Fat Chick, a novel
Lorraine Duffy Merkl
Copyright Lorraine Duffy Merkl 2009
The Vineyard Press at Smashwords
ISBN: 1-930067-70-4
Cover design: David Cohen
All rights reserved
For Neil
1981: Brooklyn, New York. You had me before hello.
Prologue
I was finally a “fat cat” ruling my world from a fully reclining royal blue velour aisle seat. It was my first ever ride on a corporate jet, courtesy of TREND Magazine, prominent client of one of New York’s hottest boutique agencies, Image Advertising.
As the newly minted Image Vice President Account Supervisor, it was my job to oversee their new major ad campaign. I had been in advertising a mere seven years and I was still under thirty. I had never looked better. Felt better. Been better. Unlike most everyone else in The Big Apple, I didn’t have a shrink, but if I had had one, I believe he/she would have told me I had a goddess complex, which was OK considering I actually did think that I was a goddess. Finally.
It’s funny, actually stupid, that all the self-help books and women’s magazines tell you to, “find your inner goddess,” “be the goddess you know you are,” “act like the goddess you want to be seen as,” blah blah blah. Then when you accomplish this, everyone thinks you’re conceited. I didn’t care. I didn’t care what anyone thought anymore, except the consumers who would be persuaded by our brilliant ad concept for the foremost bible on what’s in style.
Each ad would be a “behind the scenes” shot to show that the glamour of TREND was not just on its glossy pages. We were on the way to Miami to capture the rigors that go into a South Beach fashion shoot; flying to Paris to shoot TREND’s editor-in-chief meeting with some new designer on the way to being the next big thing; on to Australia to shoot the photographer who was shooting “Great Places to Go in Sydney” for the magazine’s travel section; next we were to follow a fashion editor to Los Angeles to hunt down the best vintage stores on the west coast; then on to the tiny community of Arroyo Seco, just outside the tony mountain town of Taos, New Mexico to get candid shots of a journalist interviewing Julia Roberts at her two-million dollar, sprawling forty-acre ranch.
Besides me, our flying fashion show took off with the agency’s Creative Director, Byron Jackson, TREND editors and assistants, the ad campaign photographer, the fashion photographer and a bevy of established supermodels who were coming out of retirement, taking a break from their new television careers or putting aside their hatred for the business, simply because TREND had come a-calling.
I would have to remind myself to mentally document everything so that Kim, my model-worshipping pal from the gym, could live vicariously.
“That’s a great jacket,” Gisele mentioned to me at 30,000 feet.
Yes it was. Black linen, peplum cut with etched black buttons and black beads embroidered on the collar. It looked vintage, but was actually brand spankin’ new from Anthropologie on lower Fifth.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Could I try it on?”
Like I would say no?
After she did, Gisele conceded, “It looks better on you.” But she turned to Kate for a second opinion. When she did, I elbowed Byron and said, “It does look better on me, doesn’t it?”
Byron just sighed, shook his bald head and rolled his big brown eyes.
When we settled into South Beach’s Savoy Hotel ––the only Ocean Drive hotel located directly on the sand of what’s known as the American Riviera––I headed straight to the poolside gym and talked on my cell phone to my personal trainer-cum-boyfriend, Rick.
“I miss you babe,” I cooed.
“Miss you too. Don’t forget to think of me when you’re squatting.” That was his gentle reminder for me not to let slide the feel-the-burn exercise regimen he had designed just for me.
The warm and sun-kissed days passed as Byron and I watched our TREND ad campaign unfold: the very hip ad agency photographer took pictures of the au courant fashion photographer, once a judge on “America’s Next Top Model,” shooting glamorous TREND editors figuring out how they wanted the too-exquisite-to-be-real-people models (who seemed to always be eating) to pose.
There were also “before” pictures of the supermodels getting blowouts, comb-outs and makeup applied. Funny how their “before” shots looked a lot like most people’s “after” shots.
It was always the same: Byron and I sat back on cushioned chaise lounges and watched through Oliver Peoples-shaded eyes at our “vision” coming to fruition. All the while, I munched on carrots and drank plenty of water, and Byron ate carrot cake and drank fruit smoothies. All this tall, wiry man did was stuff his face and he never gained an ounce. “It’s just my metabolism,” he’d sniff. If he could bottle what he had, he’d put Slimfast out of business.
One day, as he was savoring a breakfast burrito courtesy of the craft services chef, Byron met my mystified glance and accused, “What? And don’t tell me how many Weight Watchers POINTS it has; I really don’t give a crap.”
Well, I gave a crap and it was worth it, because on our off hours, I had the confidence to lay out by the luxurious pool surrounded by lush, tropical foliage with human mannequins whose bodies graced international magazine covers and were lusted after by men across the globe.
I always thought women like that would be vain and smug. But I was wrong. They may not look like the real women you ride the subway with everyday, but they were as real as any one of those straphangers. They spoke of men who wanted them, whom they, of course, had no interest in. Men whom they loved, but who didn’t love them back, not for more than their faces and bodies, anyway. Fear of younger models who were still in high school; being cheated on; unappreciated. Their bouts of marriage-fever; baby-fever; and of course, the latest diets.
I also continued to work out in the hotel gym; sometimes the models were there too.
Once, we all left together and some young, clearly fashion-conscious teens were hovering outside the door, hoping their idols would sign some of their Elles, InStyles and Allures.
“Are you a model, too?” one asked me. She must think I’m one of those petite models.
“Um, no, but I could be, don’t you think?” and I struck what I thought was a modelesque pose.
She gave me one of those blank thirteen-year-old girl stares that said, “Grown-ups are such weirdos,” and shrugged, before she backed away from me as though it were Halloween and she suspected I was doling out apples with razor blades buried inside.
Oh well, I couldn’t be too offended; after all, she did say she thought I could have been a cover girl.
I was in heaven. The surroundings, the companionship, the chicness of it all. And on top of it, I fit in. This was the adult equivalent of sitting at the cool lunch table in high school.
