150 Pounds (29 page)

Holy shit. She was so full of anger she literally saw red for a minute. Who was she, if she couldn’t count her calories? It was part of what made Alexis, Alexis. Those tiny black numbers that adjusted throughout the day beneath her fingertip filled her with calm. She’d been in control and now she wasn’t. The mood in the little room shifted into a scary calm, the eye of the storm. She set her shoulders back. The softer Alexis that had emerged recently, surprising her deeply, ran into a hole and hid. And the blackness she’d lived with since Mark died seeped back out. She realized it had never left. Her voice was a measured whisper.

“Thanks a lot, Noah. That phone cost a lot of money. So that’s how you really feel, isn’t it? You think what I do for a living is stupid. You think what I’ve done with my life, how I’ve earned a living since college with not a single dollar from my parents, is … what’s the word you used? Crazy?”

“No, no, that’s not what I meant.” Noah looked pained. He wiped white plaster off his forearm. It tugged something within her, to see the big guy get upset, but she wasn’t going to let sympathy back her down from the rage she hadn’t tapped into since that evening in March when she’d sliced open her finger and fate had sprinkled that pixie dust over her and she’d met Noah, that rage she’d had bottled inside her for the three years since Mark had died and her parents had essentially disowned her.

“Alexis. Alexis, I—”

“Don’t. Don’t even say it.” She didn’t want to hear his I-love-you. She didn’t want to hear anything else from him ever again.

“You don’t respect me. All this time, all these months I’ve been helping you build your restaurant. I scrubbed that fur shop on my hands and knees, I held that chili-making contest for the neighborhood, I ate a million fattening
wings
.”

She spit out the word.

“And for what? This is how you really feel. You think
Skinny Chick
is stupid. You think I’m stupid. Well, I don’t need you. I was doing just fine on my own, before I met you.”

“Alexis, whatever you decide, I want to help you.”

“Stop,” she said. “Just go.” She pushed on his chest, which was solid, and she could feel his heart flutter beneath her hands. “I’ll send you the bill for the abortion.”

It was a horrible thing to say, cold and unfair, and she knew it the second the words left her lips. Noah looked shocked, like he’d been punched in the stomach. Resigned, he turned away and walked out of the bathroom. She kept thinking he’d turn around. She heard the apartment door open and close, and just like that, the man who had walked into their lives and made them all fall in love with him was walking down the stairs and out onto a very crowded New York street.

She wouldn’t see him again for three months. And by then, everything had changed.

Fat and Fabulous

I was crossing the street between Washington and Bloomfield in Hoboken today, leaving my Vinyasa yoga class and feeling really good in my body after the workout, when out of nowhere a fire-red Ford pickup truck came screaming around the corner, its engine so hot and the car so close it left a scald mark on my calf.

As I gathered my bearings, having almost been killed in broad daylight, the driver leaned on the horn and shouted out the window, “Move your fat ass, lady!”

Now, it’s been quite some time since I have encountered a FBA, or in layman’s terms, a Fat Bigot Asshole. I was out of practice. I just about managed to flip him the state bird. It just brought me right back to why I started
Fat and Fabulous
. I’ve written (some may say even harped) about this many a time, but this blog is about healthy at any size, and ridding the word “diet” from your vocabulary (I always gained all the weight back, and statistically, so will you).

I wasted so many years hating my body, wearing XXL T-shirts over my bathing suit when I went swimming so I looked like a tent with tits, yo-yo dieting that put strain on my heart, trying to fit into the mold the media has set out for young women.

I have an e-mail folder where I put all of my “troll comments,” or people with bad intentions who want to post mean comments on
Fat and Fabulous
. I think there is a special warm place somewhere in hell for troll people, like Mr. Ford.

But, I digress. When I heard Mr. Ford’s slur it brought me right back to my roots.
Fat and Fabulous
’s goal is to force people to see Fatties in a whole new light, a pink, shimmery, luminescent one. I want FBAs to see not all of us are fat because we stuff our faces with junk food every night.

We once had a commenter on the message boards who posted stories about receiving nasty remarks because she uses a motorized scooter when she shops at Target. Really she uses the scooter because she has arthritis in her legs, but people automatically assume she is fat and lazy.

One of my favorite arguments (and you know I have many) is that everyone has one really skinny friend who eats like a linebacker and yet magically remains thin. Yes, of course we hate her, but we also can learn an important lesson there. Why is it that people believe it is possible to eat this much and stay skinny, but somehow they think it
impossible
to eat healthy food and yet still be fat? FBAs think we eat candy bars for breakfast, ice-cream sundaes for lunch, and donuts for dinner.

I launched
Fat and Fabulous
to start a conversation about Fat, and what it means to Americans. One of my bloggers, Jessica, wrote a story about a year ago (you might remember it) called “Thin for a Year,” about when she went on Jenny Craig and lost two hundred pounds (which she has since gained back, but she says she feels okay with that). Jessica couldn’t believe what a different world she was in—she felt like “Alice, when she falls down the rabbit hole.” The cute barista at her local Starbucks grinned at her when he handed her a tall hot chocolate. Her parents told her how “proud” they were, apparently about the weight loss, though Amanda also happens to have a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Princeton and has published, twelve, yes, count ’em, twelve books. Aren’t these accomplishments worthy of receiving flirtation and pride, more than the fact that you can fit into skinny jeans?

Another reason I started this blog was for my sister, Emily. This is the first time I have ever written about it, but Emily is a bigger Fattie than myself, and she’s taken shit for it her whole life. I remember kids calling her “tub-o-lard” on the playground, and “Pillsbury Dough Girl” in ballet class. Emily is my favorite person and I won’t stand to see someone I love so much get hurt.

