Getting Waisted (23 page)

Back on the hunt for something, anything that would help me lose weight. I asked around and I found a guy who sold some magic pills guaranteed to have you dropping fifty pounds in fifty minutes. I went to his place in a none-too savory part of town and handed him a check for $120. He handed me a dozen small baggies filled with little green pellets. I opened one of them as I got into the car. The pellets smelled disgusting and a lot like fish food. I sighed and tossed them into an open garbage can before I inserted the key in the ignition.
Once again, money well spent.

But I kept going. I took meeting after meeting with prospective agents.
When a door closes and there ain’t no windows, rip up a floorboard. Don’t quit.
I didn’t, and eventually I landed a believer—a wonderful caring agent and I got jobs, lots of jobs. I was happy to be the sidekick, the best friend, the madam, the therapist. I got writing jobs: good ones and bad ones, but I was building a resume. And again, I did what I did best. I made friends and the more I really got to know them, the more I understood that everyone had demons, challenges, good days and bad. Being there for each other was the one thing we could do, until we were able to get ourselves on track, or not. Those friends, along with Gilles, were my ticket. They became my mentors, my connections, and part of my circle of salvation.

One of those friends, Bill, thought the best way to keep me aloft was by pulling outrageous pranks on me, requiring me to keep my wits and my humor about me. On a flight back to Los Angeles from Toronto, a flight attendant came over the intercom, asking Monica Parker to identify herself. I thought they must have me confused with someone who preordered a special meal but I waved anyway. A very authoritative steward approached and in a loud whisper assured me that my doctor had contacted the airlines and, given that I was to have surgery the next day, I was to have nothing by mouth other than water. Again, I thought they must have mixed me up with another passenger. He double-checked his paper and insisted it was, in fact, me. In that moment, I knew who the prankster was and I tried, to no avail, to explain, but Mr. Busybody wasn’t having any of it. He implied my “doctor” suggested I might say that. Needless to say, I was ravenous and a bit cranky when I got off that five-hour plane ride.

After several smaller attacks, Bill got me again. It was my birthday and Gilles happened to be away. Bill called and said he had a surprise for me. I felt a chill travel up my spine. What did he have in store for me this time? It must be said that Bill was smart, incredibly entertaining, and always there for me when I really needed him. I took a deep breath and said okay. Three hours later, we were still driving. We were far, far away from Beverly Hills and most definitely not in Kansas. We were deep into the sprawl of the San Fernando Valley where most of the buildings were industrial and low to the ground. Auto body repair shops, defunct photo labs, and a couple of Mexican taco stands stood between large swaths of shuttered manufacturing plants that had begun to disintegrate under the relentless canopies of trumpet vines, all set against the haze of the Verdugo Mountains. The more I grilled him, the more Bill would smile and say, “Oh just go with it . . .” We pulled up to a small, squat, red brick building in the middle of Nothingville. Dusk was falling and Bill got out and rang the buzzer of a barred doorway. My radar was sounding off alarms. The porthole in the door opened, and I heard Bill say, “She’s here.” As a writer, I am relentlessly curious and usually up for almost any window into other worlds but my gut was telling me I was not going to be looking through a window on this adventure. Bill pretty much had to drag me out of the car. The door flung open and I was confronted by a pair of what appeared to be dominatrices.

I was introduced to Mistress Carmen and Mistress Bella. They were both wearing black corsets, fishnets, and very high heels, along with their own signature accessories: studded dog collars, matching handcuffs, and what looked like chain-link fence accoutrements. Of course they both had the obligatory plummy-black lipstick and matching nails. In that moment, I really wanted to be home with a large bowl of comforting noodle-anything and a book . . . a wholesome one. But when my surprise mistress-duo began singing “Happy Birthday” to me in high squeaky voices, I burst out laughing and thought Bill to be the funniest man on the planet. If only that had been the end of it.