If this was a business trip, may I do business forever.
One night, I answered the door to my well-appointed suite and it was Rick--surprise! What didn’t surprise me was that he did something so sweet and romantic. He was such a gentle giant of a guy. I leaped into his arms and we headed right to the bedroom and stayed there practically all weekend. He even declined my invitation to be introduced to Heidi & Co. “What do I want to see them for? I have you.”
Another night, after a hard day’s work watching the bikini-clad models roll around in the surf, we all went out to a well-known celebrity haunt, Crobar, to dance off dinner. Everyone had eaten conservatively, except for the calendar girls, who had pigged out on purpose, it seemed, because they knew people were watching them.
“We do this all the time. People think we starve ourselves, so we shovel it in to freak them out,” said Naomi with a wry smile.
We all laughed, but then I leaned over to Byron and whispered, “Should I show Carolyn Murphy my Weight Watchers book so she can see how many POINTS are in that deep-fried whatever thing she’s eating?”
“Only if you want her to go get a restraining order,” he answered, as though he were talking to a mental patient.
Being with a gaggle of supermodels really opened doors. When we got to the club, not only had the velvet rope been cast aside (hell, they threw it away) at the mere sight of them, but drinks were comped, and the riff-raff (who ordinarily I would be considered one of) were kept in abeyance.
After a couple of weeks, Byron and I said goodbye to Heidi, Gisele, Kate, Carolyn, Naomi, Tyra and Christie. We flew to Paris and followed around the editor-in-chief. There was unfortunately no time to sightsee. This didn’t matter to me, since Paris is where I had spent my junior year of college. But, Byron, well, this was his first trip to Europe and I think he wanted glamour. Instead we got to run after this woman who had ignoring people down to a science. We fared better in Australia – dogging the photographer and travel writer around was sort of like being on a tour, the kind where the tour guides pretend you’re not there. The vintage thing in L.A. had its moments. We shopped on Melrose and had dinner at The Ivy, where we watched Keanu Reeves try to look natural as he ate and talked to his companions, while the paparazzi across the street snapped away.
Then came the trip’s coup de grâce. We were off to New Mexico to catch up with the journalist who was doing the Julia Roberts piece. Being a voyeur of the rich and beautiful was actually taking its toll. Not that I missed my 1-800-M-A-T-T-R-E-S or Greenwich Village nabe; I didn’t even miss my newly decorated and semi-palatial office or my home away from home: the gym. I just got tired of sitting and watching other people work.
Byron and I both got a little annoyed as we stared down the ad agency photographer who was getting frustrated while taking candid shots of the journalist just sitting there and nodding at Julia as she answered his questions, ones she had answered only a million times before. “This is exciting,” the photographer kept muttering as she rolled her eyes and snapped pictures with so little effort that I was tempted to grab the Nikon and start doing the shooting myself.
Byron said to the shutterbug, “It’s supposed to be ‘behind the scenes.’ I don’t care if he’s doodling on her tablecloth and Julia’s stirring her ice tea-–shoot it.” Then he turned his attention to me.
“So we’ll be back in New York in a few days. What’s going to happen with you and Lisa?”
Lisa Katz was another VP Account Supervisor at Image. We had gone from best friends at work to non-communicating colleagues soon after I slimmed down to goddess proportions.
“Where’d that come from?” I said. We had managed to avoid the “Lisa” subject the entire trip.
As Byron indicated to the photographer with a very intimidating and impatient finger, that she should take a picture of the reporter on the phone and Julia playing with her daughter Hazel, he said, “I’ve tried to stay out of this, but I talked to her this morning and she asked about you.”
“Oh, really.”
“I told her you were the same and that didn’t sit too well,” he said, implying that everything had been my fault.
He nudged me to walk him over to Julia’s kitchen counter for a coffee.
“What does ‘the same’ mean?” I demanded to know.
“It means you’re different. You lost weight and you became someone different and that hasn’t changed.”
“That’s right...”
“I’m not talking about the way you look.”
“Right again. I’m no longer that fat chick who wouldn’t speak up in meetings because no one would listen anyway, since people don’t like to listen to anyone they don’t want to look at.” I saw Julia look up. I guess I was being a little too loud.
I continued in a more dignified tone. “People like when you’re down and out, and by out I mean...” I gestured with puffed cheeks and my arms curved at my sides to simulate a fat middle and hips, “...out-to-here. It makes them feel good. Well, my life may not be perfect, but at least I’m not fat and self-conscious like her.”
We walked over to a long table with proofs from the prior day and started looking through the pictures.
“Nobody is denying you your confidence. It’s, well, I’ll just say it. It’s your arrogance that we could all do without.”
“Arrogant is what jealous people call other people’s high self-esteem,” I said, before I tossed the proofs back on to the table and started to walk away.
“And by the way,” I shouted back at him, “when I was out on the patio, Julia said she wished she had my legs.”
Chapter 1
“Fat And Skinny Had A Race”
“C’mon, Trish. Craig wants everyone now,” said Lisa, as she ran by. You would have thought the building was on fire the way everyone in the agency was scrambling. The daily ritual was to sit around the oh-so-hip and happening Soho shop (our CEO and President, Craig Silver was one of the first ad agency mavericks to move off Madison Avenue), doing our work (God help you if you were not working when he made his rounds) and waiting for the verbal alarm to go off: Craig wants…Craig needs….Craig says…
Lisa was two years older than I was, having already reached the big 3-0. Unlike me, Lisa was married to an accountant, Joe, with an adorable two-year-old daughter, Lil.
I took her cue to get movin’ down the black-carpeted hallway with the red and silver papered walls to the glass-enclosed conference room (Craig really missed Gordon Gekko’s ‘80s when red, black and silver was the “it” color combination.) I hustled while I juggled a file, a pad, a pencil and chugged a chocolate Slimfast shake.
