Teenage Waistland (2 page)

This Lap-Band thingy is one of these so-called medical devices. It’s an inflatable silicone band for super fatties that gets surgically installed around the top of their stomachs. When the band is inflated by injecting saline solution through a port implanted in the abdominal muscles, it contracts. And now you get a tiny stomach pouch into which only the smallest amount of food will fit. So when the aforementioned fatties can’t plow through their usual amount of chow, lo and behold, they lose weight. It’s a short, simple,
reversible
low-risk operation and you’re out of the hospital in less than a day.
And
the Lap-Band has
already
been approved by the FDA! Megatons of weight lost, safety and effectiveness totally proven, et cetera.

But of course, there’s a catch. The FDA approved the Lap-Band exclusively for
adults
. So livestock under eighteen can only get their hooves on this miracle of modern medicine in one of two ways: through an FDA-approved clinical trial, like the one Doc here is recruiting for, or, like my best friend, Jen, did, by going to Mexico, where the FDA can’t throw its weight around.

For obese American teens who can’t get into or afford a Lap-Band clinical trial and have xenophobic parents who won’t cross international borders for medical care, there’s another surgical option in the United States. It’s called gastric bypass, and it’s scary stuff—Abby and I looked into it last month. They pretty much slice, dice, and rearrange your entire digestive tract. Something like one to three percent of
gastric bypass victims
die
from it, and a large percentage get seriously screwed by pulmonary embolisms, leakage, infection, malnutrition, and other health issues. But because the FDA hasn’t approved the Lap-Band for teens yet, far more of us are undergoing gastric dissection than getting banded. Shaken, Abby had marched me right out of that consultation. Her epiphany: Being fat is, in fact, preferable to being disemboweled.

It’s ten p.m. and I’m splayed on my bed, taking a break from ranting.

“Maybe Abby is right and this clinical trial isn’t the worst thing,” Jen finally pipes up, as if she’s had me on call-waiting the whole time and hasn’t heard a word. Jen, of all people, should appreciate the epic proportions of this catastrophe; I was at her bedside in Mexico—along with her mom—when she got her Lap-Band done there, the Christmas vacation before last. Besides, we’ve been inseparable since my first day at Fuller Prep—she flipped off a teacher when he corrected her pronunciation of “antebellum,” and even though she was freakishly large, and so sharp and tough that the other kids seemed terrified of her, I knew instantaneously that she was my girl.

“Jen!” I wail. “This clinical trial isn’t anything like what you did! For me to even be
considered
for admission, I have to get a million physical exams—bone density, pulmonary function, blood tests—”

“No kidding, genius,” she cuts in. “Everyone gets a battery of tests before surgery, no matter where they go.”

“But that’s only the beginning! There’s a mountain of paperwork—doctors’ letters, notarized releases, insurance authorizations or evidence of financial ability to—”

“So what? Abby’s going to deal with that stuff, Marce, not you. Your insurance probably won’t cover it since it’s a clinical trial, but Rich Ronny—”

“Hold your fire, Jen. There’s more!
Then
I’ll be interrogated by their ‘fat nazi’ shrink to make sure I can commit to the Lap-Band ‘lifestyle.’ Plus, Abby has her own evaluation, where she’s got to sell this shrink on her ability to ride my beached-whale butt into submission—as if Gran doesn’t barrage my mother with new starvation plans for me every other day.
Now
what do you think, Ms. In-and-Out-in-Three-Days?”

Jen snorts. “Listen, Ms. Drama Queen. I had the same evaluations. Adults never think teens are equipped to make big decisions, so they just want to be sure everyone involved understands what they’re in for. Makes total sense. Can we roll the credits on your daily diatribe now?” “Daily Diatribe” was the name of the hysterically bitter feminist poetry rant series Jen used to post on YouTube.

I snort right back at her. “Nope, saved the best for last.
If
I even get in after all this crap, they’re going to make me join a
cult
where I’ll have to wax poetic about everything related to my eating—from my ‘feelings’ to my bowel movements—every week for a whole year!”

“Oh my God—you mean a support group like Alcoholics Anonymous? That really does suck,” Jen says in her
horrified by the sheer inanity
voice. Finally, she gets it. “Look, Abby is reasonable. Discuss this with her. Just do it calmly and nicely. She always listens when you’re not laying into her.”

“I guess I’ll give it one last shot. Stay tuned,” I sigh, and take off to find Abby.

“Marcie, I get it. I was there,” Abby says wearily the instant I
calmly
embark on my rap about how needlessly annoying and drawn out the clinical-trial admission process is compared with getting the stupid surgery done and over with south of the border. She and Ronny were polishing off a bottle of wine on the porch when I found her, and he politely took off so as not to
intrude
—probably his euphemism for “listen to Marcie gripe.” “Just give me your Mexican surgery spiel so that I can go to sleep,” Abby says.

I whip out my iPhone with my right hand and Abby’s credit card with my left. I really want to fling them at her, but I keep my grip on both items and wave them in her face instead. With the wine and all, she’s slow on the uptake and gives me the quizzical variation of her
get to the point already
look. “Mom!” I shriek. “I’m demonstrating the elegant simplicity of the Mexico option. You just need to be able to dial the freaking phone number to set up an appointment and place a deposit. That’s it! The exact same surgery! Jen was in and out of the clinic in a single day. No hoops, no groups, no one breathing down her neck for all eternity. Plus, it costs ten thousand dollars—that’s less than
one-third
what Park Avenue Bariatrics is charging. We can even upgrade to the all-inclusive Cancún special—the surgery plus five nights at a five-star beachfront resort, a private nurse, and—”

Abby shakes her head, grabs her empty wineglass, and heads inside to the kitchen. “Forget Mexico, Marcie. Money isn’t the issue. I want the best for you. You’ll be under constant supervision of doctors and nutritionists throughout the entire weight loss process. And the support—”

“Mom! I
can’t
sit in a support group listening to a bunch of fat losers ramble on about their stupid little lives. Get me another psychologist—I promise I’ll cooperate this time and not spend the session texting with Jen.”

