to be or not to be (fat)

What a concept--fat pants. Even when I lost 35 lbs during my last WW go round, I never got rid of any clothes. I didn't even think about it. Perhaps there was some underlying message in my not sending my fat pants (and oversized shirts and elastic-shot skirts) packing. Perhaps I knew, deep down, that I would need all those clothes again. And I did.

I have this pair of Carhartts that are the holy grail of my attempts at weight loss. The last time I wore them I was living in Missoula, steps away from the Rattlesnake Wilderness Area, which abuts the Bob Marshall, one of the largest contiguous wilderness areas in the lower 48. I could, literally, walk out my front door, head west for 3 blocks, and hit a trail that wound along Rattlesnake creek and up into the woods. I could hike for days and never see another soul. Every day, my dear (now departed) Sophie and I would take off in the morning and weave our way up the creek--Soph would wade in, take some sips, drag sticks along the bank, while I scanned the treetops for birds, occasionally catching glimpses of osprey and red tail hawk. Physical activity was not a chore; it was a way of life, a part of every day, my solace in a chaotic world.

I have seen the ad of which my blogging partner speaks. I too have been put off by it, angry at the insinuation that true freedom and happiness means flinging your "fat pants" out a window. Bombarded by these kinds of messages daily, its no wonder eating disorders are on the rise in teens, and no wonder that women of all shapes and sizes and persuasions look at themselves in the mirror and see only imperfection, fat, worthlessness. And then there's the fat positive backlash, a trend among certain women who reject the whole notion that they, in all their overweight voluptuousness, are not as beautiful or worthy as Mimi in her size 2 hiphuggers. These women create manifestos --"FAT!SO? calls for revolution. The revolution starts with a simple question: You're fat! So what?" (www.fatso.com) calling for women to rise up against the cultural norm, throw down the gautlet and EAT CAKE. Lots of cake. I look at sites like the aforementioned fatso, and I immediately think "you've got to be kidding me. Certainly you're kidding yourselves. Fat and positive are not words that should appear in the same sentence."

So the question then is, am I just as bad as the Curves ad team that sat around a conference room table and dreamed up the fat pants concept? They recognize that the word FAT, when connected with the body, has entirely negative connotations, and they know that playing on fat fears of the general female population is a sure fire way to bring in the clients. They know that many women would rather eat birdseed than go up a pants size. So they stomp about on the hearts of the fearful, and in the process demonize the struggle that millions of people face daily--the struggle to be healthy, to approach food and eating from a standpoint of subsistance and survival (with a smattering of enjoyment thrown in) and not from a place of desperate, emotion-laden hole-filling.

I'm not fat positive. I don't love this body. But. I need to. I need to figure out a way to say that I am okay no matter what I weigh. I need to look at my naked body in the mirror and not wince. I need to see the stretch marks not as permanent scars that serve as a reminder of my failings but as slight imperfections that further illustrate my unique beauty. (Yeah right). How can I even begin to revolutionize my way of thinking about my body if I don't start from a place of acceptance and love?

That, dear Hamlet, is the question.

the long goodbye

Earlier today I was indulging in one of my favorite guilty pleasures on TV and this add for Curves came on. It was the one with all the women throwing their trousers/jeans out windows and shit and it had the

say goodbye to your fat pants

bit and it got me angry. It got me angry because it's powerful advertising, based in the reality that most of us can't maintain a healthy weight, and will gain back the weight we've lost multiple times.

It's advertising based on my life story, and it makes me feel like a piece of shit. And then, after I'm done with aforementioned piece of shit feeling, I think briefly about the fat pants I've held onto and the ones I've let go, and how saying goodbye to your fat pants is, like so many things we do, simply a gesture towards wellness. It's an idea. It's not our fat pants (or their beckoning comfy waistbands-- wait! Not comfy anymore!) that make us gain (back) weight.

I understand that the weight loss industry is not qualified to help me dig up my shit. There's no way on earth they wanna touch what's underneath my second helping of granola or my lifetime hours (yes, it all adds up) spent standing in front of the refrigerator, seeing if I can find my heart in there (should have checked the crisper!). So the industry is gonna skim the surface, maybe talk about my emotions in the general and not the specific, and it's gonna tell me how to eat healthy. Fair enough. My work is to hold onto all of that. My work is also to recognize when everything else I've ever learned (emotionally and physically [as in on the cellular level]) about food and feelings sneaks in and corrupts this new, balanced way of living I'm trying to embrace. That work, like all the other work I undertake with myself, is longterm (as in lifelong).

There will be an epic, Wagnerian commercial that I make for myself. It will involve an endless loop of me opening the fridge, then opening the window and tossing out some black cloud that I've pulled from my head/heart/ass. Rising out of the one superlatively great aria playing (how Wagnerian is that?), comes my voice:

say goodbye to your fat head

Did I mention the part where I get to wear-- with my girls all pushed up and heaving-- the taffeta gown? Oh, yeah. Fuschia, my power color.

move to build, build to move

I am sore today. Lying in bed this morning, I tried to stretch out my left leg and realized that I couldn’t straighten it all the way because my hamstrings were like taut rope. I spent most of my day yesterday gardening and landscaping—or should I say wall scaping, as I continued to build and rebuild the found object wall that surrounds our garden area.

When I first began constructing the wall, I made one rule: all materials used to construct the low, windy perimeter of the garden must be found, i.e. no money for materials could exchange hands. I love old concrete, the kind made with big colorful rock and pebbles that was used all over this part of Denver when the streets and sidewalks were first laid. I also love broken brick and chipped pavers and chunks of field or flagstone that have been weathered by decades of storm and baked in the Colorado sun. All of these materials, including some random ones that I came across entirely by accident, litter the roadsides just north of my neighborhood in an area where salvage yards and trucking companies and defunct railroad tracks coexist (seemingly) peacefully.

I set out yesterday with my handy work gloves as my sole companion, looking for discarded pieces of rock-esque flotsam to integrate into the wall. I was looking, specifically, for good flat pieces that would serve as the foundation for the southeast corner, which had initially received the short shrift of materials and now, with that section being one of the focal points of the new and improved view from the our remodeled kitchen, was in need of an overhaul. Last summer I’d come across a motherlode of red concrete chunks in a back alley and used those to finish that corner, but those pieces lacked the uniformity I was looking for.

There was an ulterior motive to this search, as well as the subsequent wall de/reconstruction—I was looking for some exercise. There was talk of taking Daisy for a hike, and I thought of a bike ride too, but my back was a little tweaked from Friday’s long stint on the elliptical, and Saturday morning was spent drinking coffee in bed and perusing the Gardener’s Supply catalog, thus precipitating a yearning to be in my own garden. I figured that, between moving heavy pieces of stone and concrete and all the raking and weeding that would ensue, I would get a decent workout somehow.

It was a gorgeous day. I rolled the truck window all the way down and cruised the back alleys north of I-70, winding an area known as Swansea. This too is included in the wide swath of Superfund site designations that came as a result of smelters improperly disposing of their tailings for well over half a century, much of it finding its way into the waters of the South Platte river. (My own neighborhood, Cole, was designated a Superfund site in the early 90s, and many lawns in the area have been mitigated and replaced with sod because higher than normal levels of lead and arsenic were found in the soil. We had our soil tested when we first moved here, and miraculously escaped the bulldozer. Regardless, we plant edibles in raised beds.) The houses in Swansea range from rehabbed Victorians that once had a full view of the Rockies from their grand picture windows to low slung ranches with RV pads taking up half the lot to trailer parks bordering the railroad tracks. It’s a part of Denver many never see. For me, it often means cool shit dumped and forgotten by the side of the road.