I don’t know why I bothered starting the day being calorie-conscious. Every day was the same futile eating routine: Slimfast for breakfast. Salad bar for lunch. (Of course, so stressed by the time lunch rolled around, I always added stuff to the salad like croutons, tuna with mayo, breaded chicken cubes, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, peppers, artichokes. Am I leaving anything out?) I never seemed to leave anything out of the salad. Or on my plate. By mid-afternoon, I was so full of anxiety that I’d head down to the lobby for a Kit Kat, or two. If we worked late, which was almost always, on the dime of Image we had our choice of Chinese, Mexican, Italian… Well, let’s just say that the U.N. commissary does not offer the array of ethnic delicacies spread out in our conference room.
“We work you, not starve you,” chuckled Craig, who stayed trim forever on Atkins.
If neither of us had to put in O.T., I’d go to dinner with my boyfriend, Kevin. When I didn’t see him, I spent my solo evenings with my other favorite guys, Ben & Jerry. (I don’t like to cook just for one. B&J comes in the convenient pint size, single serving.)
The herd was now stampeding past me. If I were last to show my double chin in the conference room, I would be seen as lazy as well as fat. I took a deep breath and inhaled the last straw full of my diet du jour, then hoofed it.
“Lisa, wait up.” But she had already entered. I hoped she’d saved me a seat so I wouldn’t have to scramble for a chair; if I missed out, I’d have to stand for the whole meeting, which is a killer on little feet forced to hold up a big ass.
We were all assembled, and as usual we all ended up in a situation where we had to hurry up and wait. Craig was on his cell and obviously in no rush to get off the phone, even though about fifty people, with work to do, remained idle.
He stood up at the front of the room, gray at the temples, dark gray Armani suit, looking like the statue that was sure to be erected to this ad legend nicknamed “The Silver Fox.” Rumor had it that Craig gave himself the nomenclature, but he swore it was bestowed upon him by Adweek, when they profiled him in the early ‘80s, and touted how every account he touched turned to gold.
Regardless of who gave him the name, the reputation was real. It all began in the mid-’70s when he was a college-educated mailroom guy at the now defunct Ted Bates Advertising. The agency was pitching the PanAm account. Craig, always privy to executive memos before the execs, read some data about the airline and figured out that the company had as many employees as seats on all of its planes put together; hence, technically there would be one PanAm employee for every passenger. This maverick mailroom guy ran to the office of the president of one of the world’s largest ad agencies and pitched him the line: PanAm: One-to-One Service. He was promoted, not to Junior Copywriter, but to star Copywriter. Moments later, to Creative Supervisor. And about half an hour after that, to the position of youngest Creative Director in advertising history.
Five years into his skyrocketing career, he walked out of Bates with a fifty-million dollar piece of business and his own agency, hailed in the trades as the sneakiest and savviest move the industry had ever seen. He’d been going strong ever since.
The Fox was tall and slender; in pretty good shape for a sixty-ish ad slave, at the beck and call of demanding and, much of the time, unreasonable clients who could easily take ten years off your life every five minutes. He had manicured nails, a perennial tan, and a parade of designer wear, for business and dress-down days.
I’ve gotta say, Craig Silver knew his business. “It’s all about image,” he would remind us all time and time again; it made up for what he did not know about graciousness, sensitivity and diplomacy when dealing with employees.
He sent an account executive home once for showing up wearing a black Diane Von Furstenburg wrap dress the day of a major pitch. “You look like you’re going to a funeral!” he screamed. When a senior art director and loyal employee asked if another A.D. could cover a shoot for him, because the guy wanted to attend his grandfather’s funeral: “If your replacement fucks up, it’s your ass,” substituted for the customary yet ever predictable, “Sorry for your loss.” And then there was that week when we had brought in several freelance computer graphics people to work 24/7 to help us pull a major client presentation together. The night before the meeting, when all was finally said and done, and the finished product could only be described as stellar, Craig poked his head in to “politely” ask the freelancers to “clock out,” as he was not going to pay them for sitting around, eating pizza and saying their good-byes.
No one ever called him on his take-no-prisoners deportment, because, well, he was the supreme ruler there, and everyone was scared of him. One word from him to a headhunter or honcho colleague and you’d never write a jingle in this town again.
When I interviewed at Image over five years ago and tipped the scales at what a boxing trainer would categorize as a “light weight,” I thought he was the most superficial man I’d ever met – even for the advertising industry. He kept looking me up and down, gazing at my dewy twenty-three-year-old face and slender shapely form, while mentioning how he could definitely put me in front of the client. I really wanted to tell him to shove the account job, in fear that he would start pimping me out to get business, but I knew that an assistant account executive position there, as opposed to the giant agency I was getting lost in, would put me on the top of the ad heap. “You work at Image? For Silver?” people would ask with an awe reserved for archangels who report directly to Jesus.
I got used to the cachet of working for the cool guy in the hot place. So to secure my status, I busted my ass. Obviously the quality of my account work secured my place there, because he didn’t let me go after I no longer fit the image of Image. I had become one of those people whom others describe condescendingly as having “a pretty face.”
Right after I took the job, my fiancé, whose name I shall never repeat again until the day I die when my last request to God will be to send him to hell, dumped me for one of those MAWs (model, actress, whatever).
We had met in senior year of college. Allow me to qualify. My spiky ‘do-ed dude had not gone to college. He did not even finish high school. Landscaping was his day job, and we met when he yelled at me to “Get the fuck off the grass, coed bitch.” His charms increased when he noticed my CBGB’s t-shirt and apologized immediately. “Sorry. Sorry. You’re obviously cool. I’m just in a bad mood.”
He was so cute and cool and unlike anyone I knew, that I forgave and forgot to go to classes the rest of the afternoon. I offered him half of my oversized peppers and eggs sandwich compliments of my mom. I had not gone away to school, but lived at home, and as in high school, commuted down from Westchester to the Bronx. That afternoon on the campus of Fordham University, we talked about his musician hopes and dreams until he knocked off work around five.
