The Perfect 10 (25 page)

I weighed myself as a child, and cried when I put on two pounds when I was supposed to be on a diet. I stole Maltesers from the sweet cupboard and cried after I had eaten them. I joined WeightWatchers, my mother took me and paid my three-pound joining fee, and I stepped on the
scales terrified and mortified, awaiting the dreaded numbers. But in my first week I lost four pounds! Of course, by the end of the following week I had put five pounds back on. Then I would cry again and tell my mother that standing, aged twelve, in a room full of fifty-year-old women in a community hall with drab walls and a big set of judgement scales at the front, depressed me. It made me feel like my problem was going to be with me for life. It made me feel like a grown-up, and I still wanted to be a child, and do what I wanted, without responsibility.

Of course, the worst thing was that my sister, Elaine, could eat the same things as me and was as skinny as a rake. She liked salt and vinegar crisps and I liked ready salted. I liked Twix and she liked Toblerone. She weighed six stone something, and I was nearer nine. She was three years older, and four inches taller. She was little and I was large, as was often remarked by careless family friends or relatives. I remember it all, every comment shot into my brain, embedded like a miniature arrow, finding a comfy spot to puncture, for the rest of my life. They won’t budge, the remarks and the taunts; I can’t lose them.

I suppose the thing that shames me most is that I was the one defining myself by my fat, and I was the one keeping occasional suitors at bay, because I was the one who couldn’t believe that they found me attractive, mound of flesh that I was. And I have no doubt that it was this insecurity that a lot of men sensed, and that made me less attractive than if I had been truly happy and carefree about my size.

I remember Ian, a friend of a friend that I somehow knew in the way that you somehow know everybody, at university in my final year. He was nice. He had dark hair, which he had cut for five pounds in a barber’s in town, and he was five foot ten. He wore slightly faded Nirvana and Police T-shirts with jeans that had ripped themselves through wear,
and not been bought that way. He was funny, in a clever way that wasn’t obvious; you had to think about his punch-lines. His glasses were rimless, so that you sometimes forgot he was wearing them. Occasionally, after lectures, he would drop in to the flat that I shared with my friends Maxine and Helen, and we’d sit and watch
Vanessa
shows with topics like ‘I married a love rat’ or ‘my mum won’t stop touching my boyfriend’. I was always embarrassed if I was the only person in when he knocked on our back door and wandered in, in the way that students do. I always felt that he’d got a raw deal, because the other girls, who were both a size twelve, and one of whom I reasoned he must have fancied, weren’t there. So I’d overact and try too hard, to make him feel better. Ian tried to kiss me on three separate occasions, twice drunk, once sober. He never tried to kiss Maxine or Helen as far as I am aware, even the night we all got drunk because they were both leaving to teach English in Japan. Each time I ran away, unable to accept his kiss, convinced that he was trying only because he couldn’t be with the girl he really wanted, or because he was too drunk to know better and would hate himself in the morning. I couldn’t accept, given the options available, that he would pick me. I wasn’t in love with him, but I wish I’d let him kiss me.

And so I envy those glorious women for whom it is truly no issue, those soft and curved women carrying three or four or five or ten stones too many, who love themselves, and the way they look, and allow others to love them at the same time. I suppose the fat fall into two categories. The ones who are happy with their choice, and the ones who aren’t but can’t seem to change it. I let food, just food, just a sandwich or a slice of pizza or a hamburger or a bag of crisps or a Twix, run and ruin my life for so long. The real difference between me then and me now is in that sentence:
it’s just food. If you don’t want to be fat, find something else to love instead.

‘Sorry to disturb you – are you working?’

‘Not yet, Mum. It’s only twenty to nine.’

‘I’m worried about you, Sunny.’

I gulp loudly. My mother has never openly expressed ‘worry’ for me before.

‘I do eat, you know,’ I say defensively, only a little pleased.