I pass three salvage yards with brightly painted 12 ft fences and weave my way through what looks to be a block long receiving dock where semi-trailers awaited their next shipments. Out of the corner of my eye I see a pile of rubble between two trailers on the outskirts of what looks to be a brownfield. I back the truck up between the trailers and go and inspect the pile. It’s just what I’ve been looking for. No sooner have I loaded three rectangular chunks of concrete into my truck bed when a minivan pulls in. I wave, walk toward it. The passenger side window rolls down, and in the driver's seat I see a woman, about 60, wearing a security guard uniform.

“Hey there,” I say.
“What are we up to?” she responds, putting the van into park.
“Well, I was just getting some concrete for my garden,” I say. “Is that alright? I figure it’s just going to sit out here and rot.”
“Yep it will,” she says.
“So it’s okay?”
“Sure.”
“Great. Um, thanks for stopping.”

I go back to the pile, imagining what the woman’s name is. She looks like a Vera, or a Bonnie. I’m actually glad that she stopped because now I didn’t have to worry about pissing off the owners of the property, or some trucker getting my license plate and the cops showing up at my door accusing me of stealing what amounts to someone else’s trash.

The more I look at the piles—there were three out there—the more excited I am. There are concrete blocks that had been faced with beautiful old brick in tones of red and purple, and a few random pieces of flagstone, and a ton of these squat pillar-like pieces that, laid side by side, would create the perfect foundation for the southeast corner. The brick pieces are incredibly heavy, as the block holes had been filled with mortar, and I'm only able to get about 5 of them, but I load as much as I can into the truck bed and slowly zigzag my way home.

The next three hours are spent unloading & stacking the new wall materials, raking out the beds, dissembling sections of the wall and rethinking its construction. I uncover tender iris shoots, baby sweet woodruff leaves like tiny celadon stars, the beginnings of this year’s stonecrop. The allium are up, and the crocus and mini daffodils have bloomed in the front bed. I turn the compost, add more leaves that are still wet from our last snow, and mist the entire pile. Chickadees flit around the refilled feeder. Daisy chases the resident fat squirrel who taunts her from the top of the fence. If I could work like this every day I would, and leave the ellipticals of the world behind.

Who knows how many calories I spent working in the garden yesterday, or how many points it translates to in Weight Watchers terms, and frankly, it doesn’t matter.

So back to the working on the wall I happily go, tight hamstrings and all.

untipping the scales

I call my mother nearly every weekend. I do this because I know it's important to her, and on many levels, to me as well. After many years of strained relations, I've finally found a way to be with her. I won't go into great detail, other than to say that it is, at times, work (and I'll note that it's gotten easier over the past couple of years).

So after our last call, I thought a lot about my mom and her weight, and how, for my entire life, she's struggled.

When we talk about food, she always speaks of it in terms of being "in control" or "eating reasonably." And I realized that, like me, my mom's issues aren't really with food, but herself.

My mother is a binge eater. I know this from our converations, the rare occasions when she talks about trying to avoid "wiping out" a half gallon of ice cream by not letting it into the house.I know this from food she hid around the house, from growing up finding empty cartons and wrappers in the trash.

When my mother and I speak of food, I sense that unlike me, she is not passionate about it. I think that she is more of the FOOD HAPPENS school, and to her credit, perhaps this is the result of raising 4 kids. But when we speak of food, of preparation and eating, it sometimes feels like she's not connected--- either she has no interest, or for her generation (she's in her early 70's) the sensuality raised by food was taboo.

I'm not sure where I'm going with all of this. It saddens me that she has struggled with obesity as long as she has. It scares me that I may face the same struggle. I don't want to. I want to be at peace with myself, physically and mentally.

When I was a kid, a teenager, my mom and I would take these "before" pictures of each other when we got ready to embark on a diet. we dieted together many times. My success or failure was often tied directly to my mother's. As a child who lived to please her parents, I often did well with dieting. But when my mother beckoned me to go off the wagon with her it felt like betrayal-- her betrayal of me in changing course, and my betrayal of her if I didn't follow and eat whatever it was she wanted.

So now, when I am trying again to get to my goal weight, I feel conflict. When I tell my mother that I'm doing weight watchers, her response is one of muted support. There is always, between us, the implication of mother like daughter and daughter like mother-- always the implication that one should do as the other does. We are hundreds of miles apart, and not getting a little nod of approval about my weight loss feels like a slight.

Or so the first impression goes. And so I sit with this a little longer, and I feel all that sorrow-- hers and mine. And I realize that as inextricably tied to my mother as I am, this is my work. And maybe my heart opens to her a little more, to the unfathomable depths of her life, her history, all the things beneath her need to turn to food as solace. These were things that she, unwittingly, taught me. I learned them well. So I take a moment to forgive myself and my mother for doing what we needed to do to survive. I hold a moment of silence. I hold it in reverence to the power of food, the frailty of human beings, and the sense of Balance that resides deep inside all of us.

stalking the elusive b word

I've lost 11 pounds. Frankly, I can't say "since ____" because I don't know. Sometime mid-to-late January I got back on the WW wagon. It's been a bit wobbly for me, and I've had to replace a couple of completely shot wheels, but right now I'm feeling relatively stable.

Balance. Let's call it the B word. I am not intimate with the B word, though I would like to be. I would like the B word to share my bed and know all of my secrets and love me anyway. I would like the B word to ride along in my pocket every day and, if the need should arise, hop up to my shoulder and reassure me that I'm not going to have a pissy fit if faced with food choices that seem overwhelming and trigger the petulant Bacchus in me. But if I approach it this way, than the B word is some external force that is going to swoop in and save me from myself and, let's face it, that t'ain't gonna happen. I need a B word t-shirt. I need a B word tattoo.

Just like the last time I was on this journey, the weight came off relatively quickly in the beginning--hell, I've shocked my system into consistent exercise and almost completely cut out white sugar and flour (well, save for the occasional piece of chocolate and the dessert I indulged in last Saturday) and I've ramped up the veggies and fruit, so it HAS to react somehow. The thing is, just like last time, I'm getting a little obsessive, esp. with the whole exercise thing. I worked out hard Saturday, a little on Sunday, hard on Monday & yesterday, and last night my muscles were screaming. Yes, yes, I know I need to give them a day of rest. Today will be that day. I think.

I woke up this morning--a frigid one at that, gray and snow dusted--and my first thought was "I should go walk Daisy. That will be mellow but at least it's something." Then I stuck my toe out from underneath the covers and felt a blast of cold air and my next thought involved burrowing deeper into our delicious bed and locating the two minute snooze on my alarm clock. (Yep, two minutes--who the hell thinks that constitutes a snooze? Target be damned. I didn't even notice that the cheapo travel clock didn't have a night light until after I'd bought it. Stupid Michael Graves and his cute designs. I can be such an impulse buyer.) Now here I am, two mugs of coffee later, still in my robe, writing. I'm not going out into the cold this morning. I need to rest today. My sinuses are acting up, and I know that I need to just push the water and watch the points and be mellow. But then I think, well, I could bundle up and go walking at lunch today...

Here's the crux of it, I believe: Exercise allows me to beat myself up less if I do slip and eat something, er, questionable. Okay, not questionable--bad. Fat laden. Void of nutrition. I was so hungry before my workout on Monday that I ate a mini Snickers bar just to provide myself with a little fuel. It was the only food I could find in the office. I knew it wasn't much, and that I would burn it off within the next hour, but still, when I took that first bite I almost spit it out. I chewed. Guilt rose in me. My stomach grumbled. I had to work out now. Two bites and it was gone. And I was running to the gym.

