During an event with Gloria Steinem, as she was promoting her book My Life on the Road, we were sitting onstage in Chicago. I was trying to maintain my cool because it was Gloria Steinem sitting next to me. A few feet to our right was the sign language interpreter. As Gloria and I began to talk, we noticed that there was some rumbling in the audience. Several people wanted the interpreter to move so they could better see Gloria and me. Their request was understandable in that sight lines are important. But those sight lines were certainly not more important than the interpreter being visible to the hearing-impaired. The interpreter stood and looked around the stage, clearly confused and distressed. I told her to sit right where she was, and that others being able to see us was not as important as her being seen. It was a conversation, after all. What mattered was that we could be heard by everyone in the audience.
I don’t share this story because I am special or in need of congratulation. Instead this was one of those moments when I had a greater sensitivity that could only be brought about by the realities of my body. It was a moment when I understood that all of us have to be more considerate of the realities of the bodies of others.
I was and am thankful for that moment. I am thankful that my body, however unruly it is, allowed me to learn from that moment.
87
I often wonder who I would have been if this terrible thing had not happened to me, if I hadn’t spent so much of my life hungering so much. I wonder what Other Roxane’s life would be like, and when I imagine this woman who somehow made it to adulthood unscarred, she is everything I am not. She is thin and attractive, popular, successful, married with a child or two. She has a good job and an amazing wardrobe. She runs and plays tennis. She is confident. She is sexy and desired. She walks down the street with her head held high. She isn’t always scared and anxious. Her life isn’t perfect, but she is at peace. She is at ease.
Or put another way, I’ve been thinking a lot about feeling comfortable in one’s body and what a luxury that must be. Does anyone feel comfortable in their bodies? Glossy magazines lead me to believe that this is a rare experience, indeed. The way my friends talk about their bodies also leads me to that same conclusion. Every woman I know is on a perpetual diet. I know I don’t feel comfortable in my body, but I want to and that’s what I am working toward. I am working toward abandoning the damaging cultural messages that tell me my worth is strictly tied up in my body. I am trying to undo all the hateful things I tell myself. I am trying to find ways to hold my head high when I walk into a room, and to stare right back when people stare at me.
I know that it isn’t merely weight loss that will help me feel comfortable in my body. Intellectually, I do not equate thinness with happiness. I could wake up thin tomorrow and I would still carry the same baggage I have been hauling around for almost thirty years. I would still bear the scar tissue of many of those years as a fat person in a cruel world.
One of my biggest fears is that I will never cut away all that scar tissue. One of my biggest hopes is that one day, I will have cut away most of that scar tissue.
88
When I was twelve years old I was raped and then I ate and ate and ate to build my body into a fortress. I was a mess and then I grew up and away from that terrible day and became a different kind of mess—a woman doing the best she can to love well and be loved well, to live well and be human and good.
I am as healed as I am ever going to be. I have accepted that I will never be the girl I could have been if, if, if. I am still haunted. I still have flashbacks that are triggered by the most unexpected things. I don’t like being touched by people with whom I do not share specific kinds of intimacy. I am suspicious of groups of men, particularly when I am alone. I have nightmares, though with far less frequency. I will never forgive the boys who raped me and I am a thousand percent comfortable with that because forgiving them will not free me from anything. I don’t know if I am happy, but I can see and feel that happiness is well within my reach.
But.
I am not the same scared girl that I was. I have let the right ones in. I have found my voice.
I am learning to care less what other people think. I am learning that the measure of my happiness is not weight loss but, rather, feeling more comfortable in my body. I am increasingly committed to challenging the toxic cultural norms that dictate far too much of how women live their lives and treat their bodies. I am using my voice, not just for myself but for people whose lives demand being seen and heard. I have worked hard and am enjoying a career I never dared think possible.
I appreciate that at least some of who I am rises out of the worst day of my life and I don’t want to change who I am.
I no longer need the body fortress I built. I need to tear down some of the walls, and I need to tear down those walls for me and me alone, no matter what good may come of that demolition. I think of it as undestroying myself.
Writing this book is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. To lay myself so vulnerable has not been an easy thing. To face myself and what living in my body has been like has not been an easy thing, but I wrote this book because it felt necessary. In writing this memoir of my body, in telling you these truths about my body, I am sharing my truth and mine alone. I understand if that truth is not something you want to hear. The truth makes me uncomfortable too. But I am also saying, here is my heart, what’s left of it. Here I am showing you the ferocity of my hunger. Here I am, finally freeing myself to be vulnerable and terribly human. Here I am, reveling in that freedom. Here. See what I hunger for and what my truth has allowed me to create.
Acknowledgments
Pieces of this memoir, in different forms, have appeared in GOOD, Tin House, Autostraddle, The Toast, xoJane, and Brevity.
Thank you to Law & Order: SVU for always being on television so I can have something familiar in the background as I write.
I want to thank Maya Ziv, Cal Morgan, Kate D’Esmond, Amanda Pelletier, and Emily Griffin at HarperCollins for supporting this book so fiercely, so completely. Maya, who first acquired this book, has always been its most ardent champion, and Emily offered generous, insightful edits that helped shape this book into what it is.
Thank you to “Team Gay,” which includes my incredible book agent, Maria Massie; my film and TV agent, Sylvie Rabineau; my speaking agents, Kevin Mills and Trinity Ray; and my lawyer, Lev Ginsburg.
Thank you to Sarah Hollowell, a beautiful young woman I met at the Midwest Writers Workshop, who taught me more than she will ever know about my right to take up space and advocate for my body and feel beautiful in my body exactly as it is.
Thank you to my friends Lisa Mecham, Laurence José, Alissa Nutting, Jami Attenberg, Molly Backes, Brian Leung, Terry McMillan, Lidia Yuknavitch, Mensah Demary, and Brian Oliu. Also thank you to anyone I’ve forgotten because I always forget someone and I apologize for that.
Thank you to my family, who have always loved me unconditionally and made sure I knew I could always come home—Michael and Nicole Gay, Michael Gay Jr., Jacquelynn Camden Gay and Parker Nicole Gay, Joel and Hailey Gay, Sony Gay, Marcelle Raff, and Mesmin Destin and Michael Kosko.
I found the courage to write Hunger because of the support of my best friend, Tracy, who sees me as I am and takes me as I am and taught me how to use Snapchat and always makes me laugh. Thank you, thank you, thank you.