ch.1

There is a place- just on this side of jumping off of a bridge or drinking alone in an empty room until you pass out- called The Point. It’s just south of “The Point of No Return” and just north of “Fuck this, I Can’t Deal with This Shit Anymore”. It is the Breaking Point, and everyone has it; just like everyone has a potential sense of humor, or everyone has a potential to be an alcoholic. The Breaking Point is the dark wasteland, littered with the fragile crumpled bodies of teenagers, driven past The Point of No Return by a bad grade, or a breakup, or pressure from parents. (It may sound shallow, but every molehill is a mountain when you’re two feet tall.) and the older, more resilient bodies of the more crafty adults- those who, instead of going home, hanging themselves, and leaving the rest of us to just wonder what went wrong, leave nice, neat little notes saying that they’re sorry that this happened but it was the right thing to do.

Then there are the rest of us who dwell just this side of the Breaking Point- the ones who walk through this wasteland every day, just to wonder if we could- and how soon it would happen. We don’t desire the quick death that will leave our bodies fat, bloated, bruised, but rather the slow ones that will leave us thin and beautiful. We, I suppose, are the lost ones.

Really, I suppose, I’m not ugly. I mean, when you have lived with your body for so long, eventually, you will stop seeing the good and start seeing all of the little things- those that might not bother you at first, but after awhile, maybe you notice are different from others that you believe to be more beautiful then you would ever achieve. There’s a picture of me: average height (ok, maybe a little on the short side…), curly brown hair, quick smile, brown-green eyes, a little thick around the hips and thighs, but working to change that. Attractive by some standards of beauty, fat by others- and, really, those are the standards I’m worried about.

“I like bones!” “I love a flat stomach on a woman!” “Girl, you got GBS!” (Ghetto Booty Syndrome, for yall who don’t speak “Black Boy Trying to Be Gangsta”) All this, in some way or another, helped push me, along with constant critiques of my weight by family, and my parent’s obsessiveness with weight gains (and particularly losses). But maybe I’m getting a little far ahead.

I was the dark one in the family, my Mom’s family, that is. The Moby Dick among all the sleek nymphs and Dianna’s running around. (Ok, I know that I just mixed Herman Melville with Shakespeare and Greek gods but, really, bear with me please? I’m trying to make a point.) I was short and dark haired; my cousins, like those evil children in that movie (no, not The Exorcist, you idiot! Not Children of the Corn, either, but you’re getting closer…children…children…Oh! Light bulb! Children of the Damned, maybe?) Were perfect Aryans. I would have been one of the first eliminated, they would have made it till the end. I was chubby. They-even in their younger years! It’s like they started losing Baby Fat at three! That isn’t normal! - were thin. In fact, they were so thin that they were Thin. Now, everyone says that there’s a stigma against fat people-I know there is. When I was a kid and my cousin, Terry Marie- yes, the full Southern Monty, The Double Name- sat at the kitchen eating chocolate cake. I remember, almost perfectly, the glass sparkling in the sun, in the dull monochrome that all old memories have.

“Grandmamma!” I said, in the strange fake-British-accent-adopted-just-for-flashbacks-like-these, “may I have some chocolate cake?”

“Certainly not, my dear!” Dear Old Grandmamma replies, scandalized. “You are so much older and must watch your weight! You know, I heard old Dr. Humbert tell his daughter the other day that if your thigh measurements exceed eighteen inches, it will be perilous to your health!”

Ok, so all of that didn’t happen exactly like that: first and foremost, Grandma was an old Southern Lady, and second, if she ever heard old Humbert Humbert talking, it would have been in some schizoid delusional fantasy. But the gist is the same, even if I did take a few (ok, a lot) of liberties with how I told it. (And, really, if you can’t have fun while telling something as serious and fairly life-changing as that, how will you even make it to middle-aged?)

But, even as I joke about this, I can’t joke about The Voice- the evil, sadistic bitch that sits in my skull and pours nasty little comments and dirty, ugly memories down my throat, where they fill up my stomach. She makes it easy to dietcrashnewmealplanstarvemiracledietwillmakeyoulosetenpoundsintwoweeksyoucanlooklikethesepeopletoothinisinthinisgreatthinthinthin, because she fills my stomach with something that is zero fat, zero calories, zero cholesterol, the new miracle food: memories. Guaranteed to make you thin and kill you slowly, or your money back! At one point, when I was Trying to Make Peace with My Body, I gave her a name, in hopes that I could control her. I called her Miranda, after the daughter in The Tempest, since we were reading that at the time. It seemed to fit, since Miranda (or, as I yell at her) The Bitch, caught me up in a tempest of my own.

“Please?”

I look up, bite my lip, look at the hand slowly moving down my arm, over my stomach (that I automatically tense up- I splurged today and don’t want him to see my stomach not flat) down to the button on my jeans (still a size three. He ain’t getting these babies off without us being in the dark till they’re a size zero-the number of absolute perfection. I’m a fat cow right now, back up two sizes from where I was when I came left for treatment.) I push his hand away, “No.”

