Leith, William (8 page)

And: 'I wonder what it would be like to . .

And: 'If I could talk to her, just for an hour, I could really help her.'

And how do I feel, looking at this woman? Oh, I hate her. I hate myself for hating her, but like I said, I'm fattist. I hate her because she reminds me that I am fat, that I'm a bit like her. But I think I hate her also because she tells me something about the world. She tells me that we live in a fat world. She tells me that we, the human race, are out of control. She takes away a little bit of my hope.

And look at her clothes. For a start, they are frumpy. Seeing this gives me a small frisson of horrified recognition. She's fat, so she is signalling, in a humble sort of way, her very humility. She's saying: I'm not the sort of fat person who is pretending to think I'm good-looking. She's wearing trainers, but not spiffy, bright, fashionable trainers. These are grey. They look like grandma's shoes; they look like they might smell of house-dust and cats and out-of-date cooking oil. She didn't have to choose these grey trainers. Mind you, her hand has been forced somewhat when it comes to her outer layers. Here, she has very definitely Gone Floaty, and wears a swaddling of greys and browns, a sort of protective cladding. She looks like a nomad's yurt that has been ripped from its moorings in a storm.

I'll bet she has an expanding waistband on her trousers. Until recently, expanding waistbands have been associated mainly with children's clothes (because children grow), sporting clothes (they need to be flexible), bedwear (must be comfortable) and underwear (too flimsy to rely on fasteners, must not fall off). But now, expanding waistbands are entering the mainstream. Like children, adults are expected to grow.

And expanding waistbands are a dangerous thing. As Greg

Critser points out, research conducted by John Garrow, a British scientist, suggests that tight waistbands inhibit overeating. Garrow investigated a group of formerly obese patients who had lost weight on a calorie-controlled diet. This was a radical calorie-controlled diet: the patients had had their jaws wired. When the wires were removed, Garrow fitted half the patients with cords around their waists. The cords were tight enough to make a white line in the flesh when the patient was seated. The difference in weight gain between the waistband group and the non-waistband group, Garrow found, was 'striking'. Those without cords gained weight at a much faster rate. And this leads Critser to an interesting point. Elasticated waistbands are the thin end of the wedge. What about the larger-sized chairs being fitted into many restaurant chains?

Will we grow into them?

The Million-dollar Question

I'm right behind the obese woman, close enough to observe the doughnut of fat she wears around her neck like a brace, like a shameful necklace, and I'm wondering what it's like to be as fat as this, and I'm thinking of Shelley Bovey's heartrending description, 'A Day in the Life of a Fat Woman'. Interestingly, even though Bovey writes in the first person, she switches to the third person when things get beyond a certain point of horror, when things get really personal.

When she wakes, the fat woman feels tired. 'She always feels tired, no matter how much sleep she gets.' She also feels

weak with hunger. She breakfasts on cereal carbs for a quick energy boost. In the car, 'she cannot do up her seatbelt without it digging in so that she can't breathe out'. She 'drives her car unbelted, breaking the law and feeling precarious and unsafe'.

On the train, she is 'the focus of many eyes as the train lurches on its way and the cause of irritation to the passengers whose arms she accidentally jogs as she passes them'. When she squeezes into her seat, she is 'jammed for a few agonising moments as her stomach sticks on the hard rim of the table and she is wedged astride the central divider'. In the street, she is jeered at by workmen. At the office, she is desperate for a doughnut, but too ashamed to eat in front of her colleagues.

Later, during a hospital appointment, the hospital gown does not fit in order to cover her breasts, she must wear it back to front, exposing her bottom. In a clothes store, she is intercepted by an assistant, who says, 'I'm afraid we've got nothing in your size.' On the way home, she visits a supermarket to buy some carbohydrate snacks for her children, because she feels 'the working mother's guilt'. At the checkout, she stuffs the snacks in the store's plastic bag as quickly as she can. Later still, weary and desperate, she goes home on the train. She is too tired to fight for a seat, so she stands. She wonders: is it just being fat that brings about this utter dreariness of body and spirit?

Or is there something else, something that caused Bovey to be fat? That, of course, is the million-dollar question. It's a question she never answers. It's a question I'd like to put to her.