So I'm still in search of the elusive B word. I'm working on making consistently better choices food wise so that I don't feel the need to burn at least 700 calories per workout. The voice of my body is becoming more familiar to me instead of some foreign tongue that I can't understand and, consequently, ignore. But it's still barely a whisper, and it still has to rise above the incessant bellowing that is my inner critic, my enemy, my oldest friend. Some friendships aren't worth cultivating, though. I think it's time me and ol' bellow had a little chat about what constitutes a friend.

in the mood

Last night, at dinner (some dijon/yogurt marinated chicken, fingerlings and steamed broccoli-- no wine for me, thanks!), L. and I were talking about how I'm really trying to change my behavior, and I was saying that it had been a hard day because after that lunch out with all my classmates, I really WANTED to eat crap, to do the FOOD AS CELEBRATION thing, and I didn't. Instead, I came home feeling a bit, well, unsatisfied, and got crabby, and had to face that. So I faced it, but I also managed to be a raging ass, implementing a spur-of-the-moment bit of spring cleaning, critiquing her shopping abilities, and god knows what else.

And so she said the following in all sincerity.

I think it would be better for you to eat cake than get bitchy with me.

And it made me stop and think: would it be better? Maybe? No, maybe not. The better thing would be for me to change my perspective on all of this. To pay closer attention to my emotions (if I'm really hungry and need something, for god's sake, eat something). And the bit about spinning out and getting angry, well that's more collateral damage. She doesn't, in her moderate eating patterns, know what it means for me to eat cake. If done in the right context (mindful, balanced, purposeful) it's a beautiful thing. If done out of emptiness (emotional, social, just plain hungry) it's a dry fuck.

Who wants a dry fuck?

fun and froth

I'm all about planning ahead.

Knowing that I was going out for a very fancy meal on Saturday night (as in, top restaurant in Denver fancy; as in, leave your napkin on your seat while you go pee and someone slides by, picks it up, and replaces it with a freshly folded napkin that has been slid off a heavy glass plate by a gloved hand fancy), I hopped on my bike around 11 am and proceeded to invite a heart attack with a ride along the South Platte. I only had about 40 minutes to get in a solid aerobic workout, so I spit and puffed my way along the river and then through downtown, encountering some unexpectedly large inclines on the way. By the time I got home, I was ready for a nap.

Instead I made myself a black bean burrito, ate some yogurt and fed the lion within. I felt good, and strong, but knew I'd also pushed the limits of my current (ahem) athleticism with that ride. I can get a little obsessive sometimes, a little overzealous in my attempt to keep the weight I've already lost from creeping back to that scary area called The Inner Thigh.

That night, dinner was, well, an experience. It's not that the food wasn't good, but it wasn't SUPERB. It wasn't $380 worth of superb. BUT. The company was priceless, and since it was a celebratory evening, I was happy to see/hear that their diver scallops atop carmelized roasted cauliflower was divine. S. had a pan seared barramundi accompanied by horseradish potatoes that were, she confided in me later, barely warm. I indulged in some meat (yes yes, I did) the details of which I will not go into here--suffice it to say that my short rib (one of the accompaniments) with a tamarind glaze was the plate's standout. Even my starter, a crazy nouveau American concoction consisting of scallop filled squid ink ravioli with blanched garlic, roasted pepper preserves and chorizo froth was interesting but not awe-inspiring. Admittedly, I am not impressed (as some must be) by this whole froth craze. I liken it to eating the spittle of a mad lobster, or, in this case, chorizo in a straightjacket. Granted, this culinary trick imparts a subtlety that I appreciate, but the effect is still a little like taking the white residue from skimmed black beans (as they're cooking) and using it to flavor a perfectly orchestrated plate of sweetbreads. Square of animal parts, meet salty charcoal foam. Mmmmm.

Frankly, my favorite part of the whole meal was picking the wines. Rarely do I get to savor such a fantastic (and over the top) wine list. We started with a Russian River Zinfandel, Hartford,“Fanucchi-Wood Road” 2002. One of the people in our party didn't like it, but I attribute that to the complexity of the wine itself--not that she didn't possess a sophisticated palate, but the zin was bigger than most, full of itself, and quite tannic. I thought it was a fine accompaniment to my frothy froth froth. We were most pleased, however, with an Italian Valpolicella Classico, Zenato, Ripassa 2003--really a lovely wine, completely different from the zin but not such a departure that our tongues were screaming for mercy. The sommelier was right on with that bottle, even if his icy demeanor left me a tad chilly.

Dessert was good, not fantastic--my friend, who hails from Florida, swore that the key lime tart was made with previously bottled key lime juice, not true key limes (juice and zest). I was warm from the wine and feeling especially pleased with the evening as a whole, so I didn't worry about it. Juice, zest...whatever. Here was the thing: I was with dear friends and the woman I love, and we were all grown up and eating at an acclaimed restaurant in our fair mile high city. We were giddy with the opulence of it all, and we appreciated every minute of it. Every cent spent, every point over my set points on WW, the muscle-numbing bike ride--it was all so well worth it. There was love, and laughter, and the night was ours.

No matter what, I hope to have nights like this again throughout the course of my life. There is nothing like good food and good company and the way the two can come together to create pure, sumptuous magic.

Now it's back to black bean foam on rice cakes. *sigh*

At least I'm smiling.

collateral damage

this morning I made a little pot of oatmeal, measured my 1 cup out, and left the rest on the stove for the Frau. After she'd served herself, I cruised by the stove and saw that some was left. I scraped at it with a spoon.

Don't you want the rest of this?

No, I'm okay. You can have it.

Then I made my big announcement:

Frau, I am no longer your human garbage disposal!

Poor sweetie. She'd just gotten up, just had a sip of tea and a bite of oatmeal, and then BLAM! the manifesto, in classic fire-sign proclamation-style delivery, complete with hand gestures and the wiping of a cutting board for emphasis.

Good thing she can laugh.

a confession

oops. I drank too much beer this afternoon.

We'd just finished the quarter, and I'd budgeted for one pint, but then I had two. And then I had a couple bites of cake and 2 little pieces of quesadilla and I could be beating myself up over this, but it was a birthday/end of the quarter celebration on St. Patrick's day, and at one point, the whole bar was singing "Sweet Caroline," and for a brief second I felt like I could, quite easily, make out with all my classmates. But I didn't. I had two beers and some food, and I wrote it all down and it's not the end of the world, and it's not cause for celebration, either. Beer and cake are not a way of life. In fact, they've become quite rare, and it felt decadent, over the course of a few hours, to partake, consciously, in these treats. I did not, however, partake in making out, despite the fact that everyone (even the boys) looked so cute to me. I did, however, partake in my March of the Penguins imitation. This involves me dropping my hands at the wrist (as though flippers/wings) and alternating each buttock up and down in my chair as though wiggling an egg into place on top of my non-existent penguin feet. It's actually a nice bit of exercise, and it feels good when you're sitting in one of those captain-style chairs at a big wooden table on the last Friday of the quarter.

food is compelling

There are these moments in cooking school. We had one today.

After Chef was done grading our mystery plates, she announced that we could go back in and clear them, nosh on them-- whatever. We were like this little group of mothers going in to visit our newborns. It was a good opportunity to check what we'd done-- in the frenzy of the 45 minutes or so of creation, things got blurry. The pressure to get the plate out on time made it impossible to really judge it-- taste, appearance, doneness-- for myself. Many of us, feeling the pressure to hit the deadline, didn't check seasoning.

