Getting Waisted (12 page)

Brokenhearted as I was, I was also filled with a sense of relief at having escaped from the very tall, very thin, shiny-haired nomads who wandered the earth with one hand always on their hips and hand mirrors ever present in the other, followed always by legions of fluffers and an ever present camera crew. I decided to concentrate on my career as a dress designer. If I was going to be alone, I’d better be able to afford me, seeing as I liked nice things. I painted the interior of my mother’s shop pink and purple, telling her it would be good for business. It was. My mother’s store had become a happenin’ boutique in the middle of Toronto’s version of Haight Ashbury and I was turning suburbanite
hausfraus
into fake flower children. I had these old women of forty wearing granny dresses, fringed vests, and John Lennon little round glasses. I was a star in the world of weekend hippies, if having a following of gay boys and old broads from the boonies was your thing. Given that I was once again in recovery from another unhealthy attraction, having any kind of following was a relief.

Beverly had originally rented our small flat for herself but then Katja moved in and my arrival only added to the chaos. It was fun at first, but with three girls and all their clothes and makeup plus whatever guys the other two were madly in love with, and then me with the model boyfriend and all his paraphernalia, it had become similar to living in a clown car. We loved each other but we were all vying for space in front of the same mirror, shower, and ironing board—and that had only one potential outcome. None of us wanted to live through a Bay of Pigs incident of our own making, so we decided to go house hunting.

We had very limited funds as Beverly was a schoolteacher, I was a junior dress designer who was underpaid—under the table by my mother—and Katja never had a real job, bouncing from one reinvention to another as they often interfered with her far more interesting love life. Her latest “career” was as a photographer scouting for a local newspaper’s Sunday hunk-of-the-week picture. It was a bad move for Katja, who was catnip to men of all ages and capable of loving each and every one.

Beverly and I found a sweet, albeit even more run-down, but much bigger house in a great neighborhood, and on the day we signed the lease Katja was fired. Each week she’d fallen in love with whichever hunk she was photographing, making her perpetually exhausted and continuously late, which meant Beverly and I were on the hook for all of the rent if Katja didn’t find another job soon. She did, but it was as a tour guide to all those who wished to visit the unexplored Third World. Before she left, she told me she had met a guy who she thought would be perfect for me. My heart thumped a bit faster, no one had ever offered to fix me up before. I excitedly asked her what he looked like, what had she told him about me, and why was he perfect for me? She looked confused, then realized that she had made me think she was fixing me up on a blind date. Instead she wanted me to meet a guy who had just started a television station and was looking for unusual ideas. Now I was confused. Katja explained that she thought it would be amazing if I did an exercise show. She told the guy I was big, but the most limber person she’d ever known. She gave me a hug and then said his name was Moses. “He’ll call you,” and with that she was gone. I wasn’t sure whether to be insulted or flattered, and I already had a career. It was time to find a new roommate. Bye-bye Katja.

And so batty Patty entered our lives bringing chaos and crazy with her. I met Patty at a party and she seemed warm and engaging, if a bit wild. During a break in a beer-quaffing contest with some other revelers, I overheard Patty mention she was desperately looking for a place to live. No due diligence was done, other than asking her if she had a paying job, which she did. She told us she did very well selling gardening supplies and had done it for years. We were ecstatic to have solved our problem and invited Patty to move in. She neglected to tell us she would be accompanied by a pair of destructive cats who loved nothing more than shredding anything soft, meaning our curtains, our sofa, and a few of our coats. It didn’t take long for our new home to look like we lived in a string factory. Beverly and I wanted to cook the damn cats in a stew along with the shredded sofa bits, but Patty’s monthly cash contribution was more important to us than the horror of newly fringed furniture, so we said nothing. Then, out of nowhere Patty accused me of wearing her clothes, which could only have worked if I was wearing her sweaters as ankle warmers. Patty was 5’9” and slender as a willow tree, whereas I was 5’6” and as round as a stump. She habitually flung crazy and paranoid accusations in all directions and Beverly and I tried to stay out of their trajectory, but when her dealer showed up at our back door at 2
am
demanding payment for a shipment of weed, we understood why she was bonkers and what kind of garden supplies she was
really
selling. Bye-bye Patty.