Ten More Pounds and I'm Finished

Looking at the obese woman in front of me, this lost soul, this woman who I guess must have some terrible problem, who, I would bet, overeats, who almost certainly has a relationship with food which is pretty disgusting, looking at this woman and thinking of her and thinking of myself makes me feel uncomfortable, and I would much rather be looking at someone else, thinking about someone else's dress sense. How much longer before I have to upsize? How much longer before I Go Floaty? Because, of course, part of me is still certain, absolutely certain, that Dr Atkins is wrong, that I am fat and getting fatter and will be fat for ever, that all I have to look forward to, as Clive James once put it, is 'a lifetime of thigh-chafing misery', that Geoffrey Cannon was right, that diets don't work, that I'll never solve my problems at all, that my girlfriend, who says she doesn't mind about my weight, actually, secretly, does, that my bulk will increase relentlessly, like Robbie Coltrane ...

Why am I fat?

I'm fat because I overeat.

And why do I overeat?

For a moment, I stop, watching the woman as she walks, haltingly, past the golden arches. Which makes a certain amount of sense. When I have talked to very fat people about fast-food restaurants, they mostly say they never go in them they're too self-conscious. They don't like the sneering. What they don't like, precisely, is for people to make the connection between their weight and their eating. They do not like people to see the cause and the effect, and make the right connection. Rather, they like to keep 'em guessing.

Yeah, right.

But those clothes they've made me think. When you're fat, clothes lose their meaning. The messages they were designed to send become warped and twisted. Take jeans. When you wear jeans, you're saying something about being rugged and outdoorsy and fit. When you see a fat person in jeans, your eye computes that image as something different. It doesn't fit. It doesn't work. It looks a bit ridiculous. This is true of other items of clothing, too. I know, for instance, that, above a certain weight (200 lbs) I can't wear a leather jacket. It really does not work. Somebody recently asked me why I always dress so negatively, why always in black, why always so scruffy. And, in a moment of honesty, a brief meltdown, I said that, well, this was all I had left. Brightly coloured, I look like a fool. Smart, I look like a dweeb. I look like a nerd. A fat nerd. When you get fat, your fat drives you away from the image you'd like to have of yourself. Sartorially, it blots out large areas of possible self-expression, until you're left with virtually nothing, and then, eventually, nothing at all. These scruffy black clothes I'm wearing they're all I have. I am, just, clinging on to an outfit that is the real me. But it's not much. It feels like a life-raft. I am bobbing on the waves, clutching my raft, scanning the horizon for a possible means of rescue.

But this woman she's drowning. Those grim tweeds wrapped around her, around the bulk that she has become, those granny shoes they're not her. She has lost the her she might have had, the her I imagine she must yearn for. She's lost it. It's gone.

How long before I lose me?

I'm wearing: a tight black stretch T-shirt by Paul Smith, a tight black short-sleeved sport shirt by Gap, a black corduroy jacket, almost a coat, by Emile Lafaurie, black jeans which say Tommy Hilfiger but I don't believe they really are Tommy Hilfiger, and black suede shoes by Journey. My hair is a tousled mess. I am, of course, still unshaven.

Ten more pounds. Ten more pounds and I'm finished.

What It Means to Be a Fat Guy

Years ago, when I met my friend Michael VerMeulen, future editor of British GQ, we talked about men and weight. Michael was a magazine editor. I was 28 years old, living with Anna, getting fatter. Michael was slim. At 5 foot 8, he was 170 lbs. 'Yes, but I'm a former fatboy,' he said. He told me that he'd been a compulsive eater, and that, at his worst, he'd weighed over 200 lbs.

`Wow,' I said, 'I can't imagine that.'

