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.