom, or are you still incommunicado? ”

At the moment, my mother is mad at me for being mad at her for being a jerk, which may or may not have been caused by
my
being a jerk. I know; I know. Don’t ask. “Not talking.” I sigh.

“This isn’t the same fight from the spring?”

“No, this is a different fight.”

“I can’t keep them all straight.” Almost every one of our girlfriends is engaged in some level of combat with her mother. How is it we all got along fine with our moms for years, yet the minute we hit our mid-thirties, wham, it’s
Adolescence 2: This Time It’s Hormonal
. Is it us? Is it them? I don’t get it.

“I figure she’s like the dogs when they get all stirred up for no reason. They lose their minds and run around the house like wild beasts, foaming and biting, bashing into each other and flying over ottomans, but eventually they wear themselves out and they’re fine. I’m just going to wait until she’s exhausted and panting on the big pillow by the hall closet. Then we’ll talk and all will be as it was. But right now? Honestly, it’s a relief to not have to discuss anyone’s unemployment with her. I had a hard enough time dealing with my own anxiety back then, let alone trying to keep Mom from panicking.”

“Your situation is different this time; why would she panic?”

“Because she totally doubts that Fletch and I have the capacity as adults to learn lessons. Do you realize that even though I wrote an entire book about all the crazy stuff I did to get a job, she’s still tells my brother that I secretly was sitting around eating candy, happily racking up debt and waiting to be evicted?”

“You did eat a ton of candy.”

“Not the point. The problem is, I have no credibility within my family. Zero. For example, I was down at their new place and I noticed a really strange smell, like the air was musty and damp. It gave the whole house kind of an old-lady whiff. So I said something about it with an eye toward problem solving, like,
‘Hey, did you get this place tested for mold?’
My mother was furious that I was being negative and did nothing to address the strange odor. Then, a couple of months later, my niece was there with a little friend, and the little friend says,
‘Your grammy’s house smells like an old lady’s house.’
Right after, I get an e-mail from my mom saying,
‘Oh, the house smells a little off
—
there must be a problem. We’re going to get it checked out immediately.’
So the opinion of a five-year -old stranger carries more weight than mine.”

“That’s some serious annoyance. With my mother, I could tell her any fact, like the sky is blue, and she wouldn’t believe me. I could show her documentation, charts, graphs, whatever, and no dice. I could quote experts from NASA about atmospheric conditions. I could go all Bill Nye the Science Guy and detail the concept of Rayleigh scattering and bouncy air molecules and shit, but she’d never buy it. Yet if my brother were to say the sky is green and offer no proof, she’d suddenly be president of the Green Sky Club.”

“On the plus side, at least you only have boys and there’s no chance in thirty years your daughter will be tooling around in her hover car, bitching on her space phone about things you do.”

“I’ll probably have daughters-in-law at that point. But they’ll expect me to torment them.”

“And you won’t disappoint.”

“You got that right.” Angie cackles. “What else is going on with you? Any book news yet?”

My call-waiting clicks, and I check the display. Of course my agent is on the other line. I’m just going to add “psychic” to Angie’s ever-growing list of abilities. “Dude, Kate’s on the other line. We may be about to find out. Gotta fly.”

"Good luck.”

Yesterday my agent told me there were no updates.

My offer didn’t come until today.

Woo!

I try to call Fletch and tell him the good news, but he’s at the gym. I consider dialing the reception desk directly and having them grab him from the free-weight room, but I’m probably a bit too screamy to talk to anyone at the moment.

I know I’ve done this a couple of times before, but each time a book sells, it feels like a miracle. The experience is so surreal. This kind of stuff doesn’t happen to me; it happens to people in movies. I want to call my publisher and ask,
Are you sure
? You’re really interested in what I have to say? And you’re willing to write me a check to do so? And then you’ll take these thoughts—asinine as they may be—and put them in a format that will live on in the Library of Congress forever?
⁸⁴

Unbelievable.

I’m dancing around the kitchen with the dogs and a fat slice of carrot cake when a thought stops me in my tracks.

I sold a book.

Correction, I sold a book, the contents of which depend on my decision to change my body, my health, and my life.

The hard way.

Without surgery or drugs.

In terms of the deal, I’m not bound to lose a certain amount of weight; rather, my publisher is interested in the process, and if I happen to get positive results, all the better. Failure can be just as funny as success, sometimes even more so.

But let me be crystal clear here so there’s no misunderstanding:

I am not about to have my inability to stop eating Ding Dongs documented for eternity in the Library of Congress.

This
is the push I’ve been waiting for.

This
is the rent check I’ve written that must clear.

No one is challenging me here except for myself. The only one throwing a gauntlet is me. For this book, I see myself in Houston at Ground Control, wearing a handmade vest and a pocket protector, an old-school headset resting on my buzz cut, barking out with the utmost confidence,
Failure is not an option!

Yet I’m pretty sure Penguin would be happy if I told funny stories about plodding along on the treadmill with a piece of pie tied to a string dangling from a stick on my head.