We started dating, which entailed listening to songs he’d penned, following him to open mike nights, and comforting him when yet another band member would bite the dust, or a paying gig would turn out to be some pre-teen’s birthday party.
This made his rationale for leaving me all the more unfathomable.
He claimed the MAW was more devoted to his music career than I. I, who carried equipment into rock clubs so seedy I feared for my life to go solo to the bathroom. I, who insisted that I knew in my heart that every trite piece of crap song that he wrote was on a par with anything Lennon and McCartney ever churned out. And I, who swore I would support him with my meager entry level ad gal wages because I knew I would get it all back (with interest) when my tattooed millionaire’s first album went platinum – any day.
The real reason he dumped me: my rival’s dad was the head of A&R for Geffen.
I had stayed thin for that man. Forget thin. I was anorexic for him, mostly because I didn’t want to lose him to some smoky-eyed, heroin-chic groupie. The ones who wear a lacy, black Victoria’s Secret bra as their shirt. I lived on diet Coke and salad with lo-cal dressing. I popped Correctol to flush myself clean two or three times a week. I was boney, yet I looked in the mirror and thought I looked attractive. Seeing my hip bones protruding was an accomplishment. And where did it get me?
Since I needed a paycheck and could not stay in bed with the covers over my head forever, I ate my way back from rejection depression and became what my Rocker used to call the “fat chick,” who only looked good at 4 a.m. through beer goggles. “The bigger the cushion, the better the push in,” his band used to joke.
Craig said nothing about my altered appearance. He also did nothing, like put me in front of the client, but I knew he liked my work because he hadn’t fired me.
Finally off the phone, the Silver Fox started rapping on the top of the black marble table that commanded the middle of the 30x40 foot room, and the buzz from its inhabitants came to a dead silence.
“OK, now why did I call this meeting?” Craig joked, tapping his tanned and wrinkle-free Botoxed-temple with his manicured index finger.
The group groaned in that good-natured, “Oh boss, please don’t tease us,” way.
“Oh goody. Shecky Silver is going to do schtick,” whispered Lisa. “I feel like I’m twelve and back in the Catskills suffering through dinner and a show with my parents.”
“He reminds me of my uncle, who’d get drunk at wakes then get up and ‘say a few words’ about the deceased, as though the funeral home was his big shot on Leno,” I added.
Lisa was Jewish and originally from Montclair, New Jersey. I am Irish Catholic and hail from Riverdale, the Upper East Side of my borough. It worked for us. Sort of a same-sex Stiller and Meara. Although so many people thought we had gravitated to each other because we were both Irish. Black Irish that is. Fair skin with dark features, like Colin Farrell or Jennifer Connelly. “I’m Jewish!” Lisa used to make clear when someone would ask if she knew how to make corn beef and cabbage. Finally, she got her husband to buy her a huge gold Star of David for her birthday so “They’ll see my Jew-ness coming a mile away.”
“OK, OK,” Craig said like a snarky emcee, who knows that the crowd would rather hear the band than his banter, but he’s going to make the crowd wait just a little bit longer to “build up the excitement.” We all knew we were there to hear the big changes that were happening at our ever-growing and glowing agency.
“I’ll get right to it. This has been a banner quarter for us. Three new clients in two months. The departure of some of the agency’s higher ups. Voids need to be filled, so here goes. For the Hanes Underwear account, stepping in as the new VP Account Supervisor will be Lisa Katz.”
Applause, applause, deafening applause. I was so proud of my pal. I gave her a friendly nudge with my elbow to encourage her out of her modest little wave/mouthed “thank you,” combo and into a Broadway-esque bow from the waist, but she wouldn’t. “Show off” was never her style.
“And...settle down people,” demanded our master of ceremonies, “and the TREND Magazine account will be headed up by new VP Creative Director, Byron Jackson.”
Thunderous applause. I caught his eye and gave my guy friend the thumbs up. No one deserved TREND more than dapper, gay, and creative genius-y Byron from Jackson Heights, Queens, who had totally transformed himself from street kid to chic kid so he could get into the Manhattan scene. His diction had become so impeccable, that he was often asked if he was British. He always answered, “Yes.” Then under his breath he’d snicker, “Me and Madonna.”
“And the new VP Account Supervisor will be, of course...,” continued “Shecky” Silver. He started looking around the room with his index finger pointing to the crowd and twirling in a circle. He had this, “where is that person,” look on his face.
“I’m here, I’m here,” I wanted to spring up and say. I knew it wasn’t going to be me. But a girl can dream. I had grown, literally, into the image of someone that Image could no longer put in front of the client, even though I had put in all the long nights, the research, and written the account brief and presentation that had helped bring in the business. Technically, I was part of a team, if you can call working with Chelsea the Barbie doll a teammate.
She had not even wanted to be an account executive. To anyone who would listen, she told the story, with pride no less, of how she had taken off between her junior and senior years of some third-rate upstate community college, moved to New York and started waitressing between catalogue modeling gigs.
When lo and behold, one day she waited on The Silver Fox. Next thing you know, he convinces the restaurant’s manager to let Chelsea take her break so she could join him for a bite. He told her that if she was going to step, fetch, and wait on people, she should do it with more prestige.
Well, her looks had worked on her behalf once again. She used to tell people that she had been “a geek,” a total ugly duckling in high school. She had heard supermodels tell that tale on E! True Hollywood Story, and in other interviews done for the Style Network. Chelsea liked how it sounded: modest, as though the whole beautiful-face-staring-back-from-the-mirror thing was all new.
Truth be told, Chelsea had had the body of a Hooters waitress and face of a cover girl since she was thirteen and knew how to use it.
After lunch, Chelsea quit her job and was escorted by Craig back to the agency for the grand tour. The next day she started as an assistant account executive. She still did, and still does, catalogue modeling. She is the image of Image, even without a B.A., since she has the BS down pat.
Well, the only thing she did as part of the TREND new business pitch was present to the client, because Craig called it her forte. I did everything else, aka the legwork.
