Eating

Do you want to know how many calories are in a slice of American cheese? The ten-year-old version of me will tell you it’s about one hundred, maybe a little more or less depending on the brand and the weight. By the time I was at that age, I knew how many calories almost everything I regularly ate had. I knew whether I was at dinner or lunch or in between, on my own. By that time, I’d bought into or, more to the point, succumbed to the unwritten and unspoken law of my home; only thin people are good people. My Mom never uttered these words. She never sat me down and talked about my weight. It’s hard to even voice this without feeling like I’m betraying her, but she was motivated by what she thought would make me the happiest and for her, it was being thin.

              And I was always a fat kid.

              I remember standing in front of the kitchen sink with a pack of hotdogs in my hand, trying to read the small print that would tell me how much sin, or calories each link contained. At that point, nutritional information on labels was limited. You couldn’t walk into a Mcdonald’s and be assaulted by the shame of what you might order just bombarding you. They wall-mounted menu just blared calories. Thousands of calories. Up there, as it is today, in the bright illuminated menu letting you know, faintly, that your choice is one of savages. Fat savages. Shame never stops working. Ultimately, it’s all we respond to. Shame or the escaping of shame. It all comes down to shame, and the shame of being a “husky” kid was intolerable. And yet, somehow, I got through it. I remained the “chubby” kid for almost all my childhood. You’d think that would have protected me from The Thing. But you know. It wasn’t my stomach he was after.

                                                                                  ***

              I’ll tell you now that this is the hardest part of all of this. Letting you in on all of the sex with a million, wildly differently gendered partners and prostitutes holds nothing to this. This is where it all lays and why I pray for golden rows of light to anoint me with the courage to speak it. Fuck, I was a fat kid and a fat adult.

                                                                                  ***

              I think it was about fourth grade or maybe earlier. I’d leave my house in Homestead Village via the front door with my bookbag or whatever talisman I routinely took to school and walk around my house and then across the back lawn of the Trennary’s house and wind up at the bus stop. This only happened for a brief period. But I’d stand there, all alone. At that point, all my allies lived elsewhere, and I just had to get to school where I was safe. Once there, I had friends. I had a group. I had a gang. The little boy me, overweight and such a target for other little boys just like me who had no idea of what they were doing. They tortured me at that bus stop. They were older kids. I never knew who they were. In my memory, they are just kids who magically appeared for a brief period as if their parents had split and they had to spend October with their Mom. Or maybe November. Or whatever. They were there and I didn’t know them. Everything felt so wholly obscure. Who were these kids? And then they targeted me.

              I was just one of the lone kids standing waiting for the bus. Just a little kid. All they picked up on was that I was undefended and “chunky” as I was sometimes called. And so, naturally, they struck. They told the smallest, youngest of them, and bear in mind that this bus stop handled kids from kindergarten to high school, the busses coming in a familiar rotation each morning. I’d see them huddle and eventually a very young boy, half paralyzed by fear: he had no skin in this game, would come out of the pile of tormentors with a stick, a twig, a thin branch and, with a clumsy jab of his arm, score a piece of wayward dogshit onto the end of his weapon. He’d nervously step toward me as I stood frozen and watched. They’d egg him on, and he’d finally get close enough for me to reach and very un-heroically knock the stick out of his hand. For a moment I remember us looking at each other and asking why, asking without words, how we’d become mixed up in this. Why us? And I’d tell him with those same eyes, whether he understood or not, “you’re the littlest kid and I’m the fattest. It’s all they know.”

              I only remember one moment of this. But it’s enough. It’s enough to make me know how many calories are in a poptart (it’s about 200). Eventually, I learned that if I left by the front door and as my natural path to the bus stop took me between mine and the Ternary’s house, I could wait there until the bus came and then dash the 50 yards and into the relative safety of its interior. Not fully safe but whatever happened to me there is gone. It’s flittered away like almost all of my life.

              One morning as I waited outside my house and in between the hedges that lined, as if by law, the Trennary’s and my house, my Father saw me through the window. Immediately he came outside and asked why I was standing in such an odd place. I suppose I spilled the beans. I have a limited but solid memory of, after confessing, him walking to the bus stop and its inhabitants of little kid creeps and just going to bat for me. He laid into them. I was mortified but I also knew it was over. My Dad rescued me in the most embarrassing way possible. He just lit them up with no regard for language. Fuck and Fuck and Fuck. Again, I was so wildly embarrassed, but I was also able to walk up there without any looks of revenge and from then on, I became me. My Dad did that for me.

