The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl (21 page)

But nothing happened all night. We were both too bashful to mention the whole Charade thing. The five of us went out for drinks after dinner, and Rhiannon pointedly raised her eyebrows at Jane and Rory so Gareth and I had to sit beside each other again. But I was too nervous and crap to make any eye contact.

Now it’s 2:00
A.M.
and I’m brooding back at home. Gareth is staying over at Jane and Rory’s, just five minutes down the road. So near and yet so far.

What did I expect to happen? Was he going to lunge at me in front of our friends? I don’t know. I’m rubbish at this stuff. I’m going to be alone forever.

The tide has turned, people!

After sulking all night that He Doesn’t Even Know I’m Alive, Gareth called in the morning! Jane and Rory must have given him my number. My heart thumped as his mellow accent wafted down the line.

“Do you fancy coming out to Dunfermline today?” he asked. “I can show you around the town.”

“Oh!”

“It’s only a wee place. It’ll take about ten minutes.”

“I’d love to.”

An hour later the train rattled over the Forth Rail Bridge and I searched for something profound to say.

“Ahh, the Forth Rail Bridge. The greatest feat of Victorian engineering!”

Gareth smiled. “Hell, yeah. It makes me proud!”

Could I be the biggest twit in the world? As the train pulled into North Queensferry, I considered hopping out and hurling myself onto the tracks.

“So… Dunfermline’s a fair distance from Edinburgh,” I said. Shit!

“Aye! And my flat is twenty minutes’ walk from the station too.”

“Aha. So is that why you’re always running late?”

He laughed. “Guilty as charged.”

“Excellent.”

I was all out of words.

Mercifully, we arrived in Dunfermline. He showed me around the abbey and walked me back to his flat via the local park, where I saw my very first real live Scottish squirrels!

Gareth’s flat was incredibly tidy, with enormous piles of books and CDs. Always a good sign.

“Can I get you a cup of tea?” he asked.

“Oh no thanks,” I blurted out automatically. “I don’t drink tea!”

I remembered a time about five years ago when a guy asked me did I want to come in for coffee when I dropped him off at his house. It was just like that
Seinfeld
episode where George turns down a late night cuppa and it sparks a lengthy “Does coffee mean sex” debate. I didn’t think of that at the time, even though it was 1:00
A.M.;
for why would someone want hanky-panky with a lump like me? So I said cheerily, “Oh no thanks, mate! I don’t like coffee!” and drove away into the moonlight.

Gareth’s question was perfectly innocent: tea really did mean tea. We couldn’t even look at each other, let alone make sweet love down by the fire. But he was astounded that I was a tea virgin at twenty-six years old. Eager to establish myself as a wild adventurer, I agreed to try it. As he fiddled with mugs and spoons, I examined the box of tea bags and took another stab at conversation.

“So… it says here this tea is Scottish Blend. How does that work?”

“Oh, it’s genuine Scottish tea,” he replied, “from the Scottish tea plantations.”

“Tea plantations? In Scotland?”

“Aye! It’s special cold climate tea. They grow it down in the Borders!”

I grinned. “Oh, I see.” He could have told me that the Scottish tea plantation was right next to the haggis fields and across the road from the oatcake orchard and I still would have said, “Really, how fascinating!”

I’ll never forget that first sip. It was scalding hot; I hadn’t thought to let it rest for a while. It burned a path down my throat until POW! It exploded like a punch in the chest. With minimal calories!

“What do you think?”

“Not too shabby!”

I proceeded to drink five more cups during the evening. We chatted nonstop, side by side on his couch, tantalizingly close yet not touching. I’ve never felt such ease and warmth talking to a guy. I was deliriously happy just to be near him, or perhaps that was the effects of tea on a body that had been a stranger to caffeine for the previous two and a half decades. Well, aside from all that chocolate.

We talked and talked, then somehow it was midnight. I’d missed the last train back to Edinburgh.

“Um, you could crash here if you like?” said Gareth.

“Really?”

“I’ll sleep in the spare room,” he said hurriedly. “No worries.”

He made another round of tea, this time with Vegemite toast. “I’m completely hooked on this stuff now,” he said.