At the end of the “hip, hip, hoorays,” Mistress Carmen took my hand and brought me inside. I turned to grab Bill, but he was already heading toward his car. He smiled, winked, and said, “Just go with it” and he was gone. I stood in the foyer, a fancy word for the hallway into a sad little derelict room with bad wood paneling and a stringy-haired man drinking a beer, eyes glued to a small TV in the corner. Mistress Carmen led me, as if I was going to my own death, into an even smaller room with a massage table strung with manacles, leather straps, and switches. An assortment of high spiky heels, whips, and chains were within arm’s reach.
Not my arms!
By this time, I had broken into a cold sweat as I stood frozen, feeling much like a child must when entering a spooky Halloween haunted house. My mouth hung slack-jawed, my eyes were as big as saucers, and I had no saliva left to swallow with. Mistress Carmen asked if I’d like a Pepsi. “Yes, please.”

She left the room and, as I let out my breath, I began planning my escape—and Bill’s murder. Too late, she was back carrying two frosty cans of soda. She handed one to me and said, “Bondage or discipline?”

I do believe I felt that most Victorian of maladies; I became weak in the knees. “I don’t know.”
I didn’t want to know. Oh God, my very own
Fifty Shades of Grey! (Oh wait, that wasn’t written yet. But you get my drift.)
The sugar from the soda hit its mark, and although I knew the rush would be short, my wits had returned and I asked, “Have you been paid for this time with me?” She said yes. I continued, “Then you don’t care what we do with our time?”

She shook her long reedy hair and my Mistress very clearly said, “It’s your money, but I don’t do girls.”
Good to know.
It was then that I told her I was a writer and would she be okay if we just spent the time talking. I had a lot to learn. The pair of us girls sat on the massage table, swinging our legs, and chatted like old friends. I found out Carmen, real name Cleo, had been a prostitute on the mean streets of Hollywood and had been severely beaten a couple of times, but as in many fun fairy tales, she had married her pimp and now only worked inside and “did nuthin’ sexual.” She told me that on Sundays, the place was packed with “sinners” wanting to have their punishment for whatever bad deeds they had committed that week meted out by whichever doms were on duty. Cleo laughed and said that “The Church of Discipline” had been registered as a house of worship, and therefore was tax exempt.

My hour was almost up when Cleo asked me if
I wanted to scare my friend who had dropped me off there by having a couple of rope marks on my wrists. It was my turn to laugh. “Good idea!” Bill was sitting outside, an odd look on his face, when Cleo and I hugged each other and I walked to the car rubbing my wrists. I refused to explain.

It wasn’t long before I got my revenge, with Gilles’ help. About a month later, he called Bill, asking him if he would mind picking me up at my doctor’s office because he was busy with a client. When Bill arrived, one of the nurses asked him to wait in another room. My doctor, a friend and a great sport, sat down in front of him and said he would be happy to discuss his imminent vasectomy in detail. He said, “Your sister Monica explained how very shy you are, Bill. I’d like to allay your fears. It’s a very quick snip and the blood leakage is minimal.” My doctor pal offered some very graphic statistics as Bill paled and babbled that he was not my brother, backing out of the room. It did little to curtail Bill’s endless enthusiasm for practical jokes, but I did enjoy his next birthday gift, a portrait of me done on black velvet, replete with a flashing diamond tooth.

Gilles was unable to stay out of the kitchen and within a couple of weeks I could no longer resist the aromas permeating the entire house.
Bastard.
We ate and drank wine and I thought there had to be a better way to deal with my body issues. I decided to take up exercise, but unless dragged by a team of runaway horses, there was no way I was going to a gym in Beverly Hills. I had ventured into a couple of them when we first arrived. They were all filled to capacity with highly motivated young actresses, singers, weather girls, and tight-assed blondes, sipping their daily caloric intake from water bottles. I felt like I had stumbled into an all-female army that marched absolutely in unison to the same drummer. When I caught my reflection in the mirror, my arms going in the wrong direction and my bent-over ass eclipsing at least two of the now-irate skinny things who couldn’t see around me, I knew being there was a worse idea than choosing to sit at the epicenter of the San Andreas Fault, knowing an earthquake was imminent.

