Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist's Quest to Discover if Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, or Why Pie Is Not the Answer (24 page)

Stroke, stroke, stroke, breathe!

Stroke, stroke, stroke, breathe!

I’m humming along in my lane with my eyes shut, deep in the zone. I feel incredible!

Well, mostly incredible, anyway. My long, firm limbs aren’t quite used to this motion yet, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of warming up. I’m probably using different muscles than the ones Barbie and I worked on today, so they likely aren’t quite as up to speed as the other ones.

Stroke, stroke, stroke, breathe!

Hmm. I extend my legs a bit farther. Shouldn’t I be touching the bottom of the pool in the shallow end by now? I’ve been on this lap quite a while. I’ve got to be pretty close to the wall on the other side, and honestly, I could use a second or two to catch my breath.

Stroke, stroke, stroke, breathe, pant, breathe, pant.

Oh, my. My muscles are getting a bit
too
toned right now. As a matter of fact, one could say they are . . . tight.

One could also say they are getting warmed up.

To the point of burning.

Stroke, stroke, pant, pant, stroke, burn, gasp.

Shallow end . . . where are you?

I finally leave the zone and open my eyes. I’m a solid mile and a half away from the other side. Wait a minute; those aren’t lifeguards stationed around the edges of the pool—they’re sorcerers! And they’re pissed off that I mocked them, so now they’ve magically, exponentially lengthened the pool in order to make me have a heart attack and die.

Or maybe I’m not quite as fit as I thought.

I try to take a huge breath and continue, but I end up swallowing a mouthful. I choke and wheeze and try to dig in to no avail. I’m barely moving forward with the crawl stroke. Finally, I flip over and begin to do the backstroke. At least I know I won’t sink doing it.

I’ve huffed and puffed about halfway down the pool when an old man buzzes past me like a speedboat . . .
vroom
! Nice. Now your grandfather moves faster than me.

Since I’m on my back, I can see a whole parade of swimmers cruising past me. This is terrific! What fun! Maybe tomorrow I can go to the prom with my brother. The day after, perhaps I can wear white pants and unexpectedly get my period.

I finally get to the other end and double over trying to catch my breath. This is ridiculous—I already worked out today. There’s no reason for me to embarrass myself in this pool. I should just go home now.

But if I get out now, that means I’ll have been gone from my house for ten whole minutes. Although Fletch is quite nice to me, there’s no way he wouldn’t tease me, particularly after the grilling I gave him for pooping out during the group class.

You know what? I’ve probably got another lap or two in me. I’ll swim down and back once or twice more, and then I’ll get ready to go home really slowly. That should be enough to keep me from getting mocked.

I stretch again and scrub at my eyes with my palms. There are traces of eyeliner when I look at my hands. My makeup isn’t quite rinsing off like I thought. I run my fingers under my lashes and they get covered in mascara flakes. Shoot, my towel’s all the way on the other end of the pool—I can’t even use it to get off the excess. Argh. Maybe this stuff will come off in this next lap.

Breath caught, at least temporarily, I manage to propel myself to the other end of the pool. All my muscles have turned to stone, and I feel like I’m breathing through a cocktail straw. This trip down, I use a kickboard, and it makes the whole process easier. I’m not sucking nearly as much wind when I get to the shallow end this time. While I’m catching my breath, I notice how many more people have gotten in the pool since I started, and the lanes are getting crowded.

The people here seem to take this whole lap business kind of seriously. Everyone’s wearing a bathing cap—no, thank you—and goggles, and many are wearing special racing suits. All week long I’ve been calling this pool a hidden jewel, but maybe it’s not so hidden after all?

On my third and, let’s be honest, probably last trip down the lane, I decide to backstroke again. My pace is still kind of poky, so it comes as quite a surprise when I end up hitting the girl who started off half a length in front of me. “Oof!” she cries.

“Sorry! Sorry! I’m so sorry—I didn’t think you were anywhere near me,” I effuse with one hundred percent sincerity.

Well, almost a hundred percent, anyway. This is the same girl who made me feel dumb for asking about the kickboards.

I flip back over and begin to swim the crawl stroke again, and we both end up in the shallow end at the same time. “Again,” I say, as we lean against the edge, “I’m so sorry. This is my first time doing laps here, and I guess I have bad pool etiquette.”

“Yeah,” she replies.

“So,” I say gamely, my stupid endorphins accidentally making me all happy and nice, “is it usually less crowded during the morning session?”

