Getting Waisted (13 page)

The show attracted a following that crossed several demographics, a few of them weird. Of course it did, I was a fat girl in a leotard who could stand on her head and still talk. Gilda Radner was a close friend and a favorite guest because she was so damn funny and because she actually thought she was overweight, but as it turned out she was bulimic, a far less common disease then than it is today. I decorated the show’s holiday Christmas tree with chicken legs and donuts and I gave a platform to endless experts from nutritionists to psychiatrists. My favorite guest was a psychiatrist who had written a paper claiming that fat people should be gathered together in colonies; that if one could harness the fat stored in all those corpulent bodies, one could heat and light a city the size of New York. I asked him if he had ever touched a fat person and then I took his hand and placed it on my knee. Only putting his hand on a hot stove could have appeared more painful. He stuttered and stammered that he wasn’t speaking about me or other “well-adjusted fat people.” Once he realized he had a rope around his neck, he shut up. I leaned in very close and said, “Fat people are such easy targets.” And then I offered to be on standby as an auxiliary generator if the power supply at my local hospital ever experienced a blackout, if he could just explain how he thought we could actually make his
great idea
a reality. He had no answer. But the best perk of all that I got from doing my show, was that for the first time ever, I won approval for being fat me from my whole family.
Aaah
, fame . . .

Being on the show had another unexpected effect—spending so much time talking about diets and exercise, I began to fear food. It had become the monster I needed to stay far away from, so I was thrilled when I found my next diet, which had no food.

It was the heavily promoted Liquid Protein Diet, which required me to only drink. I found a dealer living in a seedy neighborhood where I handed a woman, who behaved very much like a pre-Cold War Russian spy, a check for $65.00. The exchange was made and I left with two jumbo plastic bottles filled with the magic potion. Just as I was settling in for my first yummy taste, I happened to pick up the newspaper. The story that jumped out at me was about the ten most recent deaths attributed to the Liquid Protein Diet: not enough amino acids and apparently a few other missing life-giving nutrients. I immediately tossed both bottles.

Then I saw an ad for Dexedrine, a new and vastly improved way to quick and effortless weight loss. Like a junkie with a convenient memory, I completely erased my first unhealthy wild rise on that very same drug, only remembering that it worked and true to its word, it was speedy. Sold! One little pill a day and I had twice as much energy and next to no appetite. Brilliant—but within a week I couldn’t stop twitching. I had so much energy that instead of sleeping, I went on cleaning binges—which was good—but that’s because I was terrified to go to bed. My nights were filled with apocalyptic nightmares and a constant feeling of foreboding. When my doctor brother-in-law heard what I was on, he didn’t mince his words: “Throw those pills away now! They are dangerous, hallucinogenic, and are playing havoc with your heart and nervous system.”

For the first time I realized all my diets were beginning to collide, much like a chain-reaction pile-up on a foggy freeway, and I knew I was headed for a serious crash. I had become a diet junkie and at the time there was no rehab for that. If I stayed this course, it was the fast track to becoming a full-fledged, fat anorexic.

12

Out of Control

Diet #16
The Last Chance Diet

Cost
$130.00

Weight lost
34 pounds

Weight gained
1 pound but climbing

My friends were dropping like flies
and my social life was taking the hit. They were all getting engagement rings and flashing them in each other’s faces, as if trying to blind them with the size, shape, and cut of their diamonds. As their best single friend, clearly I had a neon sign on my head that said, “Always open.” One after another they’d come and tell me the most intimate details of their lives: “Should I marry him? He slept with my boss?” “Is he the one, what if I meet someone better?” “What if he finds out I slept around?” How the hell did I become Mother Superior? I was dispensing life advice as if I knew what I was talking about, but I did learn one very valuable piece of information; everyone is screwed up, even the pretty ones, which made me feel a little better.