We talked about the possibility of my writing something about what it means to be a fat guy. I wanted to write the article. But I didn't want to write the article. I didn't want to write it until I wasn't a fat guy any more. Fat guys terrified me. I began to think about them. Orson Weller had had a strange, difficult childhood, and later tried to blot out his self-doubt with alcohol and food and periods of promiscuity. Marlon Brando had had a strange, difficult childhood, and later ... exactly the same thing. Ditto Fatty Arbuckle, John Belushi, John Candy. Robbie Coltrane I wondered about. And the same thing seemed to be happening to Chris Farley, a

promising young comedian from Chicago, who was filling out at an alarming rate, hitting the bottle, being spotted around town with escort girls and hookers, dabbling in cocaine. These guys had all fallen into the same hole, the fat guy's hell you lack some essential thing, some specific, elusive quality, and so you strive and strive, trying to replace the thing you lack with your achievements. You try to be funnier and smarter than the other guys. You succeed. But somehow, the very effort makes you unravel. And then: the food, the booze, the promiscuity, the drugs.

And what about the fat guys who weren't famous? Did they suffer in the same way? Often, they did. They were the guys who laughed the most, sometimes with a kind of forced laughter. They were the guys who partied the hardest, who didn't want the party to end, because they had nowhere to go afterwards. (Fat guys who are not famous mostly have to pass on the promiscuity.) I knew fat guys who were incredibly smug and arrogant and brittle, always in on the joke, always quick to the punch, yet emanating a deep sense of unease, of distress. Fat guys who wore big fat rings and finely tailored suits, gangsterish shoes and hats. The fat-guy armour.

Hey, Big Dave!

Drinks are on me, baby!

And I knew about the other type of fat guy, too the one who wanted to be left alone, the one who'd given up the ghost. This was the person who lived inside the fat-guy armour. Sometimes fat guys tried on the fat-guy armour, and couldn't deal with it, and took it off, and moved around their lives warily, furtively, like peeler crabs.

A little over two years later, I started getting slimmer. How did I do this? I exercised. My diary at the time reads: '40 lengths. Football. Tennis.' That's all in the same day. I lived across the road from a tennis club. I hired a coach. Anna had told me that I was too heavy to get on top of her.

Oh, and I met this other woman, and when I talked to her, or thought about her, I felt dizzy. She had pale-blonde hair and blue eyes; she looked neat and sane but with something in reserve, sort of like Sharon Stone. We became friends. She was about to get married. There was nothing I could do. Anyway, I started to lose weight. Just to look good at the wedding, I thought, would be something.

I never wrote the article about fat guys. But I noticed something about Michael. He was beginning to get fatter. He put on 10 lbs, 20 lbs, 30 lbs. I remember one particular lunch we had in an Italian restaurant. I had a mixed salad. That was it. Just a mixed salad. Michael had a starter with bread rolls, a pasta dish, a pudding, wine, and coffee. I remember this meal because I had to leave early; I was on my way to France.

`Send my best to Anna,' he said.

Later, he broke his ankle in a fall and put on another 20 lbs. One day, he told me that he had decided to write the article about what it was like to be a fat guy. He'd had photographs of himself taken with no clothes on. They looked gross, he said.

Michael told me that he wasn't going to write the article for a while. What he was going to do was this: he was going to lose weight. And then he would write the article.

And Then, Click

When it happens, when the terrible thing happens, it arrives quietly, surreptitiously, like the sort of storm that kills sailors because they can't see it coming. You see the clouds on the horizon, you notice the water getting choppy. But you press on regardless. You press on blithely. Blithe: showing a casual or cheerful indifference considered to be callous or improper. It's a pretty good description of the state of mind of the person who embarks on an eating binge.

One minute you're fine, and then, click: you're in a different world. You might be walking along, more or less absolutely certain that you will not have any fries, will not duck under the golden arches, will not walk across the floor, smelling the oil and mechanically recovered meat smell, will not take in the dinky, bright-coloured tables and semi-comfortable chairs, will not approach the counter, will not look at the guy behind the counter, will not look up at him and smile. And while you're pretty certain you will not do any of these things, you allow your mind to dwell momentarily on the prospect. That's all it is. You sail towards the storm, and there's a moment when you can't quite walk along the deck with your usual assured swagger, because the boat is beginning to pitch a little, to yaw a little. And you tell yourself you're fine. And there's another moment when you have lost all radio contact. That's what it's like, inside a binge. It's like losing radio contact. It sounds silly, doesn't it? But that's what it's like.

One minute you're fine, and then, click.

A Time of Great Uncertainty