There wasn’t even time to spread the word that we had a vacancy before Beverly announced she was leaving her job, her life, and me, to go live with Gunnar, a boy she had met while climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro with her previous boyfriend. I was happy for her but devastated; she was my best and most trusted friend. Bye-bye Beverly.

I was feeling scared and abandoned. I couldn’t afford the house on my own but none of my close friends needed a place to live. I wasn’t ready to try anyone new but I also didn’t want to have to move back into my parent’s nightmare. So, I found a second job selling fabric in a very exclusive shop in the same area as my mother’s boutique, and I shuttled back and forth between the two. At night when I’d get home I was exhausted, and the idea of folding anything after hours of rolling, straightening, and tidying both stores was anathema to me; I didn’t care if my clothes piled up into mountains or if my home looked like it was inhabited by rabid pack rats. Somehow I knew my mother was gloating at her prophecy now fulfilled. I ate anything and everything as long as it didn’t require cooking. Junk food was the fastest fix, along with spooning straight out of any one of the containers of ice cream I kept stashed in the freezer. Then I’d fall onto the clothes-strewn sofa and pass out from exhaustion.

After a few marathon weeks of long hours, I was almost comatose when my phone rang—some guy called Moses. The name rang a bell but that was all, until he mentioned that Katja had given him my number. He suggested I come down to the television station and we meet, as he was intrigued by my idea. I didn’t have an idea, Katja did, and I wasn’t sure what it was exactly but I didn’t say that and I agreed to meet him.

City Television was not just new, it was an outrageous affront to conventional TV. It was a place where the inmates were running the asylum. It was the brainchild of this man Moses Znaimer and he was unlike anyone I had ever met: brash, bold, and brilliant. I was terrified of him. But being young and completely without any knowledge of how television worked or who should be on it gave me my edge. I spun bullshit into whole cloth as I painted an indelible picture of a fat girl with long blonde hair who could do backbends and the splits while making small talk and, to sweeten the mix, I promised interviews with anyone who thought they were experts in the world of diets and food. I had barely finished what was my first ever “pitch” when Moses dismissed me by saying: “Great can’t wait to see your show.”
Me too,
I thought . . .
What?
This was crazy but exciting.

It would take a few months to pull this unexpected turn of events together. There was no real money, just plenty of anticipation while I and a group of funny, creative minds brainstormed what was to become a huge change in direction for me. In the meantime, rent had to be paid and dresses needed to be designed, and I needed to stop eating.

11

Starve-a-Palooza

Diets #12, 13, 14, and 15
Scarsdale, Clay,
Protein Powder, and Dexedrine

Cost
$240.00

Weight lost
All of it

Weight gained
All of it

Pressure . . . Pressure . . . Pressure . . .
Never had there been so many people pulling me in different directions. My mother was not entirely happy that I was going to be on TV because she was afraid I wouldn’t be available to work for her, but then again, she was really happy that I was going to be on TV as it reflected well on her status. When I was driving her on her errands, I was no longer allowed to wait in the car while she carried on her schmooze-fest with her friends in the deli/bakery/butcher, as I was now worthy of being shown off. “Did I tell you Monica is the star of her own television show?” Her friends would all nod and then ask questions about what celebrities I knew and I would try to break it to them that I was not starring in anything yet and I didn’t know any. That’s when they would turn their backs and go about their business. I could feel my mother glaring at me for not embellishing in the way she had clearly done.