“I don’t care,” I convinced myself. “Being a workhorse beats being a show dog any day,” I kept telling Kevin. “Boo-YAH!” he would say, then we’d fist bump in a mock reenactment of him and his Wall Street buddies.
I was about to jump out of my skin. Craig’s finger was twirling, twirling, twirling. Round and round it goes, where it stops I don’t know as long as it didn’t point to...
“Chelsea Tyson,” said Craig. That bleached blonde bitch was going to be my boss. Lisa put a supportive hand on mine, then I clenched my quivering other hand on top of hers; until we both had to break free for the obligatory applause. I looked at Byron who mouthed the words, “You’re still on the team.” I smiled and applauded like the trained seals I used to see at The Bronx Zoo.
Lisa leaned in reassuringly, “Byron’s saying you’re on the team.”
“Yeah, second string,” I said.
Chelsea, looking like a Score’s pole dancer stuffed into a tasteful, yet flirty, Banana Republic outfit, did that palm-front-then-back hand wave favored by doll-like beauty pageant winners on parade floats or bored members of the Royal Family.
To my ears, the applause from her adoring fans sounded like machine gun fire.
Chapter 2
“What’s Eating You?”
There’s just nothing like a good chomp on a milky brown Hershey’s Bar to chase the blues away. Some people live to eat. Others eat to live. I eat to deal, so I can go on living. I learned this at an early age when food, more specifically dessert, even more specifically “a nice piece of cake,” was held up as the cure-all for whatever ailed me.
I missed honor roll by a point? I’d get a nice cup of tea and a scone slathered in butter. Tripped during the ballet recital? Nothing soothes a bruised ego like an English Muffin pizza created by me and supervised by my mother, who by the way never partook in said treat.
By the time I reached twelfth grade, I could lick my wounds (from opposite sex crushes gone awry to girlfriend cattiness) by licking ice cream, scarfing salty Lays straight out of the large yellow bag or downing Oreos after drowning them in giant glasses of whole milk.
I always felt so much better, until the problem that had been “eating” at me went away and I would be left with a big “fat” reminder of it. Then I’d always feel so much worse than I had about the original issue that plagued me in the first place. Then I’d go on a diet. I’d feel so much better, until the next “crisis” that I had to eat my way through. Then…
I had been doing this for over a decade. I shrugged it off as, “just the way I am,” and remained the creature of my bad nutritional habits.
So there I sat, alone in my middle-management, two-window office that overlooked my favorite Manhattan view – Starbucks, McDonald’s, Subway, and our local greasy spoon. Without guilt or shame, I unwrapped an Almond Joy, because sometimes you feel like a nut. Of course, at that moment, mid-unwrap, was when Byron chose to poke his smooth, shaven, chocolate head in. I suddenly craved a Milk Dud.
“You OK?” asked my newly promoted pal.
“Nothing a truck load of Kisses won’t cure.” I had bitten off such a hunk of “Joy” and was chewing multiple almonds, that even without a mirror, I knew the chocolate, combined with my saliva, had coated my usual pearly whites with a slimy russet glaze. I didn’t care how unattractive I looked.
“How could they do this? I helped bring in the business. What did she do?” I didn’t care how I sounded either. I was talking with my mouth full, so it came out like, “Ha coo ey oo is? I elped bing in a binuss. Ut id see oo?”
“Well, my little chocoholic, she’s got a track record too.”
I had swallowed by then. Hard.
“But not on this...I...”
“Look, Miss Trish. Byron will not BS. The account is TREND Magazine. She looks like she could be in TREND.”
“...but I...”
“I know, but...dear God, will you put down that candy bar, girl. I’m gettin’ diabetes just lookin’ at y’all.” When Byron got riled, his King’s English took the 7-train back to Queens.
I looked in disgust at my sugary salve that had melted all over my fingertips, made a mental note to buy M&Ms next time, and threw the candy in the trash.
My phone rang. Byron used this saved-by-the-bell moment to excuse himself so he could stop watching my now brown-laced lips get smacked by my brown-lacquered tongue. Well at least they matched.
“Hello. Trish Collins,” I sighed into the phone.
“Hey Doll Face. It’s me.”
Kevin’s voice was crackling, so I knew he was on his cell.
“Hey you.”
“Hold a sec so I can give the coffee-cart guy my money.” I rolled my eyes as I listened to rustling and polite banter. Kevin never liked service people to think he was “too good” to stop and chat. It was part of his self-consciousness about growing up with servants.
Yes, not only had roly-poly me found a decent man in New York City, but a wealthy one at that, as well as handsome and just plain nice. Even more unbelievable, was the way we met.
It was a little over two years ago at a Noho bar called Decades – dark, dingy, loud and incredibly happening. They had four rooms, each embodying days gone by. One recreated the psychedelic ‘60s; another the disco ‘70s; next was the glam ‘80s, and finally the grungy ‘90s. My three slimmer friends were off being hit on. Two of the girls, work people whose names I don’t even remember, went off to the ‘60s for free love and freer drinks courtesy of their “dates.” My new best friend at work, Lisa, headed to the ‘80s with a non-’80s guy named Joe, so they could mock the we-wish-greed-was-still-good crowd.
I sat by my lonesome at the ‘70s bar, not looking for Mr. Goodbar and pretending, “That’s the way, uh-huh uh-huh I like it.” Sitting catty corner from me were two girls, clearly, to me anyway, high schoolers made up to look like what they envisioned twenty-seven to be. I was about to turn twenty-six and even I got carded. Was the dude working the door asleep when they hobbled in wearing their mommy-let-us-play dress-up stilettos? I watched as two guys approached.
One, tall, dark and smarmy, introduced himself as Robert and gave the full court press to the mini-Kate Moss of the pair. Her black cigarette jeans and black baby-T on the real Kate probably would have looked incredibly cool. Mini-Moss looked, I’m sorry, cheap. She giggled and batted her Sephora-globbed eyes the way she must have imagined that sophisticated “older” women (you know, like twenty-two), did it.