So there I was, inspecting my Mahi Mahi with Ginger-Coconut Beurre Blanc, Aromatic Basmati Pilaf and sauteed Dino Kale. I checked doneness, I rechecked seasoning. As other people sat down and started chawing on their creations, I stood up and took mine away. I offered bites to a couple people-- asked them what they thought of the sauce. It seemed a shame to toss it into the compost, but the bigger shame might be my eating this rich, rich food merely because it was in front of me. Or in celebration of this big stressor being over and done with.

So I tossed it. I tossed it, and I went to my locker, and I pulled out the Pink Lady apple I'd bought a few hours earlier, and I walked back to the hallway outside the kitchen, and I enjoyed this incredible piece of food that was loaded with nothing-- no grade, no self-expression, no frail ego looking for affirmation, no burst of creativity-- nothing other than its essence, its simplicity, its goodness.

I ate it voraciously. I ate it with my emotions, which my creamy, meaty, buttery mystery plate concoction would have soothed and sublimated, close to the surface. The stress that had risen up inside of me needed the crunch of an apple, the skin of it pressing into my gums as I bit deep into it, the intensity of that crisp, juicy flesh. I stood over the garbage can outside the kitchen and I felt bare-- my own frazzled nerves and worn muscles were, once again, a little closer to daylight than I'm used to.

eat the ground

Today, after cooking this final project, the kitchen started to shut down, and there was this kind of flurry of face-stuffing. And so I'm sitting here right now asking myself what it's all about.

part of it is pleasure.
Food tastes and feels good. Good food does so even more. So, this was good food, and that's part of what the flurry was about.

But it's also a kind of grounding ritual. Sure, it was a bit celebratory, as in Whew, that's over, gimme a fry! But it also functioned as a calming activity. It brought people back together, and in some cases, back down from the stress of their position. Or so I think.

I didn't participate fully-- I tasted (as in tiny plastic spoon) a couple things, tried one fry, and called it a day. I drank a lot of water-- that's actually pretty grounding for me. I ate my lunch (one I brought from home) a bit earlier, and that functioned as grounding for me. I was also hungry-- I needed the fuel.

But now I'm wondering how much of my eating (in general, in my life) has been about grounding. When do I feel that urge? When do I partake? I know my tea drinking fits this description-- I often need it to settle down, to transition from one part of my day to the next.

I'm doing it right now. I continue to do it because I consider tea a less harmful vice. And I love the ritual.

My aforeblogged Mac & Cheese was also a ritual, but it was a bit more harmful, and far more checked-out. Peanut butter can be the same way sometimes. But there's no peanut butter here-- not now, not tomorrow, pro'lly not for a long long time...

Let there be bone

I've been thinking about eating disorders. And I've been thinking about how I used to always want one.

In college, it was the thing...eat whatever you want, slip away from the table, shove your pointer and middle finger down your throat and voila! no more food in the gut.

I had a roommate who was bulimic. Erin was an Irish Catholic Bostonian, with curly red-hair who wore pantsuits to keg parties and had an obsession with Clinique make up. She also had a sweet tooth unlike any I had ever seen, and it was not unusual for her to plow through a bag of mint milanos in 2o minutes flat. Seriously.

I guess I was out of the loop, because it wasn't until months into our living together that I realized she was purging her milanos (and anything else that she deemed "evil") in a small blue bucket hidden underneath her bed. I caught her emptying it around 2 am one Saturday after I'd spent the previous five hours building a 32 foot water bong in the neighbor's attic. I was crispy at the edges and wired from smoking too much Meigs county weed, and I must have come in pretty quietly, because Erin was standing in the bathroom in her underwear and a t-shirt, emptying the bucket into the toilet. When she saw me standing at the bathroom door, she let out a little "oh, um...hang on" and shut the door, but not before I saw her red face and not before I smelled something like, well, what it was. Puke.

We never spoke of it, and Erin freaked out at the end of junior year, convinced herself that we were stealing from her and went back to Boston. But my other roommates and I were on to her, and I held a secret hope that Erin had confided her upchuck methodology to one of my other two roommates so I could find out how to do this bulimia thing right.

Truth be told, I'd already tried, numerous times, to make myself puke. I'd used my hand, the handle of a hair brush, my toothbrush, a plastic ruler coated in saran wrap...nothing seemed to work. I gagged a ton, spit up bile, scratched the hell out of the back of my throat, and generally irritated myself. I even tried laxatives once, but that was not pretty. I am a pretty regular person, bowel movement speaking, and laxatives caused my body to go into full revolt. I cramped for two days, shit every half hour, and firmly believed that I was going to lose an intestine to ex-lax.

No matter what I tried, my body smiply refused to give up the goods. I could just hear my stubborn stomach, could see the smirk on its face: nope, no way, noooo, not gonna give in, not gonna push this greasy mass of rueben back up the esophagus, no way no how. Besides, toothbrushes are for brushing your teeth, dumbass. What a lovely, cooperative body I had.

But this is not something to laugh about, I know. Eating disorders kill people. Bulimia is a horrific, devastating disease. I'm not being flip about any of it...I'm just amazed when I look back and see the lengths I was willing to go to just to look like everyone else. If I was thin, life would be perfect. Guys would like me, girls would envy me, my parents would love me. What a heaping load of generalizations. Ahem.

I'm glad that my stomach staged a sit-in. I'm glad I didn't start down a road that would have led me to certain sadness and incomprehensible pain. I can't say that I don't still wish for the magic bullet, the pill that will melt this fat from my body...there are times I'm damned near hysterical at the unfairness of it all. Some people can eat whatever they want and never gain weight. Some people become skeletons because they fear fat so much that they'd rather die than let it hang from their frame. I'm somewhere in the middle: the overweight woman who yearns to eat anything she wants but can't because genetics (and age & the foodie flu) are working against her...the overweight woman who has this weirdly anorexic mindset that causes her to wonder if she'll ever be able to look in the mirror and see herself clearly. I swear every mirror I look in has been switched out by some cruel circus elf and I'm left looking like my legs have been chopped off at the knees and my chin is really a massive goiter. Oh, my.

Where once there was flesh, let there be bone. Where once there was no mercy, let their be forgiveness, acceptance, something close to love.

Linear Progression be damned

To be stared at and not seen. To be heard and not listened to at all.

This notion of invisibility. Paradoxes. I will jump from here, wade deep into a different kind of mire.

There have been times when I would walk into a room full of people and yearn for their heads to turn. Many times those heads did turn, and I was startlingly aware of my need, in that moment, to disappear. What I thought I needed was what I was, in fact, the most terrified of. A glace was acceptable; a stare was not. Glances meant the seer simply read the surface, but did not attempt to see what was beneath. A stare meant that I was being read, analyzed, and the obvious-to-me imperfections were made visible: lump of stomach, droop of chin, mountainous breasts. If I thought someone looked too long, too much, I would excuse myself, hide in the bathroom, where I'd either a) shut myself in a stall with my legs propped up on the door, close my eyes and pretend I was on another planet or b) pick blackheads in the mirror (some vain attempt at purging my body of toxins) followed by chin exercises, or I'd ditch the bathroom altogether and sneak out to the car, smoke a little reefer, and perform my handy trick of inciting distance, the smoking bullet that kills self-consciousness with one puff. I could reenter the room then, high, floating above myself, and the stares just bounced off me. I was invincible, untouchable.