What wasn’t making me feel so great was that I had become everyone’s favorite dog sitter whenever they would go off for a romantic long weekend. I love dogs but only the big ones—give me a husky, or a Burmese mountain dog and a flexi-leash, and send me on my way—but most of these doggies were teeny, shrill, yapping machines and they had more clothes than I did. My friend Marlie once asked me to look after Pepsi, her mini Yorkshire terrier. Could there be a dog smaller than a regulation Yorkie? Pepsi lived in a bag, a very fancy leather bag, and he went everywhere with Marlie: to the theatre, to every clothing store, and to restaurants where Pepsi was checked at the cloakroom if the management disapproved of him being under a table. (Who wears cloaks anyway?) Marlie, who was more than a little neurotic, wanted to make sure I knew how to follow Pepsi’s routine and therefore wasted a considerable amount of my precious time schooling me in the art of feeding and caring for a dog the size of a teacup. I was a good student and promised to follow all the rules. In our last stop, at the park, Marlie wanted me to see how Pepsi
did her business.
By that time I was a little tired and admittedly a bit snippy when I said, “I imagine the liquid comes out the front and anything more valuable out the back, pretty much like all dogs.” Marlie ignored me and opened the bag and Pepsi dutifully hopped out, squatted,
did his business
and was about to hop back into the bag when a Great Dane approached on a harmless reconnaissance mission. I can only surmise Pepsi had never seen or been that close to a large dog. He startled, gasped, and dropped dead! Not a great afternoon at the park, but thank God it didn’t happen on my watch. Of course the upside was that I never actually had to dog-sit the little hairball. RIP.

I was feeling the pain, not of being left at the altar, but by the mad scramble from so many of my friends who appeared to be in a race to get to one, leaving me with far too much time on my hands. I threw myself into work to compensate for not having a life. I loved designing evening gowns as they offered up the most license for creativity, but I had become the go-to designer for my friends’ and their friends’ wedding dresses and all their bridesmaids’ dresses as well, which meant I was often designing one of the bridesmaids’ dresses for me. I was up to six by this count and I had worn everything from melon to fuchsia. Unfortunately, my dresses always had to have sleeves or little jackets and they could never be nipped at the waist because I didn’t have one, and they couldn’t be strapless, as that would require blueprints for a special bra built by a structural engineer. But I dutifully marched down aisle after aisle, carrying bouquets as varied as the brides themselves, from loose to tightly pinched, even a beautiful, almost undetectable fake. I didn’t want to become resentful but I was getting a bit too close to that feeling for my own comfort.

And then Vally, who seemed to have gotten married only four minutes ago, had a baby shower for her soon-to-be born twins. Given all the premarital sex she had indulged in, of course she was having multiple births. I was more than a little surprised she wasn’t having a litter. I had known most of the girls at the party since they were virgins, meaning I had known them all a long time, but almost simultaneously they all started speaking in foreign tongues:
“
W
e have been looking for our china pattern. It’s not easy finding just the right one
.”
“We have decided to stay in school and we’ll live with my parents
.”
“
We love all the same things.”
We
want to puke.

I needed my own guy, but so far that had proven impossible. I was considering living with the Massai, but they were too regal. I was more the run of the mill super-size Samoan type. I liked the idea of living on a South Pacific atoll, but the idea of grass skirts and having to go topless nixed that. Maybe I should be hanging with the guys who piloted the Goodyear Blimp—they were already comfortable with my kind of shape. Despite of having loads of friends, I was lonely.

I was so sick of the insatiable fire-breathing food dragon winning. I had to gain the upper hand. I knew how to starve but I didn’t know how to eat and I was unable to get off the diet train, convinced that my forty-seven extra pounds was all that stood between me and finding true love. That’s what every magazine told me. There was no way I was going to staple my mouth shut—I had far too many opinions desperate to leap from my always moving lips. But the more validation I got from being the funny, fat girl with the exercise show, the more confused I got.

