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 (4 page)

The worst part of that summer was the exercise. The second I got up and before I’d do anything else, I’d pop Jane Fonda’s workout into the tape player, huffing my way through the sixty-minute advanced version before I’d allow myself to have my first of three meals of wheat toast.

To this day, I hate Jane Fonda.

And leg warmers.

I’m still OK with toast, though.

The only thing I liked was swimming laps in our pool, which ended up being the main reason I was able to get back to my pageant weight. But, really, I have to laugh when I think of what my family considered ‘fat.’ I’m just shy of five foot eight, and 150 pounds was well within normal limits, especially since I have a big frame and
b-o-o-b-s
. I’d gone from a seven to a nine, and I hadn’t even broken into double-digit pant sizes at that point.
²⁵
Plus it was the eighties. At least five pounds was hair and product.

Stacey asks, “Looking back, are you angry with them?”

“Now? God, no, not at all. The benefit of hindsight tells me weight wasn’t the real issue. They were trying to come to terms with the fact that their moderately obedient child went away to college, and a drinking, swearing, moderately independent young adult returned in her place, you know? More importantly, I looked fantastic when I went back sophomore year. Totally let me date guys in better fraternities. ”

“Glad you had your priorities straight,” Fletch chimes in.

I continue, “I wish I had that kind of external motivation right now, because it’s certainly not coming from within. I’m conflicted—I know I
need
to do this. I mean, I don’t want to have a heart attack, and a stroke would totally mess up my smile, and yet I can’t get past the idea of not eating what I’d like.”

“Me, too. Intellectually, I understand why it’s important for my body to carry less fat, but I can’t say I’m unhappy with who I am, regardless of my shape.” Stacey has beautiful hair, perfect features, and a positive self-concept, and I swear men throw themselves at her wherever we go. She doesn’t need to lose an ounce to be her gorgeous self.

“Exactly! We should start a Girls with High Self-Esteem and Possibly Cholesterol support group. Seriously, though, I know I should eat less and exercise more, so I started going to the West Loop Gym about a year ago. I’m there a lot, but I just don’t see results.”

“Have you done any personal training? I work out with mine three days a week, and I’m down about thirty pounds since last year. What’s important is, I
feel
good.”

“Oh, yeah,” I reply. “I had a few sessions with a trainer last year. The problem was, I’d work my ass off, and then I’d come home and reward myself with something delicious. ”

Stacey nods. “It’s hard not to.”

“When I go to the gym now, I’m still waiting for the endorphins to kick in. It doesn’t matter if I kill myself every day, I’ve yet to experience anything like a high,” I tell her.

Stacey shifts, and Loki takes this as an invitation to join her and Fletch on the couch. “I love working out with my trainer, Gabe, because he’s a really good friend. But doing it on my own? Not so much. I dislike every single step I take on the goddamn treadmill. Like, when does it get fun?”

“Lately, I’ve been on this kick where I don’t eat anything I can’t pronounce,” Fletch tells us. He’s dropped ten pounds with this little trick since the Bus Incident.

Fucking show-off.

“Yeah, I tried that, and then I read the label on a package of Hostess cupcakes. It’s amazing what I can pronounce,” says Stacey.

“I’m more of a fruit-pie girl myself, but I totally agree,” I reply. “Bottom line is, the weight went on so easily—seems like it should come off the same way.”

“But so far you’ve done nothing,” Fletch mentions.

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” I snap. “It will happen, just not tonight, OK?”

“Whoa, sorry. Just trying to participate in the conversation. ” Fletch moves Loki and his potentially leather-puncturing claws back onto the floor. Loki goes over a few feet to lie on his squashy down bed, where visions of salad tossing will soon dance in his head. “Maybe you should start the show?” he deflects.

I press PLAY on the TiVo remote and
Top Chef
begins. Five minutes of braising, sautéing, and roasting later, I look sheepishly at Fletch and Stacey and ask, “Um, is anyone else hungry?”

TO: carol_at_home, wendy_at_home, jen_at_work

CC: angie_at_home

FROM: [email protected]

SUBJECT: scenes from a parking garage

Setting: In the car, circling the lot two levels underneath Nordstrom.

Me:
My God, it’s crowded in here. We’re never going to find a space.

Angie:
(gestures toward cars parked perpendicular to those already in spaces)
Well, why don’t you park like that?