So perhaps its about layers, again, a metaphor that has served me well lately. The layers of familiarity, the getting-to-know-me layers. Meet me once, know that layer which is seen by all, the self-confident, self-effacing, silly, intellectual self that will, of course, dazzle you with insights and cut through bullshit like a Misono knife through tofu. Hang with me a few times and you get more of the same, perhaps learn of my weaknesses for tortilla chips, guacamole, single malt scotch, full fat plain yogurt and chile rellenos, as well as my disdain for GWB, suburbs, SUV's, bad grammar, condescension, fast food and James Dobson. If we should hit it off, however, and a true kinship develops, there will come a time when we talk of hatred of the body, the spiritual vaccuousness of the world, materialism...we will plumb the depths of our psychic black holes, our longing, our addictions, the wrath of war, the solace of writing. And, right alongside all this deep shit, we will find the clear, crystalline waters of humor and there we will wallow willingly, soak ourselves until every digit resembles a raisin and we've pulled a stomach muscle from laughing so hard.

It's kinda like first base, second base, third base, but with no sex involved. Intimacy, in my life, has best been achieved when sex is out of the picture completely. My tendency to disassociate during physical intimacy makes non-physical intimacy all that much more powerful. My words do not disassociate, they do not fly above my body and perform when called upon.

Familiarity breeds contempt, no? The more weight we shed, the more we are forced to examine what lies beneath the excess. There is no denying that such an examination can push us right back over the edge and into the buffet line. Talk about paradoxical.



Trigger

“Believe you and I sing tiny
and wise and could if we had to eat stone and go on.”
-Richard Hugo

Hugo, you resemble my father
in all the wrong ways,
especially in photos taken around ’82
when you preferred half-gallons of ice cream
washed down with booze and always
a lit cigarette pinched between your knuckles
as you wrote poems on a yellow legal pad
just like the ones Dad brought home
from the office. You mirror one another’s
shirt-gapped girth and balding pate,
identical comb over, matching undershirt.

I've read that excessive weight on the body’s
frame is really insulation from years of self-
admonition sprinkled like salt over that which moves
from hand to fork to mouth then collects in the gut
until it spills over and coheres into fold upon fold
of flesh, one layer then another then finally enough
to keep the stench contained. Too many definitions of ache
swallowed whole, skin, seeds, stone and all.

I never knew him, but perhaps it was my
grandfather that set my own father on the road
to acknowledging as little feeling as possible,
or maybe it was the man who offered my father
a ride home from football practice and touched him
in a way that men were not to touch other men.
Whatever the reason my father chose
to wrap himself in fat and fear, I cannot say.
Just look at me now, Hugo, hiding in this kitchen,
staring at your picture with pie on my chin. An errant
cherry bleeds on the floor. I tap the crust and it gives way.



Try as I might, I cannot carry on the legacy of fat and fear. I look inwardly and then take the blows because I have chosen this path, chosen to quiet the voices of self-admonition long enough to hear what rumbles deep in my personal mine shaft. My face is black with fear and self loathing. I am painfully aware, painfully seeing it all and I'm hungry to boot. But there is no other option.

I must learn to be different in a way that I was not before. What does this mean, exactly? Where did the safe place go? The ticket said "food provided" but all I see is rice cakes and rabbit food. The light is diminishing. I hear coughing in the distance, the faint mewing of kittens.

Whereas my reaction to someone thinking (or me thinking that this is what these people are thinking) that I am overweight and lazy might be one of ~fuck you I'm beautiful~, there's a deeper response, something far less provocative and far more damaging: it is the self that nods in silent agreement and the damning voice that follows--the See, Everyone Thinks You're Fat. In globalizing, I back myself up. I say, see, I was right. I am disgusting. The whole world thinks so. I cement the notion that I have held so dear for so long (the Why is not called into question, but I know Why, I understand, at least to some extent, why I have grown to "accept" this fat prison) that I am worthless and weak. So I have to zoom in from the global to the local, like clicking the toggle on a mapquest map and going from viewing a whole state to viewing one, single highway. The blue highway (thank you Least-Heat Moon) wriggling through the middle of nowhere is my highway--not oft' traveled but guaranteed scenic, the ride of a lifetime. I have to do this weight lost (something I never again wish to find, those same #'s on the scale as when I began this journey) one trip at a time, one day at a time, one moment at a time. I can't think about what I will eat next, just what I won't eat NOW.

So much for thoughts on invisibility.

big invisible me

It's a great paradox: taking up more space and becoming invisible.

I think about this in terms of culture and self. As fat people, we are seen, then ignored. I think it's a repulsion thing. A turning away. As though looking at us too long will turn the viewer into us. There are undertones of politeness strewn in-- as in, don't look at the person with the deformity, don't draw attention. This may read like oversimplification. Maybe it is. But then it goes deeper. I don't know that we are seen as being as human as fit people. We don't look familiar, like the signifier (forgive my deconstructionist tone here) of a human. We're not the drawing, the textbook representation, the image from the 3rd grade photostrip. We are, in our own way, Frankenstein. Off the slab of childhood, of culture gone decadently mad, of familial dysfunction and comfort where we can find it. We amble through life awkwardly at times, not because we aren't capable, but rather, we are encumbered.

I'll drop the we, because it's getting patronizing, I fear.

I've walked through life encumbered with this coping mechanism, and to some extent, a series of beliefs about my own capabilities. Some of these I learned early on, and I'm not gonna say I was traumatized by Junior High Gym class, but as a fat kid, there were things I couldn't do. No hurdles. No climbing up the rope. No running "cross country" in anything under 11 minutes. No gold shorts in the President's Fitness Challenge every year. But I could throw and I could kick. So I tried to take pride in those things, but right underneath was this knowledge that there were all these other things I wasn't so great at. Sure, I was an A student. I knew I had smarts, but I believe that knowledge of my athletical abilities-- my sense of a physical self-- was already nagging at me.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, and I've been lucky enough to have a few experiences that have shown me my physical capabilities. It's just that there is a way where I want so hard to not be in the way. I still feel it. If someone is pushing a cart past in practicum, and I suck in my gut and scootch in as hard a possible, and they still graze me as they pass, there's this cringe that has to do with it all being my fault. Nevermind the tiny space we're working in. It's a feeling of always being in the way. It's hard to shake. I don't know that folks who've been thin/average their whole lives carry this.

There's another element of the invisibility. It's a way to be dismissed. To be seen as incapable, as undisciplined (these are, afterall, the big beliefs), as genderless, harmless, I don't know what else. I've been stuck here, and I've hidden here. It's kept me from change (bad change, bad) and it's held me in my own little cocoon and kept me feeling safe (and warm, yes warm). It's also left me fucking depressed, because I've bought into all those misconceptions and beliefs. I've seen myself through the eyes of this culture and I'm gonna say it right now: I've despised myself.

This is starting to feel like a Sunday confessional. It's not. So in the interest of winding things up and moving out and into my day, I'll tell you that I'm armed with this information. I'm watching it. I'm asking myself how I comply with it, and how I'm gonna shake it up, and off, and move further out into the world.

Here I go.

oh, the stigma(ta)

Today, on the bus ride home, I was pondering why I feel compelled to come out to people around the whole Weight Watchers thing. I think I tell them so there's no place to hide. If they know, and then I do something rash (read: eat a plate of fritters), I might feel ashamed. But then again, I feel this shame at needing to watch what I eat, and being where I am. It's one of those glorious double binds: damned do, damned don't, you know the drill.

I guess what people don't know, and what I am only starting to discover, is my own long history with all of this-- the shame, the powerlessness,the hope and disappointment and the hope again.

At some point, I was a teenager, a fat teenager, and I went on a diet (it wasn't a bad word to me then), and maybe it was the Richard Simmons plan and I had a giant Queen poster in my bedroom (and how gay is all of that) and I dreamt that one day, I would be thin, and wear overalls, and ride a green schwinn 10-speed. And I had this picture in my head, of how good life would be then, and yet the day never came. Sure, I got thinner and then I got fatter and again and again.