She looks me up and down before replying, taking in my cosmetically blackened eyes, moth-eaten swimsuit, and crazy pigtails. I am the only person here not in racing suit, cap, and goggles, and I notice her angling away from me. “I wouldn’t know. My friend and I don’t come here in the morning. We have jobs.” And with a larger splash than is necessary, she’s off toward the deep end.

On the one hand, this means I’ve lost enough weight for people to entertain the possibility that I could be homeless. But on the other,
you bitch
.

I look around the pool and notice that the lane next to us is less busy, so I slip under the divider and start another lap. My interaction has left me feeling somewhat energized, and I decide to see if I can’t do another lap or two. I try to make conversation with a couple of other people, but I guess my capless, goggleless appearance is foreign and off-putting, and no one really answers me.

Forty-five minutes later, almost everyone else has quit, and I’m among the last to leave the pool when the final whistle blows. Save a quick rest at each end, I’ve managed to swim the entire time, putting in twenty more laps than I’d originally planned. Each time I’d complete a pass, I’d tell myself,
I can do one more
. And I did.

I round the end of the pool, and with all the chlorine I’ve gotten in my eyes, my vision is even hazier than usual. But as I approach my towel, I see a very thin person jackknifed over by the other table.

What the . . . ?

As I get closer, I see it’s not a person bending over at an odd angle at all. Rather, it’s a prosthetic leg, and it appears to belong to the sarcastic girl.

I guess that would explain why she was cranky, and I grudgingly forgive her.

And yet a very petty part of me can’t help but think,
Maybe you’ve got a fancy swim cap and snappy goggles, but since you only have the one leg, I could certainly beat you in an ass-kicking contest.

Session Twenty-eight

“Since appropriate headgear is apparently so important for fitting in at that pool, next time I’m totally wearing one of those big rubber-daisy caps with a chin strap and possibly a snorkel mask.”

“Ha! I love it!” Barbie replies. “All right, that was the last of the pushes. We’re going to move on to pulls.”

Barbie has really turned my workout up today and forced me to do the worst thing I’ve ever done here. In pike position, I have to move these two little padded plastic discs all over the floor with my hands, propelling myself with my legs. The discs are almost exactly what I use to scoot my furniture around when I’m rearranging things, so I call this exercise “moving the couch.” The problem is, with each set I’ve worked up too much momentum and I’ve fallen flat on my stomach at the end. This last time I actually knocked the wind out of myself, and now I’m trying desperately to not vomit grape energy drink. Barbie tries to make me feel better, saying how I’m showing terrific effort. When compliments fail to rally me, she points out how much better I must be at the furniture-mover than the mean girl at the pool.

Oh, yes, she’s good.

Barbie picks up her clipboard to see which exercise we’re going to do next and then begins to howl.

“What? Do you have more medieval torture moves for me? What’s so funny?” I demand.

“Even better. Check out the name of the next move I’m having you do.” She’s shaking as she gestures with the set list she created after my last workout.

“Which one?”

“Here,” she gasps. She points to the top of the list in the third column. “Can you read my writing?”

“Not really,” I admit.

Barbie’s laughing so hard that she’s turned beet red by the time she reads it off to me.

“You won’t believe this, but it’s called . . . the one-legged swimmer.”

I bought regular swim goggles.

So I’m a sheep.

Baa.

I wouldn’t have given in to the pool’s unofficial lap-swimmer dress code, except my eyes felt like hard-boiled eggs the whole night after I swam. My vision was so blurred, I had to pull the ottoman right next to the TV so I could watch
So You Think You Can Dance
, and even then it was a struggle. I’m still not wearing a bathing cap, though, even though the chlorine has made my hair distinctly more flammable. I keep asking Fletch to not smoke too close to me, fearing perfectly highlighted bonfires.

I’m turning into quite a regular at the pool, and each time I’ve come, I’ve been able to add an additional lap before the session ends. I’m still not fast, but I do have better endurance than many of the people here. I’ve yet to quit before the final whistle, and my breaks between laps are getting shorter and shorter. I’ll probably never master the underwater-turnaround-and -keep-swimming dealie the show-offs do, but I’m more than satisfied with my progress. One guy here keeps a little plastic flipbook at the end of his lane to keep track of how many laps he’s done. Oh, yeah? Well, I can count to twenty- five in my head, pal.

I’d forgotten what a Zen activity swimming is. With all the other exercise I do, I’m either talking to Barbie, or listening to music on my iPod, or reading a book. The laps give me a chance for reflection. Tonight in the pool I keep replaying the conversation Fletch and I had after my Weight Watchers meeting.