Me:
Those are the valets’.

Angie:
(squints at a Lexus SUV with a Notre Dame alumni sticker on it)
Wow, the valets really have nice cars.

Me:
(turning to look at Angie, incredulous)
I meant they’re valet
parked.

Angie: Oh. I guess that makes more sense.

Scene ends as I almost drive us into a pole because I’m busy laughing myself into a pants-wetting asthma attack.

See you soon?

Jen

P.S. Ang, I wouldn’t mock you if you hadn’t infected me with the plague.

P.P.S. Ten points to you for not mentioning how much weight I’ve gained since I saw you last. Thank you for taking my delicate little feelings into account.

CHAPTER THREE

Talking (Terrible) Turkey

"I stand up, and my ass knocks over someone’s wine-glass, like, four tables away. No lie. And now I’m too mortified to ever go to that restaurant again,” I tell Angie. I’m lying on the guest bed in the office with my legs angled up and feet against the wall, my default phone position since high school. Normally I’m loath to talk on the phone, but recently we switched cable providers and now our service is a flat rate. My hate for the telephone is neatly eclipsed by my love of free long distance.

“I’m sure it wasn’t that bad,” Angie replies. “Besides, I saw you a month ago, and your butt was fine. I’d have noticed if it was seventeen feet wide.” Of course, Angie is a mom and routinely lies all day—for example,
That fluffy bunny on the side of the road is covered in delicious raspberry jam! And he’s napping; shhh, don’t wake him!
—so I’m not so quick to believe her.

“Don’t be so sure. I was wearing black pants and a girdle. They’re very deceptive.”

In the background, I hear Angie’s youngest son saying, “Mommy’s on the phone and Daddy’s at work—so who will make me a sandwich, I wonder?”

“Do you have to go?” I ask. “The last thing I want is my rampant obesity causing your children to starve. And by the way, when the hell did I begin to criticize myself ? A month ago I was fat and happy. But ever since I made the decision to drop a few pounds—way less easy than it sounds, by the way—I’ve become obsessed with my size, and in so doing I’ve inadvertently allowed my inner critic to have a voice. And you know what? She’s a
bitch
. Like now when I see my underpants in the laundry, I no longer think
Soft! Cotton! Sensible!
Instead I hear her say
Damn, girl, these panties be
huge.”

“Your inner critic has terrible grammar.”

“I know, it’s the only way I can take away some of her power over me. Anyway, should I call you back?”

“Nope, not to worry; lunch is handled. Hang on a sec.” After a quick discussion of the merits of peanut butter versus turkey, and crusts on or off, I can hear Angie working on the sandwich as we talk. Over the summer we chatted one night while Angie stripped a bed, changed wet sheets, comforted and repajamaed a toddler, and chased down a car of speeding teenagers while shaking a brick at them, never once interrupting the conversation or setting down her margarita. The only reason this woman isn’t president of General Motors is because she’s chosen not to be.

“The other mothers on the PTA are terrified of you, aren’t they?”

“Naturally.” She laughs. “Back to the restaurant—what’d you do about the glass?”

“I was so embarrassed, I wanted to crawl in a hole and die, but the guy was cool. The waitress got him more wine, and he wouldn’t let me pay for it, so it was best-case scenario. But I’m bothered that certain body parts are trailing behind me creating mayhem and wasting perfectly lovely Bordeaux. And lately? I’ve noticed I’m developing a bit of a shelf back there. My inner critic calls it an ass plateau. Seriously, it’s a fleshy blob that sits right above my crack, like a fanny pack or perhaps my tailbone’s version of a helmet. When I see you I’ll let you rest your drink on it.”

“What’s stopping you from dieting?”

“Sloth? Lack of proper motivation? The new Democratic Congress? Honestly, I don’t know why I’m not doing more, because I’m certainly thinking about it 24/7. Then my mind goes back to a life spent not eating cookies and I wonder why I’d even bother, since life wouldn’t be worth living. The good news is I bought another tanning package, and that’s almost the same as dieting. You know, tanning is the new black.”

I hear an audible gasp from the woman who thought she created an SPF 130 sunscreen by layering SPF 50 over SPF 80. “Yes, and so’s melanoma. What did your doctor suggest? ”

“Don’t know what she suggests yet—I’m not going to see her until late this afternoon. My plan is to have her put me on antianxiety medication because I can’t sleep at night.”