‘Not that. I am worried about that awful thing you told me about.’ I had filled her in on the evening of the incident, about the Stranger and Dougal and Cagney and all of it. She had fallen very quiet once I had finished reciting my tale, and said she was glad that I was OK, and very proud, but the way that Dougal’s mother felt was the way that she felt now, even if he was only two and I was twenty-eight, and I should never do anything like that again. She asked if I had eaten and told me to have dessert as a treat. If I couldn’t have it now, when could I? Except that’s an argument that’s wearing thin …

‘Mum, there is nothing to worry about. It’s all done with.’

‘But how can it be? What about a court date? When you have to see him again? I’ll come, of course.’

‘I haven’t heard anything, and you can come if you want to, Mum, but I don’t need you to, I’ll be fine. How is Dad?’

‘Oh, you know, the same as usual. He couldn’t get parked at Sainsbury’s this morning. Honestly, Sunny, never marry a man who shows even the slightest interest in parking.’

‘OK, I won’t.’

‘Are you still seeing that boy?’

‘Kind of, I’m not sure, maybe …’

‘Well, if he’s not right don’t waste any time on him, Sunny,’ she says firmly.

My mother thinks I am stronger than I am. I think she
might kid herself that I have waited this long through choice.

‘I thought I might pop over on Friday, darling. We could go for lunch. We could see if Elaine is free.’

‘OK, but I have to work.’ My mother thinks that working from home is the same as not working at all.

‘Surely you can break for lunch, Sunny?’

‘Of course I can.’ I feel instantly guilty. It’s a special gift my mother has.

‘OK, well then, I’ll see you on Friday as long as your father lets me drive over to you.’ She sighs again, but we both know that she backs the car into stationary objects on a weekly basis, so I don’t blame Dad for not wanting her behind the wheel.

I hang up the phone after quick goodbyes, and chuck it onto my dressing table. I haven’t forgotten what I was doing before my mother rang.

I put the Fondler back under the covers and flick the switch, and the whirring starts again.

I lie back, with my eyes closed, and picture Cagney. I can picture anything I like, I can picture anything I like – I run the words through my head, as my mind fails to conjure up an image any more exciting than Cagney just standing outside Starbucks in his overcoat.

I blink my eyes quickly to cut off from that image and think of another one. I deliberately picture Cagney opening the door to my bedroom.

‘What have you got there?’ he asks evenly.

‘Just lending myself a hand,’ I reply.

I shudder a little, as I picture Cagney unbuttoning his shirt. He is wearing a shirt, and not a rollneck. It’s my fantasy; he’ll wear what I want. He comes to sit by me on the bed, and peels back the duvet to investigate.

‘Oh, I see,’ he says softly.

He leans in and kisses me slowly, placing his hand behind my neck to pull my mouth further on to his.

‘Let me do that,’ he says, and takes the Fondler out of my hands …

Maybe it was just the Fondler. Maybe it’s just that good. But it was the most powerful, exciting, excruciating, joyous orgasm I have ever had.

My therapist is a deep dark brown. He is sporting the kind of tan that only middle-aged men are able to achieve. He looks like an expensive suitcase. As soon as I walk into his office I notice it, or rather I notice the crazy whiteness of his eyes, in contrast to the berry brown of his cheeks. I am immediately jealous. Everybody, even my therapist, looks better with a golden hue. I want to be sunkissed.

His tan doesn’t make him act any differently, and I am surprised. I feel like it would be more appropriate if, rather than sitting down, crossing his legs, asking how I am, he lit a suspicious roll-up, poured himself a large measure of something sepia and potent, and asked me, ‘What’s your pleasure, treasure?’

‘Rainy season?’ I ask as I sit in my usual spot but on an unusual day. If I judged my friendships purely on the amount of time spent with somebody, I should be exchanging homemade best friend bracelets with my therapist about now.

He smiles at his pad as he flicks through his notes, but doesn’t say anything.

‘I hope you are moisturising, my friend, or you’ll be back to mini milk in days.’

‘It’ll go soon enough,’ he says, still scanning the page in front of him.

I feel mean, for what I’ve said.