I don't need the overalls now. I'd maybe take the bike. But what I want, more than anything, is to find a way to be that's healthy, that I can maintain-- longterm. I don't wanna succumb to my own survival/coping mechanisms, which were laid in place so long ago, and have proven time and again, that they really don't work for me.

But sometimes, this business of remaining conscious, of not numbing it all with food, it makes me itchy all over. It feels like my skin is gone, and I'm all flesh and sinew in the wind (or today, rain). There are times when it's nearly unbearable-- and others, it's amazing. It's better than drugs (or the food that might take the buzz away). So maybe that's the duality of this new way of being I'm trying to make my own. Blake said "Without Contraries is no Progression." For now, I'm sticking with the wisdom of Billy Boy.

Guilt (Reuptake)

There are extremes. Extremes of temperament, weather, temperature. The extremes that are my parents.

My mother was the child of a school-teaching divorcee in New Madison, Ohio. My mother’s father claimed that he left the marriage because he couldn’t bear the responsibility of having children, but then he went and married a woman in Indiana with four kids. My maternal grandmother, now 94, remarried when my mother was in high school, and had another son the year my mother graduated from college. Her step dad was a son of a bitch, a Germanic decorated war veteran with emphysema who cursed like the sailor he was and dropped dead of a heart attack in his garage when I was 16. One too many whiskies will elicit from my grandmother the story of how she and Paul got it on the night before he died, and that their hot action was probably one of the things that contributed to his weakened coronary state. Buzz or no buzz, it’s no picnic listening to your grandmother talk about her sex life.

The last time I saw Paul, I was 10, and my mother and I were driving to Dayton from our home in Canton—we’d left on a Friday afternoon, after school, and by the time we made it to Columbus, I was complaining of an empty, very grumbly stomach. Mom figured that Paul was cooking something and fully expected us to eat when we got there, but by then it would be at least 8 p.m., so she relented, pulled into a fast food joint, and ordered me some greasy grub.

We pull into the driveway on Elsmere Avenue around 8:30, and before we’re even out of the car we smell food wafting from the open kitchen window. Don’t tell him we stopped, Mom says to me. I’ll tell him if we have to. Minutes later, Paul asks my mother if we’re hungry and she responds by telling him that she stopped to get me something to eat because I wouldn’t stop whining. I’ll eat, she says.

Paul will have none of it. He flies off into a rage, screams obscenities at my mother: why the fuck do I even bother, he says, you’d rather eat shit than my cooking. The swinging saloon-like doors between the kitchen and dining room shield me from a direct view of the argument. I stand with my feet tightly together, toes flush with the wall, fingers curled tight around the door trim, and lean my body far to the right so as to peek through the space where the doors meet. This is not easy to do without making the doors move, I might add. My mother yells at Paul from one end of the kitchen, and Paul stands on the other side, his back to the stove. My grandmother stands between them. Paul rants about my father, calls him names I’ve never heard, says that my Dad didn’t come on the trip because he thinks he’s above coming to Dayton. At one point, my mother gets right up in to Paul’s face—he’s about 6’2, she a good foot shorter—and spits the words what did I ever do to you?! right in his face. Paul’s response, besides shut the hell up, is to push my mother, hard, back across the kitchen, where she falls against the counter and slumps to the floor, sobbing.

It was all I can do not to push through those swinging doors, grab Paul by the adam’s apple and rip his guts out through his larynx. Instead, I run. Up the stairs, at the top of which sits an antique dresser and, atop that, an 8 x 10 framed photo of my father, the one where he still has the big mole under his nose (the same mole that would sprout in the same place on my face just a year later). With one swift move I take the picture, open the bottom drawer and stuff my father under layers of hand towels. Then I run into my uncle Barry's room and lock the door. In that moment, with the voices beneath me still rising…then falling…then a door slam…then a car starting…in that moment I swore that I would never again return to that house. And I never did, until Paul’s funeral.

What rises in me while writing these words is not anger at Paul for being such an asshole to my mother, or for keeping my grandmother under lock and key for the whole duration of their marriage. What floods my receptors is guilt. Had I not acted like such a starving whiney twit, we wouldn’t have stopped at McDonald’s or Burger Chef or wherever the hell we stopped, and then we wouldn’t have eaten, and when we arrived on Elsmere Avenue, we would have exchanged pleasantries then sat down to Paul’s cooking. There would have been no bodily contortions, no straining to witness the final blows between my mother and her step father, no ugly words, no bodily harm, no hiding my father in a dresser drawer. If only I’d believed my mother when she said it would be better if we waited. I could not wait. I could never ever ever wait.

Growl

So I am officially venting. And perhaps by doing this, I will uncover the true source of my annoyance right now, i.e. why I feel like telling the world (and Weight Watchers) to go fuck themselves.

When I was younger, the punishment rarely fit the crime. At age 11, I was grounded for three weeks for saying the world "damn" to a teacher who benched me during kickball. "Go sit on the bench," he said. "I don't want to sit on the damn bench," I replied. By the time I got home, the bastard had called my mother and told her about the incident and I was in deep doodoo. Three weeks, no phone, t.v. or outings.

The thing was, I knew I had been a mouthy little twerp. Had my parents chosen to talk my reaction through with me, I could have expressed to them my disappointment in myself. I also could have relayed to them why I had been asked to sit on the bench. The details are hazy now, but it had something to do with being called out when I believed I was safe, and how bummed I was when I was told that I was, indeed, out. I argued. It's what I knew to do. It's the family way. Arguing did not go far with my teacher, however. I was told to sit on the bench. My mouth, then, got the best of me.

It has always been thus--girl with wickedly advanced vocabulary (for her age) gets pissed and a stream of invectives pours from her mouth. So damn isn't polysyllabic, but I remember being awfully fond of bombastic and magnanimous when I was a fourth grader. I relished those contexts in which I could pepper my language with words I'd only read or overheard then looked up in my family's gigantica oxford unabridged.

Today I confessed to some slippage behaviors on the WW boards. One person in particular decided that it was time to be "stern" with me because I was talking of cheese eating (ooo the full fat kind!) and had mentioned something about maybe taking a day off a week, a la body for life, just to see how that goes. Truth be told, I know exactly how it would go...poorly. To shit. Down hill. But I posted it anyway, just to see what others thought. And in return, I got "It's time to get serious because I know you want this."

Wait. Wait wait wait. Serious? Time to get WHAT? I AM serious. Inner dialogue with poster: I am bigger than you have ever been. You have no idea how hard it's been to even get here. The shame I carry. The weight of history and genetics. The depression battle. The life long illnesses. The abuse. The addictions. Wait. Am I still not worthy?

Pity is a stupid emotion, but I'm in the wellspring of it now. It's pouring from every orifice. Serious? If only I could mic my daily inner hate monger and then you'd see serious. There's not a shred of laughter tucked within this fold of belly, no skein of self-love that will suddenly appear to hoist me from this fat bitch. I've been eviscerated for years and now it's all just rot--some days, I can't even stand the smell of myself.

I eat that cheese and that cracker and a little more of me is lost to rot. I feel the dried parts dropping away. My heart gets harder, shows signs of breaking. Long ago, a stiff wind blew through and my lungs were carried far far afield. These hands--they type all day, every day, and yet they are not nimble enough to sew me back together, not strong enough to carry hope for as long as it takes to be whole again.