“I’m telling you, by the time I was done, I wanted to punch that smug leader in the throat,”
I said.
“Encouraging people
to fear food is just swapping one set of neuroses for another, and it’s wrong.”

“Consider this, Jen
—
if you want people to stop a certain behavior, the easiest path to compliance is getting them to fear it,”
Fletch told me.

“How so?”

“Look at religion
—
the best way biblical scribes had to get people to not kill each other, steal their neighbors’ stuff, or sleep with wives other than their own was to make these societal problems sinful. Think of the animal world
—
all the stuff I just mentioned, rampant breeding, jockeying for position, survival of the fittest
—
these instincts are hardwired into us to propagate the species. But then religion came along and got society to fight its natural instincts by overriding them with the fear of God.”

I consider what he’s said for a moment.
“I guess it worked. Fear
is
a powerful motivator.”

“Yeah, but look at society today
—
it’s coming apart at the seams. Fear only works if people are afraid.”

I’m looking up at the sky, and all I can hear is the gentle
swish-swish
as I slice through the water, yet Fletch’s words keep running through my head. I keep thinking about my own fears.

As I paddle along, I slowly become aware that it’s been fear keeping me out of this pool for so many years. I never came here before because I was afraid I’d make a fool of myself by not having the endurance to complete a lap. The swimming wasn’t what scared me; failure was.

My fear locked me in a state of arrested development for so many years. Fear kept me from tackling my weight, which I understand has simply been symptomatic of my greater fear, growing up.

I glide down the lane on my back and reflect on how good I feel right now.

It’s not because I’ve lost more than thirty pounds.

I feel incredible because I’ve stopped being afraid.

TO: AjaXXX

FROM: [email protected]

SUBJECT: Thank you

Hi, AjaXXX,

Thank you for responding to my ad for a biweekly housekeeper on Craigslist. The thing is, we just want REGULAR cleaning service, and not, you know, a topless cleaning service.

I’m way more concerned about getting my shower tiles de-limed than seeing a
n-u-d-e
person trying to figure out how to operate the attachments on my Dyson.

Thank you anyway, and best of luck,

Jen

CHAPTER TWENTY

The N-a-k-e-d Truth

Session Thirty

"Where are you off to?” I’m standing in the living room across from Fletch, holding bottles of Smartwater and Ripped to the Max energy supplement,
¹⁶³
and my hair’s yanked back in a do-rag and ponytail. I’ve got on my black Gojira shorts and a pink T, and I’m wearing sneakers and thick socks.

“I’m going out to sell Girl Scout cookies. If I don’t meet my Samoa quota, they’re busting me back down to Brownie.”

Nonplussed, he replies, “I meant that as a greeting,” and he returns his attention to his laptop.

"Sho’ nuff.” I lean over to give him a kiss.

He looks suspicious. “Why are you in such a good mood?”

“I have every reason to be happy. The humidity finally broke, it’s a gorgeous day, and I feel terrific. I’m not even dreading going to my training session one iota. . . . I might
even
be looking forward to it. Progress, right? Remember when I first started and I’d celebrate every time I came home because it meant I didn’t have to go back for two days?”

“No, and I don’t remember you moaning and wailing. At all. For hours on end. For weeks.”

“
Ha!
You’re hilarious. Not.” I notice that Fletch is firmly entrenched on the couch with work stuff spread from end to end. “Are you going to the office at all today?”

“Everyone’s on vacation, so there’s no reason for me to go downtown.”

“Cool. Then I’m taking your car to the gym.”

“Don’t get it all sweaty.”

“Saying it like that just makes me want to get it extra-sweaty. ”

“See you later.”

I get into the car, crack the sunroof, roll down the windows, and crank Guns n’ Roses. I cruise down the expressway looking and sounding completely cool . . . I mean, if it were twenty years ago or anyone gave a shit about
Appetite for Destruction
anymore. I’m broadcasting an old-Adam-Sandler -cranking-Billy-Squire-at-the-high-school-in-
Billy-Madison
vibe, but I don’t care. Welcome to the jungle, fellow motorists! You can taste my
Bright Lights
, but you won’t get them for free.
¹⁶⁴
I’m barely two songs into the CD when I get to the gym. Oh, well; there’s always the ride home.

I stash my stuff in a locker and wait by the front desk for Barbie. Mike, the West Loop Gym’s manager and resident powerlifter, is standing with his back turned to me, watching a segment on
Jerry Springer
. Poor Jerry. I know he’s making scads of money and has a really cushy life, but I wonder if he ever wants to shout at his assembled band of idiots,
I used to be the mayor, damn it!
¹⁶⁵

While I ponder, Mike turns around and notices me. “Hey, you’re here!”

