I was standing in my tiny bathroom, waiting for the poisonous-smelling Veet I had dripped all over the floor to eat through the hair on my legs, when my phone rang. I was using it as a timer so that toxic slime wouldn’t burn through the top two layers of my skin and start incinerating vital organs, and, because I was in a charitable mood, I answered. It was J, and he immediately launched into a long, convoluted story about a whole bunch of shit I didn’t give a shit about. No one ever tells good-looking dudes when they talk too fucking much, which is why I always end up looking like a bitch when it happens to me. “I have to remove my leg hair,” I interrupted. “This is why I never answer the phone when you call.” And just as I was about to hang up on him, he asked, “Would you go to a Weight Watchers meeting with me today?”
Despite the fact that I could feel the thioglycolic acid starting to cook the tender meat on the back of my calf, I hesitated, then said, “Weight Watchers is for quitters who are in denial about how good ribs taste.” At that moment, smelling my seared leg flesh, Helen Keller slipped into the bathroom brandishing a knife and fork.
I’m not sure what compelled me to eventually go, other than my bubbling undercurrent of self-hatred and fear of further alienating myself from a sanctimonious vegetarian who believed I had a greater appreciation for jazz than I actually do, but twenty minutes later, my chemically smoothed legs and I were watching him fasten his seat belt snugly over a nonexistent belly. I looked down at where my left thigh spread a little bit over my seat, coming perilously close to grazing the gearshift.
I’m not friends with the kind of people who suggest going to dinner and then agonize over whether to get a little oil in addition to the lemon juice on their vegetable-only salads; my friends get the chips. And the queso. And the tacos. Unless I’d begged for an assisted suicide, no one I know in real life would ever propose to me an hour of horrified weight checks and guilt-ridden calorie tabulation disguised as social activity. “Is this because I got bacon on my burger the other night?” I demanded of the sleek, hardened profile, its darkness standing out in sharp relief against the blazing sunshine outside the car window.
“Of course not!” he lied unconvincingly.
“Mm-hmm. I saw you give the waiter a look when I asked him if the restaurant had a set of defibrillator paddles.”
“SAM, THERE WERE THREE DIFFERENT PROTEINS ON YOUR PLATE.”
Aha! There it was: BACON SHAME. From someone with a preternaturally high metabolism who looked very good in the inappropriately tight turtlenecks he was fond of wearing. I should have never given my number to a man I’d watched writing his name on the clipboard for open mic at a poetry reading, but I was momentarily dazzled by the perfectly aligned, piano-key teeth revealed when he smiled and pointed at the book I was reading (The Devil Finds Work) and proclaimed it his favorite Baldwin. I should’ve rolled my eyes and told him to keep it moving because that is no one’s favorite Baldwin, but this is the beauty of being beautiful: people just let your dumb shit rock. So, ignoring the inner voice screaming at the sight of his scribbled-in notebook full of Deep and Meaningful future song lyrics, I heaved my backpack off the seat next to me and let this walking stereotype talk to me about Fela Kuti.
“How many points are in an entire pizza?” I stage-whispered to J halfway through the meeting. All 1,287 chins in the room turned to glare at me. “You know, what happens if I just can’t stop and I eat the whole thing? Do I just add up twelve pizza-slice points and not eat for three weeks?”
THAT IS A REAL QUESTION, OKAY. If you can have one square of triple-thin-crust pizza and happily close the top of the box and put it in your refrigerator until the next day and not wake up periodically throughout the night asking yourself whether or not you made a huge mistake, then maybe this is not the book for you. BITCHES GOTTA EAT. J was hoping that the riveting world of calorie counting and cheat meals would spark a desire to get with his version of healthy so that we could, in his words, “be a better match.” And I kept a notebook so full of formulas and calculations that it looked like Good Will Hunting wrote that shit. I was crabby and terrible and went to sleep dreaming about pudding every night, but I lost ten pounds. J was happy; I was hungry: all was right in the world. Until I asked him if he was ever going to not have three roommates and maybe get a checking account. You know, so we could be a better match. Then it was over.
I know a lot of hot, unconventionally beautiful ladies who kick ass and have sex with rock-star dudes and aren’t sorry about it at all. I need to say this loud for the girls in the back of the class: if a dude doesn’t want to have to use both hands to grab your ass that’s totally cool; it’s his choice. But that doesn’t make you a piece of shit. You hoist up your saddlebags and go find some dude who thinks you’re rad and doesn’t mind wiping the sweat off your bottom stomach when you switch sex positions. Don’t be all down in the dumps (like a truck truck truck) and let opportunists and perverts take advantage of some low self-esteem you’re absolutely too awesome to have. When I couldn’t catch a goddamned cold for two-plus years after Fred and I broke up I DID NOT GIVE A SHIT, because I vowed to stop fucking around with people who hate me or don’t laugh at my jokes or want me to be thankful for the opportunity to split a lunch check on a Tuesday with a man who was in one motherfucking Old Navy shorts ad in the summer of 2009. He was sexy and everything, but, I mean, he didn’t even know how to CC an e-mail to multiple recipients. I don’t have to be grateful for shit.
A Christmas Carol