The clean-cut, All-American guy with Robert, seemed hesitant about hooking up with Kate’s friend. His stance and demeanor screamed wingman.
Wing shuffled his feet, kept his hands tucked deep into the pockets of his navy Brooks Brothers trousers, and seemed to strain to make conversation with the other young woman. She had a Cindy Crawford mole, but that was the only thing “Cindy C.” about her. She too wore skinny jeans, but in denim. Her black t-shirt announced “Hottie” in red rhinestones. Aside from tacky, she also looked vapid. It was hard to believe that her interests could possibly reach any farther than getting used to wearing her class ring.
When there was a pause in their dialogue, he looked around the room, presumably for an escape route, and our eyes met. I pointed out his choice of companionship with my chin, and made a face like, “You’re kidding, right?” He sighed, gave a momentary glance up to the disco-balled heavens, then raised his eyebrows like, “Help.”
So I got up off my zebra-printed stool, walked over from behind his teen angel, and in my most dramatic turn to date, pointed and declared, “There you are.” Then with hands on hips à la Alice Kramden, I continued with, “I left the baby at home alone again so I could come out and track you down.” I then looked at the girl, who had obviously never seen such a confrontation, except perhaps on Melrose Place reruns, and lectured, “Men. You can’t live with ‘em. You can’t shoot ‘em. Or wait, maybe I can,” as I dug deep into my geometric-patterned Le Sport Sac shoulder bag. Thinking I must be going for my Saturday Night Special (sans permit), teen Barbie slid off the stool and bolted for who knows where – perhaps the ‘90s, since that was the decade in which she was born.
When “the father of my child” was able to control his gut-holding laughter, he managed an, “I’m Kevin Gallagher and I owe you – big,” and proceeded to get the attention of the bartender who was dressed like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.
Kevin was 5’10, with sandy brown hair. He was trim, not because he worked out, but because like so many young on-the-rise New York men, he ate a hearty corporate lunch with clients each afternoon, then didn’t have time to eat dinner because he got too embroiled in the late night assignment he was working on. During the course of our fun and flirtatious conversation, he said modestly that he was a Philadelphia Gallagher, which meant absolutely nothing to Bronx girl me.
He had gone to Harvard undergrad, then The Wharton School of Business for his MBA, which naturally got him recruited by Goldman Sachs as an investment banker, like his father and grandfather and great grandfather and...
“I’ve kind of had my career planned out for me since I was two. Some people, by people I mean women, like the dollar signs they see above my head but, find me a little too, um…”
Boring?
“…unadventurous,” he conceded.
Not me. I had already had enough adventure for one lifetime, being the “ex” of a future Rock God with a groupie back stage at every venue and a heroin habit waiting to be rehabbed. Steady. Stable. Secure. Predictable. These buzzwords were the new music to my ears. I longed to hear the request, “Let’s not go out tonight.”
“I hate clubs like this,” he confessed, “but I come because if I stayed home everyone would know how truly dull I really am.”
“I’m a social retard myself.” I neglected to mention that I used to live in clubs far worse than this. “I’d rather stay home and watch TV or a DVD…”
“…with a bucket of Newman’s Own popcorn…,” Kevin added.
“…with my own addition of melted butter laced with garlic.”
“Is there any other way?” he winked.
Kevin Gallagher was a nice, solid, boring guy and even had the Eagle Scout troop leader face to prove it. Jackpot!
After a few drinks and far more laughs, I said I had to go. As much as I wanted to go home with Kevin, I was not quite ready to expose my watch-it-wiggle-see-it-jiggle full-bodied self to someone I didn’t want to scare away. I let him walk me outside to get a cab, but he insisted upon seeing me home, then up to my apartment. Had I actually found a gentleman in New York City or the next Ted Bundy?
At my door, he asked, “Did anyone ever tell you that you have a face like a porcelain doll?”
Well, maybe he could come in. I’ll get undressed in the dark. I know! I’ll pretend I’m kinky and tie his wrists to the bed. This way he won’t be able to grab a handful of flab.
Then he kissed the apple of my cheek with his warm, slightly chapped lips and added, “I really enjoyed your company. I’ll call you.”
How original.
But he did.
Kevin seemed to like me the way I was, and grew to appreciate me, especially my blue-collar background work ethic. I knew he would understand why this Chelsea promotion thing was so wrong and unfair.
“OK, I’m back. So what happened at your big meet...”
“Trish got dissed,” I sighed.
“Get outta town. You helped bring in the damn account.”
“Kevin...Don’t remind me.”
I could hear him huffing and puffing. “Where are you?”
“Across the street from work. I’m running. I’m heading back from my 8:30. I’ve got to get back for an eleven o’clock meeting. I stopped for a caffeine refuel, so I’ve got to hustle. There was too much traffic to even think about sitting in a cab.”
I loved my little hustler.
“So, listen, Doll Face, I’m sorry.”
“You know who got promoted?” I asked as I watched an encore of Chelsea being congratulated by all, only this time the venue was the agency’s hallway. “Chelsea.”
“Oh,” he mumbled.
“Yeah, oh.”
“Well...you know, I can kind of understand.”
He could what?
“What do you mean you can understand?” I said as I bolted up out of my ergonomic black leather desk chair like a rocket just given the go-ahead for blast-off by mission control.
What followed was the sound of backpedaling on the other end of the line.
“No...I mean you deserved it, but...it’s TREND Magazine. I guess they wanted someone to work on it who looks like...um...”
I began having a hallucination: As Chelsea was walking down the hallway, I envisioned, for a split second, that it had become a Bryant Park Olympus Fashion Week runway upon which she was cat-walking, complete with a rock music sound track, photographers’ flashbulbs popping and plenty of twirls and poses.
As my awake nightmare turned back into the agency’s hallway, I finished Kevin’s sentence. “She could be in TREND.”
“Yeah, like that, you know.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“Look, tomorrow night we’ll work on your resume and …” Then I heard him say, but not to me, “Hold the elevator.”
