“Don’t tell me you’re a gay boy with an eating disorder,” Maya said, and at the sound of the g word I kicked her under the table. Hard.
“’Fraid not. But I always take things too far. Sound familiar, Maya? I was like that with your father. I fell for him so hard that nothing else mattered. I loved him so bad I couldn’t see straight. So I made a lot of bad decisions. When you started playing the guitar, when you’d be practicing that thing for five hours a day, I saw myself. That same obsessiveness. It made me happy. It also made me scared.”
“Mom, don’t—” Maya said, but Mom cut her off.
“And you, Matt. You both know by now that I used to have . . . a drinking problem, I guess you’d say. I was an alc—I was an addict.”
I looked around for a waitress. Anyone, to come rescue Maya and me from this Special Moment. But the place was packed and no one had time to save me from a stressful soul-baring session with my mom.
“I had a hole inside that I was desperate to fill,” Mom said. “I’ve been talking to your doctor about it. My addiction, your disorder—she thinks they might be connected.”
“I think so, too,” I said quietly, letting words come out without stopping to think, because if I stopped I’d censor myself, and I was as curious as anyone else at the table about what the hell was going on in my head. “I know what you mean. About the hole.”
Maya put her hand on Mom’s, which was resting on mine.
“Dr. Kashtan says I can’t look to anything outside of myself to fill the hole,” I said. “Not money, not success, not anyone else’s approval . . . nothing that you can’t control one hundred percent.” I didn’t add, Not love, not even awesome love with a superhot guy.
“I believe that,” Mom said. “Anyway. I bring all this up to say that if it wasn’t for those problems, I wouldn’t be where I am today. We wouldn’t be. Hell, you two wouldn’t be here at all. The point of all this is to tell you not to be ashamed of what you are or what bad decisions you’ve made in the past because of it. But know it. Stand tall in it. Understand it.” And just like that, before a single second of awkward silence could set in, she moved us on to safer pastures. “What are you ordering, Matt?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
Ordering a sundae would have been the easiest thing in the world. Swallowing that thing in five giant spoonfuls would have been simple. And then, a half hour later I’d be hating myself. The hard thing to do was order a grilled cheese sandwich and an extra pickle, the way I always used to when I was little, and eat it slowly, which is what I did. Mom clapped her hands. “Okay, grown-up conversation over. You are now officially children again. And you must obey me immediately no matter what I say.”
“We never did that when we really were children,” I said.
“Silence,” Mom commanded, and we ate.
RULE #52
People only have the power over you that you give them.
Unless you’re locked up. Or somebody’s ward. Or you live under a dictatorship. But even then, their power is a legal fiction. It possesses your body but not your mind.
DAY: -79
TOTAL CALORIES, APPROX.: 2100
“Good session?” Tariq asked when he picked me up outside the therapist’s office.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think it was.”
Something loud and angry and beautiful and punk was thumping from his speakers. We sat like that for only a second before he put his truck in drive and we started moving.
“Got us lunch while I was waiting,” he said, and reached into the backseat for a bulging McDonald’s sack.
“Is this a test?” I asked.
“Maybe,” he said. “Do you need to be tested?”
“Want to see my food tracker?” I dug out my cell phone, tapped open the app.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do.”
I handed it over. He hmmphed a couple times then handed it back. “And are you being honest with all of those entries?”
“Of course I am. I’m only hurting myself if I lie.”
“You’ve hurt yourself before.”
“Touché, asshole.”
Food was still a fight. I cupped a medium french fries in my hands and wanted so badly not to eat them. And then I ate them, one at a time, and I felt fine, because eating was not an enemy to be conquered or sign a peace treaty with, it was a thing human beings had to do to live.
Tariq ate as he drove. I watched him shovel fries into his mouth, marveled at the strong line of his throat when he tilted his head back. His greasy lips were magnificent.
“I still love you,” I said without meaning to.
He didn’t say anything.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was jerkish of me to say. I don’t want to make things awkward. I’m really happy we can be friends, after everything that happened.”
“Me too,” he said.
“But . . . maybe . . . friends with benefits?”
He snort-laughed, his mouth full. “Shut up,” he said when he’d swallowed.
“I wasn’t kidding.”
“I know. But still. Shut up.”
“Why? I thought we were good . . . together.”
“That’s why we can’t, idiot. Because I care about you, a lot, and it’s been really hard for me wondering if you were going to die at any moment. And I could never just hook up with you without . . . feeling it. Falling back in.”
“But I’m better now,” I said. “I’m not going to keel over and collapse.”
“I know. And I’m happy for you. And I really hope you can stay better.”
I nodded. I felt full, sleepy.
“How’s your dad?”
“He may be Syrian, but he’s still acting pretty Egyptian. You know, because he’s in denial. Get it? De Nile?”
“If we’re not together anymore, I’m under no obligation to laugh at your stupid jokes,” I said, although I was, in fact, laughing.
“. . . because he’s in denial about my being gay,” he said after too long a pause.
“Yeah . . . no . . . I got it.”
“I got into Wesleyan,” he said.
“Holy shit, dude! Congratulations!”
“It’s pretty great. Still waiting on a bunch of other applications, but it’s nice to have at least one yes.”
“You’ll get nothing but yeses. You’re a goddamn genius.”
“Thanks, Matt.”
And it was there, then, that it truly set in: we were over. Something about the way he said my name. With warmth, with friendliness, but not with love. We were buddies. That was all.
“My senior year is going to suck without you,” I said.
“Naah. You’ll be a god to these kids. And it’s amazing how little the Hudson High bullshit will bother you once you have one foot out the door.”
“I hope so.”
On our right, hanging from the sturdy branch of an oak tree, was a pig. With a gunshot wound in its side. Some asshole had lassoed it, thrown the rope over a branch, tied the other end to the hitch of their truck, and drove until the poor terrified thing was hanging ten feet in the air, and then used it for target practice. I shut my eyes and could see it as clearly as if it were happening, this animal dying because of me. I could imagine its fear, its screaming. I practically smelled it. My eyes burned with sudden wetness, and suddenly it felt very hard to breathe.
There goes that autonomic regulation again, I thought, but knew it was just guilt.