He giggled, a little boy and a man all at once, as he stretched out his long mighty arms and peeled the flannel off. I almost cried at the sight of it, there in the cold air of his poorly heated truck, in bright December daylight, his torso, its smooth lines and curved muscles, its dark dense hair, its perfection, its beauty, my helplessness.
Maybe your first time should not be like this. Maybe it should happen because you’re both super excited about it—not because you’re terrified you’re going to get dumped because your significant other found out just how damaged you are. Not because you’re using sex to fill an emptiness inside you. But I was super excited about it. We both were. And there were so many reasons, pro and con, so many fears, but in that instant they all fell away.
You don’t want the details. Well, maybe you do, but I don’t want to share them.
Here are a few things I don’t mind sharing with you.
When he saw my own naked torso, he said, “Oh, baby,” and his voice was thick with fear and pity, and he touched my rib cage, and for a split second I saw myself as he did, no longer the fat tub of guts I saw when I looked in the mirror but a tormented tortured body starved to the edge of breaking.
And then he pulled me to him, and his heat blocked out every other concern.
And I was, to use the secret language of gay sex, the bottom.
And it hurt.
And it was wonderful.
And we used protection.
And before we started Tariq whispered, “I have no idea what the hell I’m doing,” and we both laughed, and I knew from the way my heart beat under his hand, from the perfect mix of fear and fearlessness that I felt, that here was true power, here was real magic. Sex was magic. Love was magic. None of the harsh brutal bloody abilities I had figured out for myself were anywhere near as powerful as this.
And “All I’m Losing Is Me,” by Saves the Day was the song that was blaring from my boyfriend’s truck’s speakers when I stopped being a virgin.
And when it was over and we stared at each other’s bodies in disbelief and we held each other and smoked cigarettes and talked about our epic America-conquering road trip, I rolled down the window and sniffed the air and cried, because love was magic but it was not enough to soothe my sickness, my hunger, and nothing would ever be enough.
RULE #46
The human liver produces foul-smelling ketones as a byproduct of metabolizing stored body fat. That’s why your breath suddenly reeks of acetone. Which is what they make nail polish remover out of.
Also: pain will only help you if you let it.
DAY: 36
TOTAL CALORIES, APPROX.: 50
Black stars and the swiftly spinning world were more or less constant by then. Pain in my stomach made walking one hundred percent upright impossible. Pain in general scrambled my brain. Kept making me forget what I’d realized the night before. The epiphany of how delusional I was. Force of habit kept me from eating, because food would take the edge off the pain, and pain was power.
Maya. My father. My mother. The slaughterhouse. Seeing the past, fixing the future. Everything was within reach. Only a little more pain, and I’d be there.
No, Matt. Stop. That’s insanity. You know this isn’t real.
And even though I must have looked like hell, people seemed happy to see me in school. Word would have spread after my encounter with Ott. Everyone in that room had seen our staring contest; seen him start crying. Nobody wanted me to stare into their eyes and plumb the depths of their soul to break their brain.
“Hey,” Tariq said when I found him in the parking lot at lunch. He took a long look at me.
“Hey,” I said.
We sat in his truck.
“Gross, stop that,” he said, swatting my hand away from my mouth, and I didn’t frown or pout because he really had helped me out, because I’d been damn close to pulling out my middle nail altogether. As it was I could feel it bleeding afresh.
“Let’s go to the pines,” I said.
“Fine,” he said, the terse Tariq Fine that meant Nothing is fine.
“I really like The Dharma Bums,” he said, breaking the silence halfway there. “I’ve been reading up on Buddhism, too. Fascinating stuff.”
“Right?” I said. “Like how they say reality isn’t real. It’s an illusion. None of the things that stress us out or frighten or hurt us are real.”
“I like that,” he said.
“Some Buddhists believe that because reality isn’t real, someone enlightened enough can control the fabric of reality.”
“Huh,” he said, unsure what that had to do with anything, which was fine, because I had really just been talking through a little theory of my own: that hunger had made me an enlightened being, an awakened soul, that I could do anything, or almost anything. That I could control all matter, bend time and space and substance. Like I said: old habits. The more likely scenario was me dying and losing my grip on reality in the process.
“Did you call those therapists?” he asked, looking at me.
“Yup,” I lied. “Called a couple. Eyes on the road! Their offices were closed for the holidays. I left messages.”
“Good!” he said, and then it occurred to him that I might be lying. Clever boy. “I want to talk to you about it. I think it’ll help you.”
“I don’t want to,” I said.
“Relationships aren’t just about what one person wants,” he said, veering into the wrong lane again. “For this to work—for us to work—”
“Fine,” I said, and touched his stubbly chin. “Three questions. Go.”
With no hesitation, he asked: “Why?”
I shrugged. I thought-stuttered several excuses, rationales, lies, oversimplifications. But Tariq deserved an answer. And so did I. Pain and dizziness made me open to anything. “When I started, it was because I didn’t like the way I looked. But then I liked the way it felt, to limit the amount of food I ate. It became an end in itself.”
“Do you like the way you look now?”
I looked in the rearview, saw my too-long chin and preposterous cheeks, and shook my head no.
“What don’t you like?”
“I don’t want to say it.”
“Say it.”
I am fat and gross and no one will ever desire me.
I opened my mouth to say it, but it wouldn’t come out. Nothing would. The whole way to the pines, I could not say a word. When we arrived at the clearing and came to a stop, I leaned across and kissed him until he relented and kissed me back.
There is a thing I am obsessed with. It is a thing most boys are obsessed with. It has a lot of slang names, all of them ugly, and a couple formal ones, none of them pretty. In fact it’s funny that something so awesome should have such dumb names. It involves your mouth. Even saying that sounds creepy, but it’s the best I can do. By now you will probably have guessed what I’m talking about because you are smart. That’s why I like you. I don’t need to spell out every little thing.
Anyway I wanted to do That Thing. Bad. Like, overpoweringly bad. I wanted to seize Tariq and do That Thing to him, because I wanted it . . . and also to change the subject. Even though my head was ringing with monstrous, stupid, ridiculous questions.
Does sperm count as food? How many calories are in an orgasm? In a spit vs. a swallow? Will it take the edge off enough to hold me back when I go to find my father? And punish him?