“What about tonight?” I whined. Seeing him would keep this day from being a total loss.
“I can’t, Doll Face, I gotta go to this work thing. Rubber chicken, the works.”
I plopped back down into my chair. Guess I’ll be seeing Ben & Jerry for dinner then. I knew we had to wrap up because he was back in his office building, but… “How come I never get to go? Other people are always going to stuff at their boyfriends’ jobs,” I baby talked.
“This isn’t that kind of thing. I gotta go.”
“But it’s Friday night,” I tsked like a petulant teenager who’d been grounded.
“I know, but…I gotta go. You’ll think of something to do.”
I already had. I’d spend the evening trekking down Rocky Road.
I lived in the West Village in my grandmother’s former apartment. Think Monica on Friends, except without the second bedroom or terrace or skylight or fireplace or… Bohemia was really not for me, but the place was rent controlled, and even though I was there illegally, until the “law” came a lookin’ for me, it was my home. I dreamed of the Upper East Side, so I Ethan Allen-ed Grandma’s place, so that, at least on the inside, it looked as though I resided in a one-bed in the East ‘80s around Lexington.
I sat in my boring, beige terrycloth robe opened to reveal a gray T-shirt and matching underpants, a consolation gift compliments of Lisa and her new access to all things Hanes. To complete the ensemble, I was wearing the ever-stylish white sweat socks which helped keep my Origin’s creamed feet from staining the sofa cushion’s fabric. One dimpled leg stretched straight out, slightly bent at the knee, and the other rested comfortably over the back of the blue-striped couch. As I scooped up the ice cream out of the burgundy, black, green and white carton and into my mouth, by the blue glow of my 32” boob tube, I listened intently to the affected commentator of E! Fashion File: “...the slacks ride low on the hips to show off the season’s other fashion essential: the bare waist accessorized with the thinnest chain link belt.”
I sought comfort from my most stalwart supporters, “Not if you’re a Chunky Monkey. Right, Ben? What do you think Jerry?”
Chapter 3
“Eat and Run”
The next morning, I left the famed New York rat race for the summer, suburban scenery of leafy Westchester, where my sixty-year-old mother now lived.
We had relocated in my sophomore year of high school, after my father died. His death was not a prolonged misery caused by illness that we accepted before it even happened. It was swift and unexpected, and took us completely off guard.
While crossing Riverdale Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares of the Bronx, he was mowed down by a hit-and-run driver. It was a Sunday morning, and he had gone to the bakery to get us cinnamon buns as a special breakfast “for my girls.” When he hit the ground, the bag burst and the buns were strewn all around him. The pedestrians who ran to his rescue had to shoo away the pigeons that thought they had been invited to an all-you-can-eat buffet. Taking into consideration all the garbage I have consumed over the years, nothing with cinnamon as an ingredient has ever passed my lips. The mere smell of it makes me sick.
Even though I was able to continue in my same high school, I was still taken away from everything I knew. I couldn’t walk home with the girls; I had to catch the train. I couldn’t run home and change and meet everyone to hang out in Van Cortland Park; I had to catch that train. And if I wanted to go to a dance on Friday nights, I had to sleep at someone’s house because my mother refused to let me come home alone at midnight on, you guessed it, the train.
Suddenly my life revolved around times of day like 6:59 a.m. and 3:42 p.m., and especially Monday through Friday’s 5:54 p.m., when my mother’s train from Manhattan, where she worked at the phone company, pulled into the station.
It was around the big and emotional move when my first real bout of yo-yo dieting began. My mother and I were both sad, but being a teen, I had the added joy of being sulky and weepy as well. My mother, who had always been happy and smiling, had now become very pragmatic. “He’s gone, but we’re still here. We have to move on.” She was also very unselfish, making my feelings her priority. We’d sit down for dinner and she would let me jabber on and on (I was never quite sure if she was ever really listening) over dessert, a “nice” piece of pound cake á la mode she’d customized just for me. They were works of art, her desserts: whipped cream, sprinkles, a Marischino cherry on top. Yes, there’s nothing like a fruit that smells like red Magic Marker to say, “I love you.”
She, of course, had only a cup of tea. If I polished off the cake and ice cream before our talk was over, she’d give me another dollop of whipped cream. I started junior year in a brand new uniform skirt and blazer because I had gone up two entire sizes over the summer. My mother asked me if I had been snacking when she wasn’t looking. How could she not notice that I was eating all the food that she put in front of me?
Metro-North was as packed with people as an issue of TREND is packed with ad pages. I ended up having to stand while I drank my strawberry Slimfast shake and read the New York Post. A sleeping forty-something man, showing signs of gray at the temples, was jarred awake when we reached 125th Street and realized that by taking up two seats with his belongings, he had deprived many of us a comfortable ride through most of Manhattan. I believed for a moment that he was a gentleman, when he moved them aside for me.
“Forgive me,” he said. “Here, please sit down. I’m so sorry. So, so sorry.”
OK, already. You didn’t kill anybody’s mother. “Thanks.”
He kept staring at me with still half-asleep eyes and hooded eyelids, as he sort of smiled. I guess he noticed that I was getting creeped out, so he reassured me he was harmless by announcing, “My wife is pregnant, too. I know all about swollen ankles.”
You couldn’t have stayed in dreamland, right, fella?
Too embarrassed to admit to my fellow passengers, who were now staring, that, “No, I’m not with child. I’m just the proverbial fat chick,” I stifled a primitive scream, turned up the corner of one side of my mouth as if to imply, “Thank you for moving your junk,” and returned to the gossip and canoodling that is Page Six.
I was able to walk from the train depot to my mother’s house. She lived on a cul-de-sac that was open and welcoming. Neighbors waved and kids on bikes had room to ride or choose to play basketball without leaving their mother’s sight. A far cry from the way I grew up on our crowded, yet lively Bronx street, where the stickball game was interrupted every two minutes by a car.
I headed up the steps of my mother’s modest two-bedroom brick with small family friendly backyard, got the mail from the black box that hung next to the front screen door, and entered using my own key.