              I never felt like a target again.

              In high school and beyond I obsessed with my weight. I was never wildly obese, but the cool clothes didn’t fit me like I’d wanted. My friends, like Tim and Tim and Tim and Tim, were always skinny young guys who, with a simple air of confidence, were able to pull forth all manner of beautiful young girls lurching for the same sort of ego drift that I yearned for. I just waited behind, all smiles and pockets full of drugs. Being the kid with the drugs made me feel…well. It kind of made me feel skinny. That’s what I was always reaching for.

                                                                                  ***

              Heroin makes you skinny. Or it makes you fat. Given enough time, one of the two will reveal itself. I was the skinny junky if I used long enough. I have friends, who, while they were on a run just spent every, last non-dope dollar on donuts and ice cream. They’d cop and get home and cook up and as they’d see the black tar dissolving and start to bubble, vibrant images of pulsating cakes and puddings and pizzas and fried anything would start rotating in their locked-on consciousness, penetrating the imminent rush of opium. Let’s get high and eat!

              I was on the entirely opposite end of the spectrum. I’d go through the entire copping ritual and wind up back home in Silverlake, or, wherever, and after cooking and shooting, think, for the first time in my life of anything but sex and food. Sex and food. My oldest friends. I’d get high and proceed to do anything than pursue these two lifelines. Maybe it was video games, maybe it was cleaning the house or maybe calling old friends. I was energized but not locked down to the two primal instincts that always seemed to waylay me: sex and food. The truth is that I would have been better off fucking and eating sushi off of her stomach.

                                                                                  ***

              Eventually, I’d run out of money, and start to wonder what was available to me. Can I steal? Well. Maybe I can boost some books from a vintage bookstore. Can I rob? No. I can’t do that. Can I prostitute? I surely have would but no one would have me. So, what to do? Well, I have a whole lot of empty checks in this checkbook. What can we do with these? And those thoughts come trickling in like scenes of movies of tough guys like Goodfellas and they land, and it feels exciting. I pick up my checkbook, back when such things still existed, and I’d head out and start driving to the nearest grocery store.

I remember these days like a movie; I’m looking down from above and watching someone who only looks like me. You roll into line and the woman behind the scanner reaches for the few nectarines (about 60 calories) you’ve chosen. She weighs them. About a pound and a half, if they’re nice and all July-red, speckled with a million little brown dots: the perfect kind. You write a check for not a buck eighty-nine but forty-one dollars and 89 cents. Cashback. You walk away trembling, not quite believing it and looking back at her and realizing she’s all the way on to the next customer and you’ve made it. Forty bucks profit and some nectarines.

              For weeks and weeks, all I ate was nectarines while I got loaded with dope and crack courtesy of bored grocery store workers anywhere within my reach. These were the glory days. I got so skinny. I’d wake up one morning, knowing I had a balloon of dope awaiting me and thus, able to feel anything but doom and realize, “I forgot to eat yesterday! I forgot the two days before too!” My God! What a pretty thought for a fat kid to have. I’d forgotten to eat for a few days, and I had drugs and what could possibly be wrong with this life?  If it could only last. If only I could have stayed in the realm of nectarines and dope and easy money. But that never stays alive.

              Eventually, I got caught. Well, sort of caught, the repercussions so surreal as to make the whole thing and the thousands of dollars I’d stolen seem like a cartoon punishment. I received a letter from the LA District Attorney with a list of all of my bounced checks. I was to attend a seminar in an El Segundo Hilton conference room where I’d be reeducated. That’s it. I was in another sober living by then. When would the hammer fall? By way of introducing ourselves, we went around the room and said our names and why we’d bounced so many checks. Everyone had some version of “I just lost track of my balance.” Or” I had a huge emergency and had to just hope I had money when I cashed the check.” Probably all true. As the line got closer to me, I got anxious. I wanted to tell the truth. And so, when they all looked at me and I was meant to explain the rational reason for bouncing piles of checks, I simply said, “crime.” No more questions were asked. They just quickly moved on.

                                                                                  ***

              I was watching the TV one day and I felt besieged by a certain commercial. Relentless. Just pounding into me but it took effect. There was some procedure called the “Lap band.” A simple procedure that tightened the path to the stomach and thus made it all but impossible to overeat. Every bite of all you love just landed at the band and it hurt. So much pressure. I sat on it for a while but eventually I wanted to do it and it cost a lot so, as usual, I reached out to my mom. She was game but also very reticent as she’d heard these pleas so many, many times before. I called the place and set up an appointment. I was going all in.