“You’ve still got the insomnia?”

“Yeah, I still feel pretty stressed, but it’s more like free- floating anxiety over financial stuff than episodic. Although the stress is somewhat lower now that I got caught up on my student loans.” Yeah,
you
try to not have a panic attack when the student loan guy tells you he’s going to send the Department of Justice to your house to break your ankles and take your couches and dogs.

Okay, fine, he didn’t exactly do that.

He simply suggested I follow the payment schedule as I’d promised to do in a binding legal document.
²⁶

“Did you use your royalty check?” I hear a muffled banging on the other end of the line. Angie’s either building her own chicken coop or testing her formula for cold fusion.

“I did. Oh, and get this—when I told my mom about finally taking care of this debt, she said,
‘You’re just like that Osama fellow,’
which . . . what? I said I had no idea what she was talking about and she replied,
‘You know, your Illinois senator
—
Senator Osama. When he got his book deal, the first thing he did was pay off his student loans.’
I told her if she couldn’t differentiate between the terrorist
Osama
bin Laden and the Democratic senator Barack
Obama
, she may want to taper back on her 24/7 FOX News viewing.”

“Speaking of your mom, how was Thanksgiving? Did they come up?” Most years, my parents drive to Chicago from their home in Indiana and take us out for a lavish dinner at Lawry’s. We love going there because the restaurant is in Marshall Field’s old private residence and it feels like we’re having dinner at an obscenely wealthy elderly relative’s house. The place is all done up in Christmas decorations and there’s festive music, and everyone’s dressed in their holiday finery—it’s more like a party than a restaurant, and there’s enough pie for everyone! We gorge ourselves on prime rib, creamed corn, and my favorite dessert ever, a chocolate bag filled with fresh berries and mousse.

We started this tradition about ten years ago, after Fletch and I got out of college. We both had entry-level jobs and were required to be at work the day after Thanksgiving, too. My parents would have spent the day with my brother’s family, but we lost them about twelve years ago. Don’t worry—they’re fine. That was the year my mom decided to extend her fat, salt, and sugar moratorium to Thanksgiving. I’m not sure if it was the accidental turkey jerky or the yeast-roll baseballs that dealt the killing blow, but my brother and his wife ran back to her family’s butter-drenched, chocolate-covered celebration in southern Indiana and never looked back. (If they had, they’d have seen a pile of unsalted, unbuttered, untouched carrots.)

Instead of spending Thanksgiving alone or in the car for eight hours, we improvised, and a tradition was born. However, my relationship with my mother can be volatile, and we generally end up missing every third holiday because we’re not speaking to each other, as was the case this year.

“Nope, but my sister-in-law’s family didn’t celebrate until Saturday, and now that my parents and brother live within walking distance of each other, they spent the day together. Since we were here, Fletch decided he’d cook.”

“Uh-oh. Was the fire department involved?”
²⁷

“Not this time. We followed a menu from this guy on Food Network, and it was great.”

Angie’s a budding Martha Stewart, and everything she prepares is delicious, homemade, and perfectly nutritionally balanced. But there’s always a chance she’s hiding a flask and a Nixon-esque Enemies List in her pinafore apron, which is exactly why we’re such good friends. “I love Food Network! Unfortunately, the kids turn up their noses whenever I serve anything even remotely gourmet, so I don’t try too often. Get this—last week James was on a play date and the other kid’s mom fed them SpaghettiOs. James never had them before and he just went crazy! He kept telling the mom,
‘You’ll have to give my mother the recipe for these!’
”

“Stories like that make me reconsider my whole children-are -the-devil stance.”

“Yeah, I imagine I’ll think twice before selling them into white slavery.” I can practically hear Angie smiling through the phone. “Anyway, from what I saw this year, if we hadn’t gone to my grandmother’s house, I’d have done Tyler Florence’s meal.”

“Hey, that’s exactly what we chose! Except I couldn’t get his name right, so for a whole week, I kept telling everyone we were having a Tyler
Durden
Thanksgiving.”
²⁸

“I don’t get it.” With four kids under thirteen, Angie doesn’t see many R-rated movies. For her, it’s pretty much anthropomorphic penguins and Ellen DeGeneres starring as a cartoon fish.