I write this blog not only for my sister but for Angela White in Omaha, Nebraska, who wrote a beautiful post about her mother, who kept going to the same doctor for her entire life, even though that doctor told her, after only superficial exams, that her chronic shortness of breath was due to her being overweight.

Angela’s mother passed away two months after gathering up the courage to seek a second opinion, whereupon she found out she had asthma. She suffered an immense asthma attack while out buying groceries and hadn’t yet filled the prescription in her purse for an inhaler. Angela blames her mother’s doctor—his prejudice against her weight blocked him from making an accurate diagnosis and his negligence was fatal.

But back to yesterday, back to Hoboken. After I caught my breath, and felt the anger with the FBA subside, I smiled. I smiled right there in the intersection, because he had done me a favor: he’d reminded me of all these reasons I mentioned above for why I started
Fat and Fabulous
. I smiled because I have a life, amazing friends, and I don’t have time to worry about whether or not my ass jiggles as I walk across the street. I smiled because I love the hell out of lip gloss, face creams, Betty White, Italian festivals, and now apple orchards. I enjoy life, and this guy doesn’t.

Because I eat what I want, which is sometimes asparagus and sometimes a frickin’ cheeseburger. So what if I can’t go braless, even at night? So what if I get glared at on planes, in the supermarket, in line to get my oil changed? I’m a person. With a mind, body, heart, and soul. And I’m a good person who eats (mostly) healthy food. This redneck asshole brought it all back, and for that I can only say, Thank You. And I hope you someday get over having such a small penis you have to buy a large truck to compensate.

And on that classy note, loyal readers, I am taking a little mini-break from
Fat and Fabulous
. Before you start running for the hills, please note that this is only temporary, while I get the farm I inherited from Aunt Mimi in working order as a true apple orchard. As some of you know, for the last three months I have been splitting my time between my (very crowded) apartment in Hoboken and my little shabby chic farm in Chester. I have learned how to trim apple trees from twenty feet to ten, to hand-pull the weed vines that like to wrap themselves around the apple tree trunks, to hunt and destroy apple scab, a nasty disease that looks like the zits I got in middle school, and lastly, to bake the best apple pie on the East Coast. (I’m not kidding—I found Aunt Mimi’s recipe, and let me tell you, it’s awesome!)

Come September 1, I hope to be open for business as a real, live, working orchard! So if you live around Jersey, or even if you don’t,
Fat and Fabulous
readers from far and wide will be able to come to Shoshana’s Apple Orchard for meet-ups, book groups, and apple-pie-buying excursions! See you in three months. In the meantime, my friend Jane will be posting a great story about yo-yo dieting to fit into her wedding dress which almost led to disaster, and Andrea, who is a frequent contributor, is going to continue to write her column about healthy and yummy summer cocktails.

Dr. Amanda Weber will also be posting weekly about healthy eating, and also writing a riveting column on the language of anorexia—how to spot the hidden signs in your friends. See you all in the fall!

XO,

Shoshana

It was a rare Friday night that Shoshana didn’t have any guests sleeping over at the farm, and this weekend was no exception. Her mom and Emily sat on the new couch given to her by Joe Murphy and Greta, which Shoshana knew Greta had probably picked out and Joe had paid for. It was a dusky purple Crate & Barrel microfiber wraparound in a much larger design than ever would have fit in her Hoboken apartment. Shoshana was able to balance living in both places, which felt worlds apart. She was a city mouse
and
a country mouse. She recently learned that before she died Mimi ingeniously had the property declared as a historic landmark, and its land was also preserved. Therefore, Shoshana’s taxes would be low enough to allow her to keep the Hoboken apartment.

In the past three months, she spent nearly every day here, and with the assistance of Joe Murphy (“assistance” being a relative word; he mostly sat in a lawn chair and sipped from his flask) she’d cleared out the jungle behind the house and gotten started on owning her own orchard, a notion that gave her the chills. Greta brought her shoe boxes full of black-and-white pictures of the farm in its heyday.

Joe taught her to recognize disease and treat it, how to cut the branches and allow the optimum amount of sunlight through. He provided a rich history of the farm, including more stories about her father as a child.

Every night, Shoshana walked over the hills with Sinatra to dine with him and Greta. Greta had patiently cleaned the farm with her, refusing all Shoshana’s offers of pay. Shoshana often wondered what arrangement Greta and Joe Murphy had; Greta did all the cooking and cleaning, but the two bickered night and day, driving one another crazy.

Greta was fond of saying refrains like, “That man wouldn’t remember to eat breakfast if it weren’t for me.” Or, “I doubt he even knows his own Social Security number. He’d be dead in a gutter if I didn’t take care of him.”

Joe Murphy put up a great show that Greta was the “beast on his back,” but as she got to know them Shoshana could, even more than initially, see underneath how dependent on and grateful to Greta he was.

Her mother and sister had been visiting just about every weekend, and Emily had dropped a few comments about moving in, which then caused their mom to state that
she
might as well move in as well. Then Andrea asked if she could stay on the couch this weekend because Aggie had been driving her crazy with her kleptomania and weird sculptures: “If I have to smell that girl’s patchouli one more day I’m going to strangle her with one of her dreadlocks!” The farm couldn’t have come into her possession at a better time; Shoshana loved her roommates dearly, but with Jane’s wedding tomorrow morning, everyone had been a little on edge at the apartment, especially Jane. She was glad she had a place to get away from the commotion.