Of course, Gilles found the perfect solution. I worked out, not in a public gym but in my garage. There were two spaces, but we only had one car and we weren’t that worried about it getting scratched. He partitioned it off and lined one wall with mirrors including a pull curtain in case I was in a self-loathing state of mind. First I tried a “dreadmill,” but it didn’t take long for me to feel like a large, imprisoned hamster on its perpetually moving belt. I sent it back and bought a stationary recumbent bicycle, so sure this was to be my machine of choice. It hurt my knees and felt so unsatisfying to have pedaled for so long to end up going nowhere. Luckily I bought it on sale so felt little remorse when it soon enough embraced its new life as a clothes rack. I tried jogging but my boobs kept hitting me in my ears.
Maybe speed walking encased in head-to-toe Lycra?
What was wrong with looking like a jiggling, turquoise and hot-pink bratwurst windup toy?
I bought a giant yellow plastic bouncy ball. It reminded me of being a kid, until I tried some real fat-burning moves on it and landed repeatedly on my ass. I left it on the curb where it was soon picked up by some other wanna-be.

Everyone in Beverly Hills had a personal trainer. I knew it would be expensive but maybe that would turn the tide. I put out the word and was flooded with recommendations. I chose a German woman who sounded kindly and confident that together we would break the cycle of failure that she felt was mostly mental. Her name was Gudren and I hired her sight unseen. I was excited—a trainer who was part shrink—I would be getting a two-fer. In the same way some of us clean their houses before their cleaning ladies come, I thought I’d better get in shape before my trainer met me. I strapped on my double-cushioned, hundred-dollar running shoes and ventured out into the smog and dry-as-flour air to hit the pavement. Twenty minutes later, I was winded and my knees were in danger of buckling. I crawled back home and lay on the couch, with a small bag of potato chips to replenish my energy.

I was so excited to begin my guru-lead exercise routine that I made cookies to welcome Gudren into my life. A fully tattooed and muscular she-bitch from hell stomped through our front door and took over. First she led me to my kitchen and hovered over me like a vigilant maximum-security guard, just to make sure I dumped the cookies into the garbage can. The soft-spoken phone voice was a sham, a come-on to lure people with her warm, lulling demeanor. I had been suckered.

One week later, the beat of some hard-pumping disco dance-to-the-death music was blasting from a set of speakers set on the hood of our car in
my gym
. My new Nazi-trainer’s voice cut through it all, screaming, “Hit the deck and give me fifty! And stop staring!” The woman was a human billboard but didn’t want to be looked at. She didn’t seem to notice or care that I was far from being in Navy Seal shape as she bludgeoned me into yet another murderous round of deep, butt-burning crunches. This woman had not one iota of compassion or sensitivity; she pushed and pushed and all I could feel was my burning resistance to being pushed. I was exhausted, parched, and getting more upset by the moment. I had fifty that I wanted to give her but it wasn’t push-ups, more like stab wounds to her every artery. I didn’t respond well to being yelled at. But I was more afraid of quitting than I was of having a heart attack. I couldn’t handle failure, seeing as I had invited the bitch into my life. I bit down and pushed myself harder, visualizing my long lean body piercing through the layers of fat, continuing on until it pierced her, right through to the place where her heart was supposed to be, until she was seriously dead on my garage floor.

21

Wine Making

Diet #24
All the Fruit One Can Eat

Cost
Minimal–It was California

Weight lost
12 liters of bodily fluids

Weight gained
13 liters of bodily fluids

I woke up at three in the morning,
tossing and turning, dripping in flop sweat after three weeks of nonstop abuse. I was agonizing about how to dump the trainer from hell and it was causing me sleepless nights. Even the word “trainer” conjured up nightmarish images of a sadistic ringmaster wearing black leather riding boots and carrying a sharp-cracking riding crop, standing over me, a cowering fat woman covered in bandages. I wanted her gone. I couldn’t unload her in person, as it might prove to be dangerous; she could break me in half. A letter would take too long. Hiring a hit man would come back to bite me, but that was my favorite scenario. He could make her eat her damn Kettle ball. I sat up in bed in agony from the searing workout pains running through every part of my body. I felt Gilles rubbing my back. “What’s wrong? Why are you awake?” I told him I had to fire Frau Trainer, but I didn’t know how. As always he had an easy, commonsense solution: “Tell her you are done and you won’t be needing her services anymore.” He yawned and went back to sleep. He clearly didn’t know Ms. Barbell-Breath; she believed in the art of war. She ate children for breakfast. These were the days before texting and e-mails allowed us to chicken out of anything in a faceless and cowardly way.