The TV station needed me to be available whenever the studio was free and I shuttled back and forth between there and my two other jobs, one of which I was in danger of losing, seeing as I took so much time off. I pleaded and promised the snotty manager of the fabric store that I would do better and I did. I was firing on all pistons at all of my jobs but once I walked through the door of my house where no one could see me, I crashed and burned. If it wasn’t moldy or hard as rock I ate it, along with whatever else I could forage from my poorly stocked kitchen. Candy bars were easy and they became breakfast, sometimes dinner, along with globs of gluey Chinese food from the really horrible neighborhood takeout.

I was passed out, on, or under the growing mountain of clothes and laundry when I heard the jiggling of a key in the door. I woke up and grabbed a snow boot as a weapon as Katja bounced into the room. She had met a pilot in Belize and they were madly in love. Of course they were. She had quit her job and flown back in the cockpit’s jump seat and thought she’d surprise me and see if there was room for her to crash for a week or two while the pilot sorted things out with his wife.

Having Kat back was a miracle. She had time on her hands while waiting for her pilot and she wanted to use it to take care of me—because as usual she didn’t have any money and this was her way of paying her freight. Clothes were picked up and hung up, and the fridge was de-junked and restocked with healthier alternatives. There was a reason she had an amazing body; she didn’t fill it with crap. But I also understood her addictions were just different than mine and we both had plenty of them. She used the time back in Toronto to figure out how to get her new glass eye, which was ready and waiting for pick up as soon as she could pay for it. Much like Scarlett O’Hara, tomorrow was another day and she was sure she would find the money somewhere or from somebody. She had no regrets about blowing the first handout on her fabulous purple boots, seeing as she kicked butt in them all the time. She didn’t want to hit up the pilot, even though he had offered, because she had forgotten to collect then and there and she didn’t want to jeopardize any sensitive negotiations he might be involved in by calling him at home and having his wife answer.

Kat decided we should throw a dinner party to celebrate the amazing news of my up-and-coming exercise show and her good fortune for having met the true love of her life. I winced. She invited a couple of her old flames with bucks to spare, figuring she’d get the moola that way. Neither of us needed much excuse to throw a party.

From beginning to end, it was a debacle. Katja came home after having been to the optometrist, having convinced them to give her the new eye by promising that she’d bring the money in the next day. I was curious, asking if I could see her new eye before she put it in. That was the first and last time I have ever said that sentence. She took it out of its box and I was surprised to see that its shape was almost triangular, making sense, as it had to fit into the socket. As weird as it was to be ogling the ogler, I felt honored that she trusted me, but just as I handed it back to her, it slipped to the floor and disappeared in a crevice of the old house never to be seen again, no matter how much we searched, even lifting up floorboards. Kat was far cooler about it than I was. She actually laughed at the idea that at some point after we had moved on, someone would stumble upon it and from then on an outlandish tale would be spun to explain the bizarre find. With a totally blasé attitude, she did a quick calculation, doubling the money she would need as she now would have to pay for yet another new eye as well as the one that had disappeared.

Somehow we thought there were going to be about ten people for the dinner, but in our exuberance, we didn’t check with each other about who had invited whom and there were at least forty, making it officially a cocktail party. Neither of us knew how it happened, but we knew we didn’t have enough food for a sit-down dinner, so we improvised and made finger food. Everyone brought wine, so most people were too drunk to notice. I didn’t really drink, so I noticed, because I was starving—not in a third-world famine kind of a way, but in a deprived food-loving, fat-girl kind of a way, which just left me feeling vulnerable. And after an unexpected glimpse of my body as I walked past the now cleaned and shiny toaster oven, I caught my reflection: It was if a Botero painting had come to life, complete with its exaggerated and disproportionate bulk.

I was shattered and filled with self-loathing and I couldn’t shine it on for another second so I went outside and took refuge on a rusty, wrought iron chair in the shadows. The music and raucous sounds of a party coming from inside my house did nothing to soothe my agitation. I sat under the cloudy night sky thinking about how out of control I had allowed myself to become. One look from a passing stranger would have confirmed that I was not currently a happy person.