I poked through his record collection, looking for a clanger that would spoil my opinion that he was possibly the most perfect bloke in the world. But there was nothing incriminating!

Finally at two o’clock this morning I crawled into his bed. I was still so wired that I kept yapping, even though he was in the spare room.

“Why don’t you just come in here?” I said after a while, all bold like an oversized Mae West.

So he slipped into the bed beside me and we lay on our backs, too timid to look at each other even in the dark. Eventually he reached over and took my hand and traced the back of it with his thumb, neither of us skipping a beat of the conversation. My heart pounded wildly, but again that could have been the caffeine. I had to keep getting up to pee and agonized over whether he could hear me through the flimsy walls.

By 6:00
A.M.
he was starting to drift off, but I was still staring at the ceiling and squeaking, “I can’t sleep! I can’t sleep! Hee hee!”

At 8:00
A.M.
, I called in sick to work because I couldn’t bear for the conversation to end. Then we finally slept for three hours.

When we woke there was more tea and Vegemite toast but it was back to the extreme shyness. We watched DVDs and chatted all afternoon, then finally at six o’clock we walked back to the train station in awkward silence.

Standing on the platform in the chilly night air, my breath shot out in anxious, near hysterical puffs. It had been five long months since our fateful meeting at the pub quiz: now the time was ripe to finally make that move!

With the train rattling toward us there was potential for a dramatic and memorable moment, like
Brief Encounter
or something. But an ill-timed lunge, an awkward hug, and my kiss landing somewhere up his left nostril was hardly something to tell the grandkiddies. Neither was me blurting, “You rock!” before fleeing onto the train. All executed without any eye contact whatsoever.

Now it’s eleven o’clock and here I am cringing in my bedroom. You rock. You ROCK? Why did I say that? What kind of crap seductress am I?

For the past three days Gareth and I seem to have returned to chaste e-mails. I’m starting to panic. Was that wonderful weekend entirely my imagination?

I went shopping to console myself and bought a new pair of jeans—size 18! And a normal size 18 from a normal shop. Finally! There’s no elastic in the waistband either. If I weren’t so anxious, I’d be feeling pretty darn foxy right now.

“Shaunie Prawn. It’s the Mothership!”

“Hello!”

“How’s life treating you?”

“I’m fine. Well…” I couldn’t contain my glee. “I’m about to head out, actually!”

“Oh really?” I could hear the wheels turning. “Going anywhere special?”

“Just the pub around the corner.”

“Oh yes. With anyone special?”

“Well…”

“Spill! Spill!”

“He could be. Oh, Mum. I really think he might be.”

“Shauna, you sly dog!” she howled. “Who is he? Why wasn’t I informed earlier?”

“He’s Scottish. He’s smart … oh bugger, he’s just rung the doorbell. I’ll put Rhiannon on. Wish me luck!”

“Good luck. You’ll be hearing from me soon!”

I was just beginning to give up when Gareth called and asked me out for a drink. A few hours later I was fumbling with Walker’s chips and a gin and tonic. The MTV Awards were on the telly, live from Leith. Christina Aguilera ponced around the stage in a tiny kilt. I was so nervous that I couldn’t think of any zany anecdotes to charm him with, so I resorted to probing intellectual debate: “Speaking of Michael Hutchence—would you rather people thought you’d committed suicide or wanked yourself to death?”

He made me laugh. He made me feel like I didn’t have to be anyone else but me. Before I knew, it was last orders and he’d missed the last train back to Dunfermline. We walked back to my house in the drizzle, stopping outside a lighting shop. My heart clattered against my rib cage as we made inane conversation about lampshades. I was considering attempting another Move when I felt his hand curl warmly around mine.

Simple and effective. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

And then finally we kissed, and everything fell into place.

Has anyone ever lost a stack of weight and felt like it was a dirty secret? No one in Scotland needs to know about my former size unless I tell them. But if I don’t tell them, they’ll never understand why I’m so paranoid about my body. They won’t know about the decades of misery that came before because they don’t have the historical context!

Yesterday I was having lunch with some House of Sport colleagues and we were talking about exercise. One chick said she wanted to try BodyPump classes, and I said I’d been doing it for two years and loved it.