              The entire process took a few months complete with office talks and so much testing; would I survive it? Of course, I would. I’m immortal. Immortal but fat and unlovable. I gradually came closer to the day. I woke up one day and my Mom and my best friend Judy, who is completely estranged from me now, and I still wish we could sit on my couch under a blanket and watch the Flaming Lips documentary, but we can’t. Those days are gone. Saudade.

              I thought this operation would change everything. I saw myself skinny and wearing suits. I always wanted to wear suits. Fat kids dig suits because they’re so removed from us.

              I awoke gasping for air. I didn’t know how to breathe. They gathered around me, and it passed. I was given rules for the next two days and sent home, my right shoulder pounding around the clock. They told me that might happen. Which by the way afforded me painkillers.

              And so, I started the ride that I’m still on but it’s faded into the sky, this thing that was meant to save me and wear suits. This thing was supposed to make me lovable.

              I tried my best. I followed directions. I’d taken a drastic move which I was so ashamed of. The Lap Band is my true deep dark secret. It makes me feel wholly dirty and beneath you all. I followed the plan for months and lost some weight, but it wasn’t sustainable. It’s still in there. It just blocks food in my throat, and I have to throw up, filled with shame and trying so hard to hide it. Every meal with friends becomes a minefield. Do they notice? I time my trips to the bathroom. I pretend to get someone something from the kitchen and throw up in the trashcan. It’s horrific and yet it’s just everyday life. It lives in me, and it taunts me.

                                                                                  ***

              By March of 2021, I was drinking to an insane excess and playing World of Warcraft all night while seeing patients all day and pretending. Dan came over, as usual. He asked me if I wanted to try this thing called NOOM. What? Explain! It was an app that was just another weight loss gimmick. I’d tried everything. Only heroin made me thin-ish. But, hell, I said yes. And so, I stopped drinking and I started and by Christmas, I’d lost 100 pounds. This was nothing short of a miracle and maybe Divine Intervention.  Everything just morphed into some other thing. I was skinny! When I said yes to Dan, I’d finally reached the place where I was willing to endure overwhelming discomfort for some, unpromised, version of me in the future.

              Time to buy suits. Who knows how to do such a thing? I pored over websites and videos trying to learn what a good suit was. Eventually, I found a place and they wrapped paper tapes around me, now skinny, waist and arms and legs and it was done. I bought two.

                                                                     ***

              For years and maybe my whole life I’d dreamed about being a skinny guy who could wear beautiful suits with crazy, floral shirts. I thought of Warren Ellis, Nick Cave’s right-hand man. We had the same white-ish long scraggly hair and unruly beard, And Warren was always in a suit. He became my style Icon. I’d settle for less but that was my target. I was transformed. I was almost weirdly skinny but none of it came from some crazy deprivation diet. I just changed.

                                                                                  ***

              In March of 2022, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis announced a tour. Of course, I went. The first show was at the Shrine Auditorium which seems to be a part of USC and if not, it lends its hand to some other bigger brighter place. We drove there on March 9th. Me, Dan and my beloved friend Piper, who’d never heard a lick of Nick Cave’s music. We pulled in and drove up a winding parking garage. All the way up. I got out and lit a cigarette and straightened out my three-piece navy checked suit and felt like I was finally a human. A human who didn’t sulk in the weeds when everyone better trod upon me.

              We started to walk to the elevator when a gorgeous woman walked determinedly toward me. When she spoke, it was in a beautiful French accent. I would have swooped her up and taken her all away from there. But instead, I said “hi.” And then she said the words. She merely said, “You look exactly like Warren!” At that moment I loved her so Goddamn completely. But I just listened and said thank you.

              I was finally, at least on the outside, who I wanted to be. Or at least I was what I wanted to pretend I could be. All of it worked all scrambled together. She said I looked like Warren. I just said, “Thank you.” I hope she’s in the place she loves the best. I know I was.

                                                                                  ***

              Always the fat kid, me and my soul, and on into my adulthood. Shooting dope to try and lose weight. The things I’ve done to stay high and not eat. The things I’ve done,

              On Friday I’ll wear a suit and go talk with a bunch of guys in a sober living in Culver City. They’ll exclaim! They’ll touch the fabric. And I’ll feel okay. I’m not the fat kid anymore. I’m just me, slinking away from pain and rushing towards joy. And if you see me, I hope I have a suit on. I’ll wrap it lightly around your head and kiss your forehead and tell you I love you. I’ll love you until the end of the world. Just you and me.