“Why?”

“Because….”

“Because why?”

“You don’t have a condom.”

Rustle, rustle. There’s a quick digging sound, like scratching dirt, as he shoved his hand up to his wrists in his pockets. “Yeah, I do.”

“Ok,” I fake a laugh, “so you just assumed that you were getting some tonight?” I raise an eyebrow.

“Baby…” his exasperated (v. “great irritation or annoyance) voice makes me count backwards, trying to shut Miranda the fuck up.

20….19….18….17….

“I love you. And I want to have sex with you.”

I open my mouth to argue (16…15…14…13….shut up, Miranda! Don’t screw tonight up, too!) But he gives me A Look. “With the lights on for once?” (13….12….11….10….)

He doesn’t want to see you with the lights on. He thinks that he does, but he doesn’t. If he saw that disgusting sack of skin that you call a body, he would lose his hard-on in a heartbeat. You’re fat….(shut up, Miranda) and ugly (9…8….7….go away, I won’t listen to you….) Oh, but you will, and you know that you will- if just because I’m the truthful one, I’m the one voice that you can’t shut up. Tears don’t work on me, they only make me angry. Anger only makes me want to play. Happiness makes me want to see you crash and burn. (6….maybe you’re right….5….my thighs are still too big….4…..he thinks he loves me, but he loves what he sees….3….if he saw me totally naked, every dimple of cellulite and pooch of fat, he’d totally leave….2….)

“Can we please just turn off the lights? It’s more romantic.” Look up through the eyelashes, purse the lips subtly so he wants to kiss you, push out your chest a little- no! Not that much! No need to overemphasize what he’ll feel that you don’t have.

He sighs, again, but this time it’s his Defeated Sigh, his I’m Giving In sigh. “Ok, baby. Honestly, I just want to be able to touch you.”

In the bathroom, after all is said and done (and my Lee lays, on my bed, his hair tousled, his clothes scattered everywhere, his cheeks flushed- orgasm: the best blush!) I strip, avoid the mirror and turn the shower water on. No lukewarm or hot water for me. This is Purification. Cold water. Cold water clots cuts faster (try saying that ten times fast). Cold water gets out grime better. Cold water cleanses, makes you whole again (even with a huge hole in your life.)I sit on the edge of the tub, shower running, letting it get up to full potential. Red blooms on my skin and I am mesmerized by the track that it makes when a wayward drop of water splashes into it. More red blooms-it’s like a garden!

I step into the shower, stand under the ice-cold water, tilt my head back so that I don’t have to look at the patchwork quilt of my skin-with cuts and scars criss-crossing, stitching strips of skin together like the quilt Lee is sleeping under now. I stick my head under the water; let it run down my face tearswater dripping into the hollow of my collarbone and the concave canyon of my shoulder blade, the place between the bone and socket.

This is my body; I murmur into the water, this is my blood. The water under my feet turns pink-oops, cut too deep, got to watch that-my head swims at the sight and I turn to put my leg under the water. Pink streaks down my leg, pools up at the drain, rushes down into the yawning maw of It. My head feels fuzzy, like it did when I started smoking, or like it did the one time that I got high, sitting in a circle in Lee’s basement, passing around a joint, feeling myself release from reality. The edges around my vision blacken and I grab the shower curtain, regain my footing. I’m fineeverthing’sfineiswearsolemlyswearsohelpmeGod.

Clean. Cleansing. The world washes away. All of the dirt washes away. All of the dirt from my name, lengthening it from the recent adaptation of Lil-tough, cigarettes and safety pin bracelets, and opinions spewed loudly across a crowded classroom, with a dirty mouth to beat; this tough creature becomes, slowly, Lillie- soft, sweet, bubblegum and teeny bop, knee socks without a trace of irony and experiments with makeup, stealing kisses from boyfriends behind the bleachers. Finally, after the water has cleansed me, washed away all of my sins so that I am whole, at least until the next time that the hole opens up, I am Lilith (yes, Mom named me after Adam’s first wife. The one he left for Eve- the whore.) Saddle shoe, crayons, curls and ribbons, colorinsidethelinesholdhandswhenyoucrossthestreet, Blue’s Clues and Bear in the Big Blue House. Who I was before I fucked up my life.

I crawl into bed, clean and whole. Safely bundling myself against Lee feeling my fat thighs and flabby arms in a loose tee shirt (probably one of his) and a pair of sweatpants. He stirs. Slips an arm around my waist. Buries his face in the nape of my neck. I shiver. Try to pull away. Stop. Move closer. Settle for a happy medium between the two. He kisses the base of my neck, where my t-shirt starts. “I love you, Lilli.” Lilli. Lill-ehh. His pet name-the one that he uses when he’s sleepy, high, drunk, horny, or all of the above.

I can’t answer. The words curl around my neck, wrap around my windpipe. Crush me. He can’t love me. He doesn’t. He can’t. You can’t love a dead girl.