Authors: Chamein Canton
Marcus smiled for the cameras. “Just a minute, guys, I
forgot someone.” He walked over and led a surprised Cathy
over to the cameras with him.
Marcus kept smiling. “What kind of a gentleman
would I be if I didn’t introduce my girlfriend?”
Cathy’s heart leapt. “Your what?”
“Who is this, Marcus?” a voice shouted.
“This is my girlfriend Catherine.” He smiled as he
looked at her.
A flood of flashbulbs nearly blinded Cathy but she
didn’t care. He’d just told the world she was his girlfriend.
She was happy to smile for the cameras.
“Okay, guys, you got some pictures. I promised to take
her dancing, so if you will excuse us…”
“Thanks, Marcus!” another voice shouted.
The one and only time Cathy had been to a nightclub
was when she was thirty-three. She and Marcus walked
hand in hand through the club. The music was so loud she
could barely hear herself think, which when she thought
about it, was probably the point. As they made their way to
a table, people approached Marcus just to be in his orbit.
He managed to remain gracious and still make his way
through the crowd. They found a table.
“What would you like to drink?” he shouted.
“It doesn’t matter to me,” she shouted back.
“Okay. I’ll just pick something and hope I get it right.”
Cathy covered her ears. “Whatever you get will be fine.”
Marcus smiled when he glanced back from the bar and
saw Cathy moving her shoulders to the music. He hoped
this little outing would be just the ticket to get things off
her mind.
Just then he felt someone rub his back. He turned
around quickly. It was Sarah, the brunette he used to fool
around with. Her timing couldn’t have been worse.
“Hey there, stranger, long time no hear,” she purred.
“Hi.” He was subdued.
She was genuinely surprised by his reaction. “Is that all
I get?” she asked.
“How are you, Sarah?”
“I’m good, but I would be even better if you called me
back. What gives?” She put her hand on her hip.
Marcus looked directly in her eyes. “I have a girlfriend.”
He looked over at the bartender mixing the drink he’d
ordered for Cathy.
“That never stopped you before.” As she went to rub
his chest, he gently grabbed her hand.
“What gives?” she growled.
“I said, I have a girlfriend.”
The bartender walked over, drinks in hand. “Here you
go, Mr. Fox.”
“Thanks, man. Keep the change.”
“Thank you.”
“It was good seeing you, Sarah. Take care.”
Marcus coolly walked away from a shell-shocked Sarah.
Cathy scanned the A-list crowd of twenty and thirty
somethings on the dance floor.
Wow,
Cathy thought,
I’m
only 40 but in here it might as well be in dog years.
Marcus returned.
“Here you go.”
Cathy smiled. “How did you know this was one of my
favorite drinks?”
He played coy. “I made an educated guess. I figured
you’d like something a little sweet but not too sweet.”
“Good guess.” Not much of a drinker, she sipped it
slowly.
“The music is pretty good tonight,” Marcus said as he
moved to the music.
“Yeah, it’s pretty good.”
“As long as it’s not that techno stuff, I’m good.”
“I know what you mean. They sometimes play it at my
gym in the morning. It drives us crazy.”
“Are you feeling okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine.”
“Would you like to dance?”
“Sure, just let me finish my drink and I’m good to go.”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
Cathy took one last sip for courage before she hit the
dance floor with all the Beyonce and Usher wannabees. She
prayed she wouldn’t make a complete fool of herself or slip
a disk.
She got up. ”Lets go.”
Whether it was fate or the good Lord smiling down on
a fool for love, the club played R&B music from the
nineties that Cathy could actually shake her groove thing
to.
Marcus was pleased to see Cathy have such a good time.
While the other women were grinding and dropping their
groove thing, Cathy’s smooth, sexy dance moves left more
to the imagination, much more. Cathy noticed a few fellow
big girls on the dance floor. She almost chuckled out loud
when she thought about something Chris Rock had said
about big women in the clubs. She smiled instead.
“What are you smiling about?” Marcus shouted.
“Nothing. I’m just having a good time.” She continued
dancing.
Before they knew it, they’d worked up a sweat for over
an hour on the dance floor. Although younger, Marcus
threw in the towel first.
“You really did your thing out there.” Marcus put his tie
in his pocket as they headed back to their table.
“It’s nice to know I still can.” Cathy was pumped.
Cybil
who?
“Want something?”