“Mom, I’m here. Where are you?”
“In here, Patricia,” she singsonged.
“Here” was the sunny kitchen made sunnier by its yellow curtains and accessories. I walked through the burgundy, floral print living room and Country French dining room into the breakfast nook.
My petite and thin mother and equally fat-free Aunt Emma were sitting at the canary Formica table. I am my mother’s only child and my aunt’s as well, since she never had any children.
“Mmmm, what smells good?” I had to know, because as my dad used to say, “this woman can cook!”
My Irish father had married an Italian girl. My olive-skinned, dark-haired mother was a traditional creative genius. She could not only cook, but sew, garden, and decorate. She was Martha Stewart before Martha knew she was Martha Stewart. I inherited nothing from my mother except for her diminutive size. I have my dad’s coloring and his face. That’s probably why my mother was always staring at me, searching for a glimpse of her lost love.
“Brunch,” my mother answered with reticence.
“Sorry I missed it. Any left?”
Well, I’d done it. Asked the dreaded question.
My mother and aunt glanced at each other. The only thing worse than having a mother, who disapproves of you, is having two.
“There’s some on the stove,” answered Mother, in a tone that stated clearly, “If you want it you’ll have to get it yourself. I will not contribute to making you fatter than you already are.”
“I’ll just have a little taste,” I lied.
I scooped myself a hearty helping of fluffy scrambled eggs she’d seasoned with onions, peppers and oregano, took a few strips of bacon which had been fried on a low flame to absolute crispy perfection, and a slice of French toast made with thinly sliced Italian bread.
When I joined them at the round table, Mother and Aunt Em looked disappointed at my full plate. It made me feel disappointed in myself. So… I drowned my sorrow, as well as the French toast, in maple syrup.
“So how’s work?” my aunt wanted to know just to change the subject away from my dietary indiscretion. Or just to get me talking so that I couldn’t put anything in my mouth.
“Not too good. I didn’t get the promotion I wanted.” Just the thought of Chelsea in “my” office with “my” title and “my” bump in pay made me drizzle on even more Mrs. Butterworth.
“Did they say why?” inquired my mom. Her annoyed tone was now directed at the horrible people who had denied something to her brilliant and capable daughter.
“No, they didn’t have to say. I know. It’s TREND Magazine, so they gave it to this model-type.”
“TREND? Oh, I guess they only want to work with people who look like they could be in the magazine.”
What was that? The standard comment for when you don’t get a job with a fashion magazine? Is it in some fashion reject handbook somewhere or something? That remark sent the seasoned eggs shoveling in.
“Didn’t you eat breakfast, lovey?” asked Aunt Em, who happened to look at the wall clock in order to take her eyes off my unnerving and uninterrupted fork-to-mouth hand motion.
“No. Well. Yes. Well, I had a Slimfast earlier.”
“Are you on a diet?” Mother wanted to know, half excited, half confused.
“Always, sort of.”
“Then why are you eating that?” She said, “that” as though it were something vile I had dug out of the garbage instead of food she had prepared.
“You’ll never work with TREND if you eat two breakfasts,” chimed in my aunt.
“Guess not.”
Shovel. Shovel.
“You’ll get sick. It’s not good to feel so full,” added my mother for the full effect of the double nag.
I dropped the fork defiantly on my empty, except for a strip of bacon, plate.
“Guess so.”
“We’re only saying it for your own good,” defended my aunt.
“Don’t you want to look nice? Does Kevin ever say anything about your weight?” interrogated my mother.
“No. I guess he figures I get enough insults from my family.”
“Who’s insulting you?” said my mother in all sincerity. Aunt Em backed up her sister with, “Yes, who?”
My aunt just had to know, “You don’t eat like that when you’re out with him do you?”
“When we go out to dinner, we don’t keep tabs on each other’s food intake.” I was running out of steam for comebacks.
My mother couldn’t resist, “Don’t get mad. We just want you to look nice. They probably picked that other girl, because she can wear all the nice style clothes, right?”
“I have nice clothes,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Oh, nothing looks nice in those big sizes. They never lay right over bulges.”
My aunt nodded in silent agreement like some sycophant subordinate. As my mother started to clear the table, she went for my plate first.
Before it was out of reach, I swiped the last piece of Oscar Meyer and bit down on it hard. In their faces to spite them both.
Chapter 4
“Pulling Your Weight”
“Pass the grapes,” I requested of Byron at our Monday morning internal TREND strategy meeting.
I munched and munched on grapes from the fruit platter, pretending they were green M&Ms, while Chelsea, looking even more glamorous than usual, sashayed around the room like a pin-up girl; her steel gray Armani suit jacket, just like the boss was wearing, was off revealing a sleeveless, slate blue, v-neck silk blouse. She used her Pilates-toned arms to gesture at rather typical print ads the client had already run, and her Marilyn Monroe-ish voice, to pontificate about where they ran (as if we all hadn’t seen the Times Square billboard), and who shot them (even though it was common knowledge that TREND used only famed photographer, Giles Bensimon), and which models were used (because no one in the room recognized Carolyn Murphy, Christy Turlington or Elle McPherson).
Just watching her strut with such confidence, the kind that comes from looking good and knowing that people are enthralled with you even if what you’re saying is pedantic, or dare I even say, inaccurate, was enough incentive for me to not grab for the melt-in-your-mouth chocolate chip muffin I had been eyeing. I refused to take it, not so much because eating one would make me look and feel fatter, but because watching me eat it would make Chelsea feel even thinner and more self-assured.
I monitored The Silver Fox seated at the head of the table in his black leather swivel chair, the only one in the room with arms, as he became transfixed by Chelsea. Like all men, you could just tell, he liked keeping his eyes glued as she moved. I had to admit, regrettably, she was a great presenter. But like even the best Oscar-winning actresses, she may have been able to say the words with aplomb, but still didn’t, or couldn’t, write the script to save her life.