I must have fallen asleep because when I woke up, with every part of me in pain from having sat for so long, there was a blanket draped across my legs. I untangled myself and stood up, and immediately caught sight of a man with a huge Afro staring at me from his apartment window across the street. I moved to the shadow of the wall and crept inside. Katja was asleep on the couch, amid a sea of debris from the remains of what appeared to be a very successful party. I woke her up and told her to look outside to see if the man was still watching our house. He was. We turned off all the lights and sat in the dark taking turns to see if he had left, meaning he could be headed over to our house, but he was still there, motionless, and watching our every move. We armed ourselves with kitchen knives and took turns being on watch but neither of us could sleep; we were too scared. We called the police but they said a person had every right to be standing at their window. If anyone should have known that, it would be me. When the sun came up, everything looked far less ominous—especially the big-haired man in the window. “He” wasn’t a man at all; it was a big, round stationary window fan that wasn’t going anywhere. We were slap-happy from relief and lack of sleep, and only a little mortified.

Heading into the kitchen I saw the toaster, which instantly reminded me I needed to make a radical change before I went on television in a leotard. It was one thing to know the camera added ten pounds, but on me that was two five-pound bags of potatoes. So began another foray into full-bore Starve-a-Palooza. I had to find a diet that would allow me to eat on the fly; I was too busy to cook and I also didn’t want anyone to know I was on yet
another
diet. Up first was the Scarsdale Diet. It offered up a dizzying spread of the most boring unadorned food anywhere, chicken without the skin, and salads with no dressing. It was a diet plainer than a Quaker’s bedroom. But the salads and vegetables were open season with no portion control. Perfect, I had no control and I got my wish—no one would have ever guessed I was on any kind of diet. I ate like a mulching machine until I threw up, and strangely I did start to lose a little weight, likely from feeling continuously queasy from all the artificial sweeteners, which were encouraged in everything from pudding to diet sodas. Dr. Tarnower and I soon parted company; he had not been a cheap date and I wasn’t that much thinner. Moving on . . .

I was elated when I discovered the Clay Diet, which sounded blissfully easy with no calories to count and nothing to weigh. It consisted of a cocktail made of a special clay, taken two hours before meals, supposedly giving one that full and satisfied feeling. When liquid Bentonite is taken internally, it rapidly absorbs all fluids in the stomach, causing a feeling of fullness, thereby reducing appetite and any desire to over eat. Yes! Easy peasy. But it wasn’t long before I began to feel like I might explode from all that clay. It tasted like a thick stucco-and-water milk shake, not that I had any real frame of reference for what
that
tasted like, but there’s a certain kind of smell when you walk into a damp basement and the walls are wet. It’s so potent, you can sense the taste and it isn’t good. I was sure I was making fat little statues that were now living in my bloated gut.

The show must go on and I was about to make my exercise debut even though the swelling kept getting worse and worse, and there I was, encased in a leotard sitting in a makeup chair next to a very sweet and brilliantly quippy Dan Aykroyd, who was going to be my announcer. It was his first television job, too. I should have been over the moon with excitement but I was feeling like a cement-mixing truck.

It was my first day on a set and it was the camera crew’s first time on a set, maybe their first time holding a camera. We were all really young and really clueless but we had enthusiasm and a kind of Gonzo determination to do well. I may have been fat but I was also blessed with an elastic body, and from a very early age, I had brought tears of laughter and amazement to my family with acrobatic antics and contortionist displays. Given that I knew no shame, and seeing as I was willing to try anything, I was sure I would be a success. But on that first day, I was about as flexible as a brick. I covered by talking fast and talking some more, then while attempting a somersault, I picked up a set phone and ordered a pizza and had it delivered while doing the show. It was an amazing day as I again stumbled through an unexpected door and found an unexpected part of me. I was funny.