Yeah, maybe I'm not serious. Maybe, in the final analysis, there's just not enough left to save.

mac-n-sneeze (or, my intention was not to write about sex)

Okay, two things here in this limited space of time I have on this lovely Friday during which I have to crank out so much work that I'm feeling a little like orchestrating my own prison break. It's just too gorgeous outside and I'm cagey in here--all I have to do is turn around in my chair and I've got a snapshot view of the downtown skyline and the hazy mountains rising behind it. Ah, a little relief for my wayfaring soul--looks like the air quality in the mile high city leaves something to be desired today. Perhaps the wind will pick up and blow that nastone-ness out on to the plains.

So I heard from a couple of people that my blog yesterday came across as sexual, mostly because of the line about getting Hot Doc's number. What? I thought I was being silly, maybe funny, but there is nothing sexual about hoisting oneself onto a cold examination table and having one's feet placed in stirrups, legs wide open. So the doc was hot. I had to call her something. So we got her number. It's not like I've called her, or have even contemplated it. Did a red flag not raise--indicating that this was not a tawdry moment during which I seized the opportunity to pick up Hot Doc--when I spoke of my chilly vagina?

And this thought: how easy it is for me to speak of these things, to assign words to the parts of my body that ordinarily go unacknowledged and damn near ignored...is it in the saying that I roust them from their deep slumber? Is this one of the steps toward my embodiment or just another way to create distance? The modifier and the modified. Or mollified, as the case often is, anything to soothe this seething that churns and burns beneath the barely-there differentiating membrane. My protection from, well, everything.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I, too, was a whole-box eater of mac-n-cheese. I will admit to a degree of snobbery here, too, as I refused to eat any generic versions of the stuff. Like my cohort-in-blogland, I cannot make the stuff now and think that I will have one "serving". One serving = one box. I would make mine with tons of black pepper, and always sneezed as I cranked the grinder ten, eleven times over the saucepan of orange goodliness. Rarely was this stuff allowed in my parents house--instead, I ate it almost exclusively at my family's cottage in Ontario, Canada, in the Kawarthas. I was raised a cottager, and often spent two month long spans there in my youth. Long days lolling on the dock were punctuated by my sneaking up to the cottage and making myself a box of kraft mac. I recall a couple of times when my sister ribbed me hard for eating a whole box. I recall how easy it was to eat a whole box. I also remember hiding out down by the frog pond, my trusty tupperware full o'mac and cheese tucked securely under my arm then opened like a treasure box in the diffuse light of an lake country afternoon--the slow and deliberate savoring of my treasure made possible by spearing each little log of pasta with the tines of my plastic fork. My best friend in the whole world, Fullness, sat beside me, cheering me on.

the orange devil and all my monsters

I am about to head out to school. I now get off the bus a bit earlier (to add a little more truckin' time to my day), and when I do, I step onto the sidewalk just outside the HOSTESS CAKE plant. So yesterday, as I was walking by said sugar bomb factory, I took a little whiff, and it made me remember how I coveted those evil apple pies, and how I could suck down one in no time flat and be wanting another, and I'd like to say that this was during an isolated period in my life, but it really wasn't, and as I now know that those cakes are really quite crappy, I don't think the sucking was about savoring their fruity or buttery or floury goodness, but rather, trying to patch some hole that had formed-- that's hostess fruit pie as fix-a-flat, only non-aerosol and possibly more environmentally friendly and not the kind of thing you keep in the trunk of your car for years just waiting to use. No way.

So the thought of those pies (apple, berry) got me thinking about all the summer lunches lost to Kraft Mac'n'Cheese. And that was definitely my teenage years. And I could easily kill a whole box and I'd like to blame the fact that I grew up with brothers who could put away a lot of food, or the fact that my mom didn't let us eat much junk, but that gooey orange cheeze (how else can we spell it?) wasn't really food. It was a salve for my scabby teenage soul. That stuff, it was a salve, and it was a sedative, and those quick lunches -- odd, how I could suck it down so much faster than I could make it-- soothed me, even if they left me tired and greasy inside.

If I were to build my wall of pain, my tribute to teenage angst and the discomfort of coming into consciousness of the World and the secrets of my family, and my own lack of control of my home surroundings, it would be constructed entirely of Kraft (and generic brand) Macaroni and Cheese boxes. And it would be built like a house of cards all around my teenage me.

I can't eat that stuff anymore. Not even the organic, non-gmo, non-food colored stuff. I can't go there.

Back in the saddle again

First, a little sign of spring for my dear stiney b.

Second, I got back on my bike again today.

For those of you who don't know (yeah, like I have an actual audience here in cyberland, like I'm not jostling for position with about a million other blogs), I had a little accident about a month ago wherein I wiped out pretty hard (avoiding a collision with a 3/4 ton pick up whose driver was blinded by afternoon sun, or whose driver just wanted to hit me--I like to think it was the former) and nailed my crotch on the crossbar. Flash forward three hours and I'm laying on my bed with no pants on, allowing my dear sweet love, S. (bless her sweet soul) to pry apart my labial lips and inspect the place from whence blood was coming...and then there we were, driving 30 minutes to an after hours care place on a Sunday evening, Superbowl Sunday no less (good thing, since traffic was virtually non existant), just so I could have a nurse and then a doc and then another nurse inspect my vagina and its outerbanks.

Turns out I'd lacerated my labia, about a 1/2 inch or so, "clean" they said (I guess it didn't have any jagged edges and looked like a bubble had popped open) and there was talk of sutures. I said Helll No.

"The only thing that will hurt is the lidocaine," said the Hot Doctor.
"You're going to give me a shot down there?" I replied. I could feel my lunch burrito rising from my stomach up my esophagus. "No way."
"We might be able to just let it heal," Hot Doc says.

S. and I had seen kids in the waiting room, mostly with flu like symptoms, but one kid had a bad cut on his forehead and they'd used glue to mend it.

So my partner chimes in, rather meekly, "Can you use that glue?"
Hot Doc chuckles. "We don't usually use that on mucous membranes. I think it's either we stitch it or leave it alone. Let me go grab the other doc on call and see what she thinks."
I must be staring at her blankly, because then she says "You okay with having someone else look at you?"
Oh no! The more the merrier! I'm as fresh as a daisy! (I still want to puke.)
"No, that's fine," I say.
Hot Doc leaves, and I look at S.with wide eyes.
"I'm NOT getting a shot. The thought of it is making me nauseous," I say.
"I know, I know...I wish they could use the glue," she says.
We wait for 10 minutes. I am sighing heavily. My vagina is chilly.
Hot Doc comes back.
"Well, I called the ob/gyn on call and he said we have two options," she says.
I imagine the OB/Gyn on call sitting in his living room, beer in hand, munching on nachos and yelling at his t.v. as Seattle gives away another first down. I am pleased by this thought, if only because I love the Steelers and the Seahawks can kiss my overly-exposed ass.
Hot Doc continues. "We can either let it heal...I mean, let's face it, you've got a self-cleaning oven down there...or we can glue it!"
"Really??!" squeals S.
"Yup. It might not hold too long, but we just want to give it a healing head-start."
"Cool," I say, taking in a deep breath and letting all the shot-in-the-cooch anxiety drain out of me.
Nurse comes in and together she and Hot Doc get their glue on. Get my glue on. Apply glue, hold.
"Don't sit up right away," says Hot Doc. "I want to give this a chance to dry a bit."
"No problem," I say.
Soon, Hot Doc and S.and I are chattering on about rammed earth homes and wind power and how Hot Doc wants to build a rammed earth home but can't find a builder/firm in Colorado that does it, and S. mentions that she might know people, and I say that I know people in Montana, and the next thing I know, Hot Doc is handing S. her card with her personal info on it.
Oooooo, we have Hot Doc's #.