“I’m here!” I reply heartily. “And so are you!”

Mike picks up a clipboard. “No, I mean, I’m training you today. Barbie’s out of town. Didn’t she tell you?”

I wait for my heart to stop dropping all the way to my feet before I answer. “No. I was . . . unaware.” Had I been informed that Mike was training me, I’d have concocted an excuse to not come, like the couple of other times Barbie’s been unavailable. Although he’s friendly to the point of charming, Mike has trained Fletch before, and every single time, he pushed Fletch so hard he barfed. I want to exercise and feel good. I don’t want to exercise and revisit my lunch. “It’s probably too late for me to run away screaming like a little girl, isn’t it?”

“Ah, come on. We’ll have fun! It’s good for you to swap up trainers every once in a while. We all do things differently, so we’ll probably hit some muscles today you haven’t hit in a while.” He begins to walk back to the training room, while I stay firmly planted.

“You’re going to hurt me.”

“I won’t
hurt
you. I
will
make sure you’re working hard.”

“Which equals deep hurting.”

“My job is to push you outside of your comfort zone, and that’s what we’ll do today. Come on.”

“If I barf in the car, Fletch is going to divorce me.” Oh, no. I’m not moving from this spot.

“We won’t go that far,” he promises me. His expression is so sincere, I almost believe him.

“Please understand—part of my training process entails quite a bit of complaining.”

“I hear you swear a lot, too.”

“Yes, but not
at
you. About you, later, though. Count on that.” He motions toward the training room with his clipboard, and, grudgingly, I fall in step behind him.

“Hey, what’s the worst that could happen?” he asks.

Good thing I’m over that being-afraid business. If I weren’t, those would be some scary final words.

“I didn’t even hear you come in.” Fletch is in the bedroom changing into his own gym clothes.

“That’s because it took me ten minutes to get from the garage to the house.”

“Why?”

“Turn around and take a look at me.” There’s not an inch of my shirt that isn’t soaked, and at some point in the last hour, I cried every bit of my eye makeup off. I tear off my sodden top and collapse on the bed. “Am dead now. Blerg.”

“Whoa. Barbie have you do something new today? Usually you’re so energized when you get home, I can’t stand you.” Fletch begins to pack his gym bag.

“Barbie wasn’t there today. She had me train with Mike. And she didn’t tell me beforehand because she knew I’d ditch. You know what it was like? It was like thinking I was heading to a surprise party and instead it was a surprise pap smear. Plus, right now, I’m a nine point five on the vomometer. ”

“The what?”

“The about-to-vomit thermometer.”

Fletch looks stricken. “The car’s OK, right?”

“The car is fine. I, on the other hand, have completely lost the use of my legs. That bastard had me step up on this really tall box eighty times. And then he had me do a sitting motion with a medicine ball another eighty times. Do you realize that’s eighty lunges and eighty squats? I believe that’s illegal in the continental U.S. My quadriceps are completely gone. I’m going to have to go on eBay to search for another pair. Don’t even start me on how many crunches I did, either. And look at this.” I hold up my almost-full bottle of Smartwater. “Normally I finish the whole thirty-three ounces in the course of a session, but Mike only let me take a break for about a second each time. When you get to the gym, I would like you to punch him right in the junk.”

“Yeah, I’m not going to do that.”

“Are you sure? It would mean a lot to me.”

“You’re not getting any sympathy here. If you didn’t throw up working out with Mike, then he was holding back. He could have worked you harder.”

“The second I can lift myself from this bed, I’m going right out to the garage to eat a sandwich in your car. And then I’m going to leave a bunch of sweaty ass-prints all over the hood.”

“I’m going to finish up my project, and then I’m going to the gym.” Fletch leaves the bedroom and trots down the stairs.

“You think you’re so cool just because you can walk!” I shout. I lie on the bed for a few minutes before I realize I’m absolutely ravenous. I need to eat something right this second. I manage to lean on the dog and nightstand enough to elevate myself. I stagger over to the stairs and attempt to take a step down. My right thigh responds by telling me,
No fucking way
. I lift the other leg, and Lefty expresses the same sentiment. I try again on both sides and finally am forced to turn around and back down the stairs on my hands and shunu -nu-nu-nu-nu-nu-nu knees, knees.

I’ll tell you one thing—the next time I see Barbie, I’m giving her a present.

Maybe she’d like a nice Guns n’ Roses CD?