Abby slams her glass on the marble countertop. “So that’s what you were doing?” she snaps, and storms out. I resist the urge to take her precious crystal wineglass and smash it on the floor. Instead, I just wait to hear her footsteps on the stairs before grabbing a spoon and hitting the freezer.

God, I
hate
my mother. Of course she can afford to put me through this ridiculous and expensive clinical trial now that she’s married to Rich Ronny Rescott. The more money Abby can spend on my misery, the more she’ll enjoy the ride. Just the
idea
of not getting ripped off sends her running for refuge in the Dolce & Gabbana department at the Short Hills Neiman Marcus. They only make clothes for women size 14 and smaller, and Abby fantasizes about me one day fitting into her beloved D&G the same way competent mothers dream of their girls graduating med school! If Abby had stayed married to my dad, I’d have been banded in Mexico before you could say “burrito grande with extra sour cream.” Then again, if my mother hadn’t dumped my father and moved me to this soulless suburban hell so she could be with Rich Ronny, I wouldn’t need my stomach cordoned off in the first place.

Annie Katia Itou is my given name but I go by “East,” a nickname arising from “Far East” and my crazy Polish grandmother, who lived in our sunroom from the time I was a baby until she died six years ago. Grandma’s entire life orbited around her pills and me, her “little China doll”—yet another term of endearment that irritated my
Japanese
father. Though he’d grimace silently in Grandma’s presence, he always voiced his disdain when she wasn’t around.

“ ‘Far East’ is an expression used to imply
foreignness
or
exoticness
in a derogatory way. Tell her again, write it on her hand if necessary. Annie is not Chinese, and she’s not from the Far East.” One time, Mom tried to gently explain that while her mother might be uninformed, she wasn’t racist. “Uninformed and racist? They’re the same thing!” Dad had said in the loudest voice I’d ever heard him use. “I won’t tolerate racism under my roof.” Then, in an even louder voice, Mom shouted, “The woman is in
diapers
, for heaven’s sake. How do you expect her to understand anything I explain to her?”

Luckily, Dad’s moral objections were no match for Grandma’s Alzheimer’s, and “East” stuck. Had Grandma picked up on “Pacific Rim,” the politically correct term for East Asia, she might have nicknamed me Pacific and then the joke in school would be that I swallowed an entire ocean—or that my rear end is as wide as one. You don’t ever get used to being called names like “Beast” or “Feast,” but after a while, you learn to bear it. Maybe I just don’t care about being a reject. That’s why I’m not exactly jumping on my best friend Char’s latest harebrained scheme.

Char’s had us on a zillion different diets and starvation plans over the past few years. Now she’s absolutely positive that our solution to weight loss is Lap-Band surgery. She was reading about it online when she saw the advertisement for this clinical trial in the city.

“Totally meant to be,” she texted yesterday, along with the hyperlink. “We are so doing this!” Last night, Char called me with more of her latest research. “Asians have a significantly lower rate of obesity than the general population.”

“Great. Not only am I an outcast at school,” I said, “I’m an outlier among my people. Thanks for the breaking news.”

She snorted and probably rolled her amazing blue eyes like she usually does when I exasperate her. Char’s fat like me, except she’s beautiful.

“You’re so negative! I’m gonna have to smack you,” Char replied. She’s not serious in general, but she’s very serious about this. (For the record, I’m negative about this and negative in general.)

Char calls me the Black Shroud. “Hey, Your Shroudness,” she’ll call, “wanna go shrouding?” That’s going clothes shopping with me. She teases me that I could start my own
fashion line—Grim Reaper for Girls. Char’s always all out there with her big self in her bold colors, and I don’t understand how she does it. If it’s not black and baggy, I don’t feel comfortable.

Looking back, I’m not sure if I grew into East or out of Annie—I just know I’ll never be an Annie again. “Annie” sounds too happy and optimistic. Not that I’m always miserable. A shroud is made of fabric, not cement. Sometimes I can completely de-focus on my body, like when Char and I delve into our favorite pig-out—Boylan’s black cherry soda and zeppoles from Mario’s. The fried dough and flavored soda tangoing on my tongue spins off a warm, happy
all’s right with the world
feeling. I exist for this feeling. Or maybe I should say, except for this feeling, I might not feel anything.

Lap-Band surgery would mean no more zeppoles and no more Mickey D’s fries washed down with a Friendly’s mocha chip Fribble—although there’s only a handful of golden sticks left by the time we reach Friendly’s, three blocks down. No more cookie dough. No Nacho Cheese or Cool Ranch Doritos—we can inhale a party-sized bag of those every day. If we get banded, we’ll probably never have any of that again. Or even if we could, it’ll only take a chip or two to fill up the tiny change purse that’ll be our new stomachs. You can’t cram very much happiness into such a small space. This is what I’m marinating on in this auditorium full of fat kids when Char elbows me.