It was barely seven in the morning but I was armed with a glazed doughnut and a cup of very strong black coffee as I dialed, praying for the strength to spit it out and then hang up. Her answering machine picked up.
Oh thank God.
But then I heard that soft, sweet lying voice and I shivered. I spat it out all right, “You’re fired!” I hung up, realizing I didn’t even say who was calling—but she’d know my whipped and whiny voice anywhere. I was about to take a huge bite of my doughnut, when I remembered: I had just spent weeks working my tail off. How much weight had the bitch screamed off me? I was excited. “I’ll be a sylph—a string-bean size 14.” I went to the bathroom to weigh myself, so sure that this time . . . Oh my God, I had gained muscle weight and I was still dragging around an ass big enough to double as a shelf. I measured myself. Instead of being a size 22, I was now a size 20! Big whoop-de-do! I needed something radical and I didn’t care if it was rat poison. I took a huge bite of the doughnut. I had to get this damn weight off. But first, I needed to take a three-day nap.

* * *

An anorexic, second-tier, thrice married but now very much single, former movie-star neighbor, who always carried a packet of dog-eared, yellowed photographs and clippings of her glory days in her ancient Hermes Birkin handbag, had befriended me. Cassandra was lonely and alone, and seemed to always have one eye on her window to see the comings and goings of the neighborhood. Whenever she saw me coming in and out of my garden gate, she somehow managed to whip out of her house and block my path. She was deeply interested in the ongoing saga of my losing battle with the bulge. She fancied herself something of a New Age practitioner of all things natural. She carried oversized pillboxes filled with herbal everything from sleep aids to stool softeners. She didn’t understand when I told her she reminded me of my father. She had jumbo bottles filled with fish oil, bee pollen, magnesium, ginkgo-biloba, and it was all stuffed into that bag along with the clippings and a pair of ben-wa balls.
You are on your own for that one
. I had barely set foot on the sidewalk when Cassandra blocked my path and excitedly invited me over for tea at her place. She had been talking to a friend who was visiting, when she saw me and thought I would find Roselby very interesting. “She’s a High Priestess.”

“Of what?” I asked.

Cassandra said, “Of living food.”

From a girl who was willing to eat rat poison just a few hours ago, I didn’t feel I had the right to judge anyone. I sat down with Cassandra, right under an enormous full-length portrait of herself looking as she wished she still did when she was under contract to a film studio 110 years ago. Roselby, sitting across from us, was the picture of health, if gaunt was your thing, and I so wanted it to be mine. I hung on every word as she messianically assured me that a six-week regime of nothing but fruit would change my metabolic set point forever. I had no idea what that meant but it was just fruit, nothing weird. Cassandra promised me Roselby was the best. Everyone went to her. I was in. I loved fruit.

I committed to the All-You-Can-Eat-Fruit-Diet, which came with the guarantee that I could eat all day and yet still lose acreage. It consisted of bushels of berries, casaba melons by the truckload, papayas, mangoes, whole vineyards of grapes, pineapple, and dozens of pears. At first I was ecstatic; there was no counting and no weighing. I ate as if I were a happy baboon, picking fruit right off the trees, although I did have to spend an inordinate amount of time visiting the deluxe bathrooms of Beverly Hills. But then, like most too-much-of-a-good thing, it began to get old, and my mind began to drift into dreams of German chocolate cake. I couldn’t look at another guava.

Gilles stepped in to the rescue. He began serving me all my meals. My breakfasts were bowls of berries pretending to be cereal with an accompanying milk pitcher filled with water. Lunches came disguised as two huge slabs of watermelon filled with mashed mango, as if it were a sandwich. Dinners were amazing: plates heaped with papaya-slices cut to look like a mountain of french fries, watermelon steaks, and pear puree in a sundae cup for dessert. Three weeks later, horrible painful cramps began to set in. I could barely stand up. Gilles immediately brought me a piece of toast with peanut butter but I refused to eat it. I wanted this to work. Within two days, I was sitting cramped over in my doctor’s office, swearing I would never buy into anyone’s assertion, no matter how well intentioned, that they knew the best tinker, tailor, doctor, vet, or hair-colorist and absolutely the “best diet ever.”
Bull . . .
After a fairly quick analysis of my fling with nothing but fruit, the doctor gave me his diagnosis. I was fermenting.
I was making wine in my kidneys!
I would have laughed had the cramping not kicked in again.