Walking out to the car, sloooooowly, I might add, it feels like there's a little pinto bean nestled between my lips. Not mouth lips--the other kind. I take little steps. I'm like those daddy emperor penguins that are trying to move without allowing the egg to drop from the pouch of warmth on their feet onto the murderously cold ice. I fear that if I spread my legs too far, open my stride, the glue will come unglued and my laceration will ooze.

I am happy to report that the glue lasted, oh, about five days or so, and several days after that I was back to normal. But I didn't get back on a bike for almost three weeks because I wanted to give myself time to heal. Today, I got back on that bike and rode to a local art gallery/framing place. It was a short ride, just about a half and hour, and I had forgotten how badly I wrenched my handlebars when I crashed, but now that one of my handles is higher that the other, I can be more upright on my bike.

It was great to ride again. And I am happy to report that my labia has fully recovered.

cut to the bay area, circa 1995. Our heroine, in grey sweat pants and white T-shirt, loses a girlfriend but finds something more

I'm not big on gyms. Maybe it's that smell. Ooh, ooh, that smell. Maybe it comes from years of being overweight and so self conscious about my body that i couldn't even be seen in the place where I was supposed to be getting healthier. Doesn't make sense? Well, once upon a time they called them "Health Clubs" -- how alientating was that? The way I made it back into the gym was by joining a gym that had ALL kinds of people going to it. It was back in Richmond, CA-- the YMCA-- and I'd be on the treadmill next to big ol' black ladies and hunched over Chinese guys and all kinds of uber-fit teenagers, acne and all. We were beautiful in our imperfection, in our not fitting the media norm of what "healthy" looked like. So that's where it started (and back then I was in one of my more pronounced FOOD=LOVE/SEX relationships-- but that's another story), and soon came the end of a relationship, and I got more into working out, and I started in at World Gym in San Francisco, because I got a discount through the produce warehouse where I worked. And that gym was more like the gyms I'd imagined and feared-- a lot of really fit people (many of whom just happened to be gay guys) in workout wear that would have broken my bank, and personal trainers with a whole lotta attitude (and combat boots-- did I mention the combat boots?), and lots of TVs going, and mucho man-sweat en la silla, and maybe some exotic dancers doing a whole lotta toning, and a little snack bar chock full o' supplements and just when I couldn't stand it anymore, in walked this personal trainer who did not look like all the other personal trainers, and her clients, who didn't look like anyone else at the gym, and all of a sudden, I was empowered again.
It made me realize how much courage it takes for those of us who don't fit the "fit" mold to make that kind of change-- to step into a gym, or out onto the street/sidewalk/multi-use-path and build that relationship with our bodies. I never had a session with her (dear reader, I must admit that I had a wicked as in whincy, whincy, squeezing my own thighs tight crush on her), but I took such encouragement, and that sense of capability, though it may have waned at times,has never left me.

I've been considering putting in some time at the school gym. Mainly weights, maybe some rowing. I take pride in the fact that I've found a lifestyle with a certain amount of activity (cycling, walking) built in. I enjoy working exercise into my everyday routine, and I like that when I walk up Denny Way in the morning I'm getting to school AND clearing my mind AND getting my exercise AND doing my bit to clean the air. I'm also taking in all those sounds, sights, and smells that tell me how the seasons are changing. So it's a gift.

But that gym smell, it's another kind of gift. And it sure can bring back fond memories...

Ah, love and food. (I'll leave the sex out for now.)

Let's pan out for a minute, or should I say pan back, and explore the genesis of this complicated marriage.

We always ate supper together. Supper, not dinner. Dinner, in my father's parlance, was actually lunch. He is, at heart, a farm boy, who spent his formative years on a small farm in Mt. Pleasant, Ohio. I have never seen the place, but he has mentioned that it was quite idyllic--fruit trees, a few animals, lovely view. When I asked once where it was and expressed interest in seeing the place, Dad bristled, said it was a dump now. So much for revisiting family history.
What my mother cooked for supper changed over the years. We were raised on classic American cuisine, but each dish had a flair all its own. Spaghetti sauce made with ground beef, seasoned heavily with thyme and oregano, and cooked all day. My Grandmother's mac'n'cheese recipe, which had nothing to do with a roux or cheese sauce, but was constructed from layers of macaroni and shredded colby-jack and then flooded with milk (until you could see it coming up the sides) and topped with bread crumbs. Bake for one hour. Fucking nirvana in a casserole dish. Linguini with white clam sauce, a family staple. Lots and lots of lamb. My family was big on lamb, even moreso than beef. Leftovers were curried, made into sandwiches, or, in the case of my famously frugal-with-food mother, mixed all together (especially with that night's salad) and eaten while cleaning the kitchen, post-dinner.

AH! An epiphany. When I take the dishes into the kitchen post-dinner, I literally have to run out of the room or I'm hiding in the corner, scarfing down whatever is on the counters, on the stove...I'm grabbing a handful of pasta and dragging it through the leftover sauce in the pan, sprinkling that with parm crumbs on the chopping block and shoving it all in my mouth as the tomato juice slides down my stuffing hand and my chin. And then I'm doing it again. And again. I'm wondering if my lover in the next room is thinking about how quiet it is in in the kitchen. I bang a pot or two, run the water for effect and wash off my now sauce-covered mouth. It's official: I am my mother's daughter.

As the years wore on and my parent's love of cooking grew (today they have a collection of cookboooks that numbers in the hundreds), so too did my father's girth. He was always a large man, but by the time I graduated college, he was officially grossly obese. His dress shirts gapped at the buttons. XXXL was (barely) his size. He ate three, four portions at dinner, and, always the bread eater, slathered a quarter stick of butter+ on his bread every night.

But I get ahead of myself. I'm trying to tease out when I started realizing that food=love. I suppose my mother's faithfulness to keeping my father sated had something to do with it. The look on his face when she baked him that rare apple pie. Surely that was love. How my father once blamed my mother for his weight by saying that it was because she didn't get up and make him breakfast every morning. So, of course, she started making him breakfast every morning. And he was still fat. How every birthday, we got to pick a meal: my sister's was usually bbq, mine ran the gamut from my mother's chicken cacciatore to shrimp pasta with lemon cream. (Oh no, no fat in THAT.) My brother? I have no idea. I can only recall what he hated, food wise--eggs were a big one. And brussel sprouts. Surely it was love that made our parents want to celebrate our birthdays by pigging out on whatever our hearts desired. I mean, doesn't everyone do that?

But here was the rub: my father was merciless with his commentary about how we looked, what we ate, what we drank...for kids who didn't know what a hypocrite was but had an inkling of what it looked like (fat, balding, lumbering through life on rotting knees), his brand of hypocrisy was like an oil well percolating underground until, come the teen years, a geyser of resentment erupted in us that stuck to everything, everything. I can still recall isolated incidents from our childhoods that illustrate perfectly this wicked, painful double standard. Being yelled at for drinking too much grape juice and not enough water. Icy stares as I go back for more marshmallows to put in my cocoa. My brother, in the sole conversation that he's had with me about this, recounts a foggy story of eating ice cream--he remembers only that my father hit the bowl out of his hand , saying "you don't need that."

"The only thing I remember, really," said my brother, his voice dropping to an almost child-like tone, "was the sound of the bowl hitting the sink and what the ice cream looked like."

My sister won't talk about it, but I remember my father chiding her, telling her that she needed "that second helping like she needed a hole in the head." To this day, she's the only one who can call my father out when he's eating too much, when he needs that fourth helping like he needs a hole in the head.

"Isn’t it wrong, the way the mind moves back," wrote Richard Hugo in "The Freaks at Spurgin Road Field".

I take great liberties here and amend that line to this: Isn't it wrong, the way the mind moves for fat.