“Oh, yes, I’ll take anything as long as it’s cold and nonalcoholic. I’m going to the ladies room.”
“Okay. I’ll be here when you get back.”
Cathy made her way to the ladies room and splashed a
little water on her face. She was relieved to see it wasn’t
crowded so she wouldn’t look like some old chick trying to
catch her breath. She knew her makeup was a lost cause
after sweating it off on the dance floor, but since it was her
first night on the town with Marcus, she needed a little
color on her mouth and she put some lipstick on. Cathy
reached for another towel to blot but she’d used the last
one.
“Damn, I threw the towel away.” She looked around.
“Tissue will have to do.” As she went into one of the stalls
she heard two women enter the bathroom.
“You got the stuff?”
“Yeah.”
Cathy heard what sounded like snorts. She took a peek
and sure enough, there stood two women snorting coke.
When the hell did doing coke in the bathroom become fashionable again? It’s not the eighties.
The women continued
talking between snorts.
“Did you see her?”
“Who?”
“The woman with Marcus Fox.”
The minute Cathy heard his name she froze.
“Is she the one he left Cybil George for?”
“Yeah. Cybil called him a chubby chaser.”
“Did you see how big she is?”
“I would die if I gained that much weight.”
“Me too. I wonder how he screws her through all that
flesh.”
“If cows can screw, there’s a way.”
Suddenly Cathy felt as if she’d been punched in the
stomach. She was upset and mad at the same time.
“She looks like she wears a size 20 or something.”
Cathy stepped out of the stall. “It’s more like a size 16.”
She was pissed.
Caught, the two gossipers made a hasty exit.
“We have to do this again sometime, ladies. It’s been
real!” she shouted after them.
She looked at her reflection in the mirror.
What the hell
am I doing here? What made me think I could do this?
Cathy went back to the table. Marcus’s face quickly
went from a smile to concern. “Are you okay?”
She could barely look at him. “I have a wicked
headache. Can we go?”
“Sure. I’ll call Louis.” He looked disappointed but he
made the call.
She felt bad for cutting the evening short but there was
no way she could stay there a minute longer.
It only took a few minutes for Louis to bring the car
around. On the drive back to the apartment, Cathy took a
couple of Advil for her non-existent headache that was sure
to become a reality in the penthouse.
The minute they walked in, Cathy kicked off her shoes
and flopped on the sofa. Marcus sat down next to her.
“Now are you going to tell me the real reason you
wanted to leave?”
“I knew you didn’t buy the headache excuse.”
“Does it have anything to do with your mother?”
“My mother?” she asked.
“We talked about this kind of thing earlier. I thought
maybe dancing was against the religion too.”
“I did talk to my mother before we left, but for once she
doesn’t have anything to do with it. There’s no doctrine
against dancing. The prom had more to do with not dating,
I guess.”
“They didn’t let you go to the prom but you could go
to a nightclub?” He seemed puzzled.
“No, they don’t approve of nightclubs, but dancing is
okay. You could dance at weddings and some gatherings
had music for dancing.”
He laughed. “So you mean this very religious woman
likes to shake what her momma gave her?”
“Yes, she does. It is kind of funny when you think about
it. Whenever there’s a wedding, all we have to do is look in
the middle of the dance floor and there’s Mom, shaking and
moving. It cracks us up.”
“Sounds wild.”
“It is.”
“Well, if it isn’t about your mother, something else
happened. It’s written all over your face.”
Cathy’s smile ran away from her face. She sighed.
“Take your time, I am not going anywhere.”
She could see he meant it. “I overheard two women
talking about me in the bathroom.”
Marcus’s stomach sank.
“I’m not thin-skinned but it was hard to hear people
who don’t know me from a hole in the wall talk about me.”
“What did they say that got you so upset?”
She didn’t want the words in the air again but Marcus
wanted to know. She took a deep breath. “They couldn’t
figure out how you could have chosen me over Cybil. Of
course, I’m paraphrasing.”
There was something about the way Marcus took her
hands that touched her emotions. She fought to keep the
tears at bay and tried to pull her hands away but Marcus
wouldn’t let her.
“I want you to know you’re safe. You can talk to me.”
Cathy looked away. The tears began to well in her eyes.
“That’s a tall order, captain. You want me to let my defenses
down. Don’t you know I need my quick wit and self
effacing humor to hide in plain sight? You can’t just call me
out on it. What will I have left?”