“Not important. All you need to know is, when Fletch and I work together, we do a good job. Our dinner was fantastic, although we used two pounds of butter cooking the turkey alone.”

“If you’re going to do Atkins, that’s not so bad.”

Before I can respond, my caller ID clicks and I glance at the number; it’s my doctor’s office. “Hey, Ang, I’ve got a call on the other line. Can I ping you later?”

“No problem. Have a good day!” Then Angie hangs up for an afternoon of laundry folding . . . or possibly of brokering a lasting peace agreement in the Middle East. You never can tell with her.

Last month when Angie was visiting, we had some of our mutual friends over and the conversation turned to stress management and therapy. By the way, how great is it that mental health is no longer a taboo subject? Ten years ago we’d have never had this conversation.
²⁹
Turned out practically everyone in the room takes some sort of medicine for either depression or anxiety—Paxil, Prozac, Effexor, Zoloft, Valium, Ativan, Xa na x . . . the only side effect seemingly being that suddenly everyone’s a pharmacologist.
³⁰

As we spoke, I began to realize that our systems are struggling more and more to cope with daily stressors, which led me to think about evolution. Since the days of the caveman, our bodies have changed to adapt to their environments. Seems like we should automatically produce more serotonin or endorphins or whatever feel-good juice it is we need to function, but this seems no longer to be the case, hence our need for medical intervention. Then it occurred to me that the problem may be that advances in technology have happened so quickly that we’ve totally lapped the natural progression of human evolution, which just seems . . . wrong.

Finding no plausible solution, I decided
screw it
and had another margarita, quietly noting that I should discuss cake-free methods of stress control with my internist.
³¹

That Monday my doctor put me on a course of Zoloft. At the same time, I came down with a horrible cold
³²
and was out of commission for about two weeks. But even after my symptoms cleared up, I couldn’t shake the fatigue. I barely left the house because even the idea of climbing the stairs to shower was exhausting. I found that I couldn’t sleep at night, but that’s only because I couldn’t get out of bed until noon.

The thing is, I wasn’t stressed or anxious—far from it. Mentally, I felt terrific. It was such a relief to get rid of the constant blathering that goes on in my head, and Fletch remarked about how much calmer
³³
I was. Yet I was sleeping sixteen to eighteen hours a day and I couldn’t figure out why. I even missed a doctor’s appointment because the idea of walking to the corner to get on the bus at the godawful hour of eleven thirty a.m. was too much to bear. Obviously a trip to West Loop Gym was out of the question.

I got up one day at the crack of ten thirty a.m.
³⁴
and promptly fell back asleep on the couch. A few hours later I woke up to the sound of a garbage truck idling in front of my house. The damn thing was parked there for almost an hour, and I could barely hear my TiVoed episode of
Extreme Home Makeover
, or, as Fletch calls it,
The Ty Pennington Paints a Wall and Makes You Cry Show
. I kept looking out the window, thinking
I am vaguely annoyed
.

Then it struck me—when am I ever
vaguely annoyed
? I’m generally a mad-as-hell, want-to-beat-you-with-a-nail-studded -plank, track-you-
and
-your-kids-down kind of annoyed. And where was my bizarre assumption that the truck had been sent by some waste-management goons to harass me? Or that a group of Chechen rebels had stolen it, had packed it with homemade explosives, and were going to destroy a piece of the adjacent expressway as soon as they finished their coffee? I mean, at no point did I even
think
about calling Homeland Security, currently the third preset on my speed dial after Domino’s Pizza and the place that delivers Philly cheesesteaks.

I realized that although I was totally copasetic, some essential element of
me
was missing. I didn’t have the nervous energy making me apeshit crazy, but I also didn’t have the nervous energy making me dash off ten pages at a time about my current obsession.
³⁵

Where the hell
were
my obsessions anyway? I mean, not once since I started taking the pills did I put on camo makeup, lie on my stomach, and stake out the weirdos next door with binoculars. I took big sips of my canned soda, never once worrying I’d choke on a fingertip or a syringe; nor did I cautiously peer inside the toilet before sitting down to make sure there was no alligator inside. What was up with
that
?

It finally dawned on me that the meds were the culprit, and I stopped taking them cold turkey.
³⁶
I figured whatever the withdrawal symptoms might be, they couldn’t be worse than losing the essence of what makes me
me
, however flawed that may be.