‘You could top it up, you know. St Tropez is good. It
barely streaks, if you are patient. Or I had a spray-on tan a couple of months ago – a Polish woman in Debenhams on Oxford Street airbrushed me. The first night was terrifying, but … what?’

He is staring at me patiently, his legs crossed, one shoe dangling off a brown foot. ‘How are you, Sunny?’ he asks, resting his pad in his lap. He eyes flicker down to it quickly, to remind himself of a name or a place or a neurosis that slipped his mind, but they flicker back to me just as quickly.

‘I’m OK.’

I thought I might say ‘well’ when he asked me. I thought I might even say ‘good’, but now these words escape me, or refuse to form, as I am overwhelmed by the fact that I am no more than OK. It pays to be honest when you’re paying for answers. I run my hands through my hair, and pull my knees to my chest. He sits and waits.

‘I’ve been looking, a lot, at fat,’ I say. ‘At fat people, fat women mostly. The way they move. The way they hide. The length of their shirts to cover their stomachs. The buttons slotted precariously through stretched buttonholes, fit to burst. The comfortable shoes that support thick ankles, the skirts that sit lower at the back of their calves, raised at the front by the rolls of fat at their stomachs. Elaborate hair, coloured and styled, to detract from the rest of them, to accentuate the face. The way they walk, legs slightly apart, because the tops of their thighs are chaffing. The way they sit, on the tube, trying to make themselves small in their seat, upright and uncomfortable, scared to relax in case they inadvertently spill over into the chairs next to them, a little hot, a little flustered. They feel so conspicuous, so aware of their own volume and shape and mass. They don’t realise that the only people that care at that very second about their size are themselves and me. Just the two of us, an unhappy couple: they are so self-conscious, and I am so fascinated.
It’s like watching an old home video of the person I used to be. It’s admitting how ashamed I was of myself.

‘And then what’s really confusing is that there are some fat girls that I see, no more or less attractive than any of the others, who seem so … sexual. Their size and their big swollen thighs and breasts above and below huge bellies. These are not freakishly overweight girls by today’s standards, just big girls – sixteen stone, size twenty girls. And it’s not that I personally find them sexually attractive, but I can’t help but feel that men looking on, and I realise now that men are always looking on, must desire them! Must want to be enveloped in their gentle curves, must want to experience the softness of all that flesh beneath them, a big glorious cushion for their orgasm. And when I think that it makes me feel good, it makes me smile, until I remember that I don’t look like them any more. I am muscle, and I am long legs defined and toned. I’m skin, or I’m bone. I am half the woman I used to be …

‘Twenty years ago, if you had a big nose, you had a big nose. Unless you were Marilyn Monroe you lived with it, dealt with it. Nobody really cared, on a day-to-day basis, because you couldn’t change it so you accepted it, as did everybody else. But now everybody seems to care, because now everything can be fixed – big flappy ears that can be pinned, yellow teeth that can be whitened, too small/too large breasts that can be enlarged/reduced at will, and with the right personal loan, because it is infinitely more acceptable today to owe the bank ten grand than have a crooked nose. Whatever makes you happy. Twenty years ago I’d have been happy with a crooked nose …

‘But the more bits we can cut off ourselves, and reshape, to make us that little bit closer to perfect, the less meaning we attach to anything openly flawed. But look around, because surely something has to change, in the next twenty
years, given the pace at which we’re moving. Either it will become illegal to walk down a street without looking picture perfect, or people will be arrested and charged with “crimes against vanity” or something equally as ridiculous and
1984
, but it’s going to happen!’

My therapist smiles. ‘Or maybe everybody will agree it’s got out of hand,’ he says softly.

‘Maybe,’ I frown, unconvinced. ‘Maybe they will, and a rebellion will rise, and the beauty fascists twisting and pinching the skin of our culture will be hacked to a bloody ugly death, and we will all revert to looking the way God made us. Nothing will be tampered with again, be it pinned ears for potential models, or skin grafting for burns victims. The new rule will be simple: you are what you are. Appearance is the sum of individual experience, and that is what the world will see. There will be no more air brushing, and no more grasping for impossible goals.’