“The truth.”
“The truth will set you free,” she said half-heartedly.
“What they don’t tell you is self truth is much harder to
face.” She bent down and wiped her eyes with her arm.
She had a far off look in her eyes. The memories played
in her head like a movie reel. “I’ve always been the big girl
growing up but it was harder for me because of religion.”
“You felt like an outsider?”
She shook her head. “Yes. I couldn’t participate in the
very things that would have validated me. I didn’t get to be
pretty in pink for my prom. I didn’t date. I spent my
Saturday nights studying or reading Jane Austen. It’s not so
much that I was the only big girl in my class, I wasn’t. I was
just the only one who never went out.”
“God, those are all things most of us take for granted.”
“It made it that much harder to learn how to be
comfortable in my own skin. My mother always fought her
weight but divorce took care of that for her once and for all.
She was definitely from the school of Ivana. She got everything and she looked good doing it.”
“Oh, I see.”
“She became one of those former fatties who suddenly
got onto this soapbox about weight. She said it was about
health, but that was a load.”
“What about your dad? What did he have to say?”
“He never said anything about weight. He was more
interested in school work. Grades, tests, things like that.”
“He never said you were beautiful or pretty?”
“He did but I developed way ahead of other girls so he
was more protective than anything else. I wore a B-cup in
the fifth grade and by the time I graduated high school I
was a DD-cup.”
Marcus was impressed. “You were a DD-cup in high
school. Wow.”
“I know.”
“So your parents’ split was less than amicable.”
“That’s putting it mildly. My mother was awarded
custody and froze my father out whenever she could just
shy of violating the court’s visitation order. Her nitpicking
about my weight got worse and now 24 years later we’re
sitting here dealing with my hang-ups.”
“Have you ever talked to your dad about it?”
“No. It’s not exactly an easy subject to chat with your
dad about.” She paused. “I still don’t have a clue how to
even bring the topic of body image up.”
“As a man he could have helped you deal with your
insecurities by giving you a man’s point of view.”
Cathy wiped her eyes. “You may have a point there, but
everything was so tense back then. He couldn’t talk to my
mother. He had an affair so he was the last person my
mother would listen to.”
“He was and still is your father. No matter what
happened between them, he should have had a say.”
“Not on Elizabeth’s watch he didn’t. She did back off a
little when we got older but by that time, I had my issues
under control, at least most of the time.”
“You know, you don’t seem like you have any issues
with your body at all. I watched you dance tonight. You
have some great moves.”
Cathy couldn’t help but laugh softly. “Thanks. You
know, I thought I’d dealt with it, but the truth is these feelings die a thousand deaths only to be resurrected over and
over. It’s an emotional cha-cha dance.” Unable to hold
them back any longer, Cathy felt tears stream down her
face.
“I can’t say I understand it completely, but I want to.”
“I’m grateful that you want to understand but it’s just
not the same for men.”
“Why don’t you think it’s the same for men?”
“Because when my cousin Madison gained weight from
medication and went from a 34 to a 42 a few years ago, it
didn’t put a crimp in his social life. He still went out with
gorgeous women; he had no qualms about his size. When
it happened to me after my car accident, I wanted to crawl
under a rock.”
“You were in a car accident? When?”
“A long time ago I sustained a back injury after being
hit at a light. I put on weight due to the medication my
doctor prescribed. I knew it was a side effect that would go
away once I stopped taking the pills but it didn’t make me
feel better. I went from a size 16 to a 22. It took me a year
to get back down to a 16. That’s why I started dating at 29
instead of 28.”
He shook his head. “I knew there was pressure on
women to be thin but I never realized how much pressure.”
“Pressure?” she repeated. “Do you know most big girls
would never even think of approaching a hot guy? Not to
say there aren’t some that would. But if you hadn’t come
over to my table at Keen’s, I would have been satisfied
telling people I saw you in person.”
He was taken aback. “Satisfied with never taking a
chance to get to know me?”
“As bad as it sounds, yes. I would never have dreamed
in a million years that
you
would find
me
attractive.”
“Why?”
“For one thing, I’ve never seen you with anyone who
remotely looked like me size wise. Whenever I opened the
paper, there you’d be with some long, lithe, leggy creature.
That’s why I thought you were interested in the women at
the table behind me at Keen’s.”