As soon as the words were out my old friend Paranoia was back in town. Quick! Tell them about all that weight you’ve lost! Otherwise they’ll think, She’s been doing weights for two years and still looks like THAT?

Even though I’m happy in my size 18 body these days, I feel I should explain to everyone that I’m still trying to get smaller. Why can’t I just be out and proud about the way I look right now, instead of explaining away my supposed freakiness?

And if I tell someone about my loss, I always understate the number. I usually say 70 or 80 pounds, when it’s actually 140 pounds now! If people knew precisely how obese I used to be, would they look at me differently? Would they think I was some gluttonous weirdo?

I just know that nonfat people find such figures hard to fathom. A few months ago at Jane and Rory’s tea party we were looking at some old photos and there was a very large guy in one picture. Rory said he weighed about 308 pounds.

“How can anyone weigh 308 pounds?” asked David. “How is that physically possible?”

“Wow … that’s nearly two of me,” said Gareth.

They weren’t being mean or judgmental; they were genuinely awed that the human body could scale such lardy heights.

It can happen!
I wanted to say.
I used to be 350 pounds!
But I couldn’t bring myself to speak up. What would they think of me then?

It’s funny to have such a huge (forgive the pun) part of your life a total secret. I can’t bring myself to tell Gareth about it. Our love feels so lovely and shiny and new, but inside I’m brickin’it, as they say over here. I may be a lot smaller, but I’m more neurotic than ever about my body. I look fine with my clothes on, but underneath it’s a disaster. My stomach is flabby and my gelatinous arms depress me.

I’m terrified of this romance going further. He may just well be the most incredible guy I’ve ever met, and possibly be very understanding about my issues. But if it ever comes to us getting naked, there will be soft lighting. And I will explain why my body is such a wreck and reassure him that efforts are being made to rectify the situation. Then I will probably feel the need to outline my gym schedule, nutrition plan, and highest squat weight, just so he knows I am aware of the problem!

I’m sending Gareth deranged mixed signals re: Getting My Gear Off. We’ve been taking things slow and he seems to be letting me set the pace, as though he senses a neurotic, insecure freak lurking beneath the clothes.

Last night I crashed at his place after we’d been out to see some bands. My top was reeking of secondhand smoke but I’d forgotten to bring my pajamas. We were lying there in the dark when he said, “Man, that pub smell is really clinging to me tonight!”

“Oh! That would be my stinky shirt,” I said. “I left my PJs in Edinburgh.”

“Let me get you one of my T-shirts!”

“No!
I mean, no thanks!”

“It’s no trouble,” he said. “You shouldn’t have to sleep in your nice clothes.”

“I’ll just take off the T-shirt.”

“Well that I don’t mind,” he laughed. “But it’s freezing.”

“It’s OK, honest.”

I could just make out his puzzled frown in the dark. “I demand to know why you’re refusing to wear my crappy clothes!”

I gave a weak laugh and told him not to worry, then whipped my top off and slunk under the covers.

Yes, I’m so ridiculous that I’d rather go topless and freeze than risk the humiliation of not fitting into his T-shirt.

Tonight it snowed. It wafted down slowly, not looking like much at first. After an hour I took a break from the Geriatric Rescue phones and stared out the window in amazement. The world wore a marzipan coat. It looked surreal, almost fake.

My Canadian colleague told me that I should try living in Calgary if I wanted a proper winter, but it was impressive enough for me. It was my First Snow! Even as she shoved a snowball down my shirt I couldn’t stop grinning.

Until tonight it was as though I believed I’d still been living in Australia, just in some remote pocket where people talked funny and ate a lot of lard. After my shift I got the bus back into town, along the same road we’d come in from the airport nine months ago. Only now, gawking at snow-covered cars, did it truly sink in that I’m in Scotland.

It took me half an hour to get home from Haymarket, shuffling through the sludge. My shoes were drenched and my thighs were frozen. I smiled at people going by as they stabbed at greasy chips in polystyrene boxes.

By then it had stopped snowing and the sky was soggy and pale. I stopped on the canal bridge and watched the shivering swans, wondering what other Firsts are in store for me next year.