I was a mess and now terrified of food, believing every mouthful arrived loaded with calories and anxiety; my mouth was a portal to hell. I knew how to go into the food monastery and take a vow of starvation, it was when I stepped into the land of the eaters I was doomed. I had no understanding of middle ground. I knew how to be a pig at the trough or a twig-eating nut ball. There were millions and millions of pounds lost each year along with millions and millions of dollars. I decided to get off the diet train and try something completely foreign, a balanced lifestyle.

This resolution lasted about a minute in my diet time line; in reality, it was probably about two weeks in, when my upstairs neighbor, Linda, who was no stranger to the art of celebration—in fact I would have to anoint her The Queen—invited me to a party. Every February 14th, Linda had an all girls’ Valentine’s Day luncheon that started at noon and ended when the last chocolate heart had melted. Linda was a woman who loved hearts and she pulled out all the stops on this annual rite of passage. Hearts were everywhere, made of crystal, flowers, straw, paper, porcelain, and, even better, cheese and chocolate. The lunch plates were heart-shaped as was every hanging bauble and there was a plethora. It was a
tour de force
of excess. We were instructed to wear only red, pink, purple, or white, and at every turn there was a photo op, where we all looked like bunches of pretty peonies. (One year I wore green and almost lost my place.) But it was the platters of delicious heart-shaped sandwiches, quiches, tarts, and pies that did me in. Much like a panda deprived of bamboo, I ate the entire forest.

Year in year out, regardless of which diet I was on and I’m sure I was on one every year, my willpower would rarely accompany me through the front door on those heart days. This lunch was a hot and much-desired ticket; there was only room for a dozen women and all of us treasured our special seats at the most fun table in town. It started with everyone bringing a gift for Linda, but then one year, one of the girls brought a gift for each guest, and so it began. From then on we all went home lugging eleven over-the-top but never-ever expensive presents, wrapped and primped like no other. It had become quite competitive in its inventiveness and who doesn’t love wholesale Swarovski crystal eyeglasses, tiaras, cowboy hats, boas, bracelets, and on and on. In spite of the gathering being a collection of well-known actresses, power brokers, and independent thinkers, this was the most unabashed girl-fiesta anywhere, and a true testament to how much laughter and love women have for each other. But what did we talk about while drinking pink martini’s and noshing on sumptuous heart-shaped berry and cream scones, besides our love lives? It was all about the latest diets that most of us would be on soon enough, regardless of what shape our bodies were in. There was something sad about that.

As Julia Child said,
“A party without cake is just a meeting.”

I still had my personal gym but I no longer had
Gudren, the she-wolf, so I had no fear about pushing the button on our garage opener and going inside. There stood the recumbent bike under a pile of coats, and sticking out of bins were the bits and pieces of exercise paraphernalia I had bought and then sold and probably bought back again at various garage sales: two mini trampolines, a ThighMaster, walking weights, dumbbells, an Ab Blaster, ropes, pulleys, a broken rowing machine, and various forms of transportation from bicycles to Rollerblades
.
The whole collection appeared to have eyes, all looking at me in condemnation. I threw a coat over the bins so I couldn’t see their scorn and picked up a jump rope, contemplating stringing them all up, but then I took it into the backyard and began clumsily to skip rope. For a short while I felt like a happy four-year-old, but the beating my chin was taking from being hit by those damn boobs, along with a sudden seizing in my left hip, put an end to that activity. I dropped the rope and left the garden on foot. It started with an exploration of my neighborhood, one step at a time, and before I knew it, an hour had passed. So began my lifelong joy of walking. No equipment required. I parked all of the fitness crap outside on the sidewalk and posted a sign that said, “Free.”