I heard about a new and supposedly fool-proof diet created by an osteopath, Robert Linn. He had written a bestseller called
The Last Chance Diet
. That’s exactly how I was feeling. I had one last chance to get this weight off. It was perfect—no food whatsoever—therefore there could be no fudging with amounts or calories and best of all, no exercise was required. What I did on my show was just for show
. . .
Oh God, why did I have to use the word fudging? Now all I can think of is maple glazed fudge
. . . The Last Chance Diet plan was simple; it revolved around fasting and then drinking a very tasty concoction that somehow looked and tasted a bit like a drinkable strawberry Jell-O shake that was very filling. The weight melted off as if someone had taken a blowtorch to my ass. I believed I had finally found the right way for me to keep it off.

Nothing fit me anymore and I had to buy new clothes . . . again. I also had to get new underwear, but not granny panties or Kate Smith bras. Instead I got lace, and I intended to show it off, pretty much to anyone who showed any hint of interest. I took validation from jerks and losers, and all they had to do was pretend to like me. The cable guy, more than a little rough around the edges, made the mistake of giving me a free movie package and I was happy to show my appreciation by getting to know
his
package. A drunken neighbor flirted with me, but if I hadn’t been there he would have flirted with a doorpost. I was still like the needy retriever that had been without water for far too long. I lapped it all up and lied about my regret the next morning.

“Mirror, Mirror—Is that me? Why do you like me now?” I was the same person I was six months ago, but I wasn’t. I had wings but no idea how to use them. Nor did I understand the whirlpool of emotions, the good, the bad, and the ugly that had come with this new territory. I knew I was never going to have a trophy wall of captured boy-heads, so I chased, stalked, and I scored. I knew none of them were playing for keeps but I still reveled in getting their attention, if only for a limited run. There was Roger the engineer who found me amusing. Unfortunately his wife didn’t; she found out where I lived and one day I came home and discovered a large knife lying on my bed with a note saying, “Stay away from my husband.” I hadn’t known he was married. I had the locks changed that day, and I never saw Roger again.

Then there was Brian the art dealer, who dueled relentlessly with me if he thought I was getting more attention that he was. He was
way
too much work. Russell, so cute, so little, I felt like Gargantua whenever we . . . whenever. There was Jacob from Germany; he was bossy but handsome, and at first I thought I could handle his demanding personality but then he insisted I dress only in leather. I looked like a couch.
Auf wiedersehen
. Then came Gordon, handsome, smart, a real candidate until I found out he was a total liar. He tossed out sweet talk as if it were confetti; he had never met anyone as exciting as me . . . I was the funniest, the sexiest . . . I was hooked until I ran across another fish on the same line, who had also been caught with his well-rehearsed spin. Bye-bye Gordon.

I was experiencing a delayed form of sexual adolescence. It felt good to be looked at like that, but I was also angry at any of the men who did the looking and scared by my own out-of-control responses. Why couldn’t they see me before?

I was exhausted. I felt drained and depleted. I couldn’t suck back one more of those shakes. Hungry again, I fell from the wagon with a thud, eating caramel popcorn, laced with chocolate sauce. Depression and failure oozed through me. I began calling random numbers from my phone book desperately seeking a real connection and just as I hung up from a dead-end call, the phone rang. It was a new friend, Dave, a newscaster from the TV station, saying that the Jamaica Tourist Board was doing some cross promotion and had offered a trip for a bunch of the personalities; best of all it was
free
. He thought it would be great if I joined them. The timing was miraculous. I don’t think Dave could quite understand the level of my gratitude.

I begged and made promises to my mother that I’d make up the time by working weekends when I got back. She was happy for me but was worried that my father was going off the deep end. He had taken to standing at the bus stop with no real plans to get on any of them, but carrying a pad and pencil so that he could take notes. If there was a puddle and the bus splashed him, he wrote a letter. If he was standing there and they didn’t stop exactly at the right spot, he’d get that bus’s number and dash off another missive. My father wrote the most articulate but damning letters ever, citing times, street names, and their coordinates and when he could get his binoculars focused in time, he got badges. If he had left me just the money he spent on postage in those years, I could have gone to Paris and back, twice.