¡Olé!
I did the Macarena jump and turn. As I did this, a strand of hair fell from my ponytail and landed across my face. Shannon reached over and moved it back with his hand. It was a simple movement. Yet something about the way he did it made me feel like he was waking me up.
Anda tu cuerpo alegria Macarena.
I held my hands out again, only this time I was more aware than ever that this was my body and that people could see it. I spread my fingers and looked at the space in between each one, I flipped my wrists,
mine
, I touched my hips,
hip bones!
I felt faster, fluid, almost like I was floating. I jumped. Fifteen people jumped with me. At the same time, someone at the bar tossed a wad of bar napkins into the air. I looked up at the swirling white napkins, raining down on us like confetti, listened to the eerie, “HAHAHAHAHA” of the Macarena girl, and thought,
Oh, my gosh—it feels so good to be me!
The song ended. Shannon took my hand and led me over to the bar. Without music, without dancing, I suddenly felt very nervous. I’d never made it this far and I didn’t know what to do next.
“You’re a good dancer,” he began.
My mouth was dry and red blotches started appearing on my neck and on my chest.
“Thank you.”
“And you have beautiful eyes.”
“My dad calls them my root beer eyes!” I blurted out, immediately cringing.
“Your lips are beautiful, too.”
“What?” I couldn’t quite hear him.
“I said . . .” He stopped midsentence and leaned in for the kiss.
It totally caught me off guard.
Relax your jaw muscles, ease into using your tongue, flick the tip of your tongue against his
. I tried to remember all the advice I’d ever read.
Create a slight suction . . . and whatever you do, don’t screw this up!!!
He clutched the hair at the base of my ponytail and pulled my head toward his. I wish that I could say losing forty pounds automatically gave me the ability to kiss. It didn’t.
Boy likes me! No way! Relax your tongue? No, relax your jaw. Ughhh. What the hell does any of this mean?
His soft, slightly wet lips reached mine. I froze.
Just play dead,
I decided.
My body went limp, my eyes rolled back in my head. Shannon might as well have been kissing a cold cement wall.
“Sorry . . .” He stepped back. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
You didn’t scare me, I want to kiss you,
I thought. Only that’s not what came out. “I have to go!” I shouted.
“What, why? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I answered. “It’s just . . . here,” I grabbed a bar napkin and wrote my name and telephone number on it. “Call me and we’ll go out, and it’ll be
just great
.” (By “just great” I meant that somehow in the next few days I would research kissing and learn how to do it, and then I’d be prepared.)
I handed the napkin to Shannon and ran to the nearest exit. On my way out the door, I couldn’t help it; I looked back. He was still standing at the bar. Smiling, Shannon took the napkin out of his shirt pocket, pressed it against his heart, and blew me a kiss.
If it were possible to choose a moment to come back to on my deathbed, I would’ve chosen that one. I mean, I know I’m young and I haven’t gotten married or had my first kid, so I might regret picking a moment early in the game, but I didn’t care, it was the greatest feeling in the world watching him press that napkin to his heart and promise me, in an air kiss, that we would be together.
Shannon never called.
Cyprus
Every member of every family plays a specific role. I’ve mentioned it before, but just to refresh your memory, this is the rundown for my family: Tina’s the pretty sister, I’m the funny one, Julia’s the sarcastic sister, Britain’s the boy, and Jill’s the baby. (We’re all capable of being many different things, but for the sake of simplicity this is how I classify us.)
I didn’t intend being the “funny one”; it was a matter of survival, and after years of wearing this label, I identified myself with it. However, after I lost weight, I didn’t have to work the room to get noticed. I’d enter a room, and people would see me. While I liked it, it was unnerving. I remember one night in particular. After grilling me on diet tips for over an hour, a girl I barely knew said something that really got to me: “You look so great,” she said, “but remember, Elna, you used to be so funny.
Don’t lose that.”
Don’t lose that?
As if to imply that I already had.
You don’t know me. You don’t know my life.
I tried to shake off the comment, but for the rest of the night I was left with a strange feeling. If you’ve lost a ton of weight, then you know what I’m talking about. I felt unsettled. Like I’d gone to Paris and forgotten to turn off my stove. Whatever it was, I’d left something important, something I could not quite place, behind.
I didn’t want to listen to myself, or to confront what was happening to me. So I pretended that nothing had changed. I looked at my new body and thought,
This doesn’t make a difference: I am what I am.
But it made a HUGE difference. The first thing I noticed was when I walked down the street attractive people would do something to me they’d never done before: They’d look me up and down, and then nod their heads. It was the same gesture Shannon had used, only now both men and
women
were doing it. That’s when it occurred to me:
There is an attractive people club and the nod is their secret handshake.
They were letting me in on a trial basis. It was exciting. More exciting than I thought it’d be. It was like a point toward being pretty.
And then I went to get new clothes. I had been a size 18/20, now I was a 4/6, and that was also more exciting than I thought it’d be: It was two points toward the idea that I was actually pretty. And then I met someone who didn’t know I had ever been fat and they said, “I bet you were a cheerleader in high school?”—and that was way more exciting then I thought it’d be—ten pretty points.
Gradually I stopped writing and performing, and instead I spent all my time going to clubs, wearing tiny outfits, and trying to get as many points as possible for being pretty.
Soon I was afraid of telling people that I’d ever been heavy for fear that this would repulse them. I tried to destroy any evidence of my former self. I threw all my old clothes away and every picture taken of me when I was chubby. If I ever get married, the wedding slide show will be amazing: my husband as a baby, me as a baby, my husband in kindergarten, me in kindergarten. My husband graduating from middle school, high school, backpacking through Europe, drinking at college party—me, at twenty-two, looking skinny!
Another bizarre aspect of this transformation was that, aside from Tina, no one in my family had seen me. I was living in New York at the time and they were still in London. My mom asked me to send her pictures, but we had a family vacation planned for August, so I decided to wait and make an entrance.
After three months of being officially thin, it was finally time for them to see me. Tina and I flew to Cyprus for our family trip.
What if they don’t recognize me?
I spent the entire six-hour flight going over their potential reactions. In some versions they screamed, in others they fainted. There was the possibility that they’d pick me up over their heads while chanting my name. Or the embarrassing prospect of them kneeling on the ground and worshipping me. I couldn’t figure out why none of these scenarios seemed right until we were nearly landing.
I don’t want my family to change like everyone else has
.
I want them to treat me like they always did.
When the glass doors to the arrivals area sprang open, I immediately spotted my family. They were behind a metal railing. Julia was looking to her left, my mom and Jill were looking to their right, my dad was looking at his BlackBerry, and Britain was looking directly at me, only he didn’t know it yet. I lifted my hand and waved.
“Elna?”
When Britain said my name, they all turned and stared at me, their mouths hanging wide open.
Boom,
they came back to life and started overreacting. My mother and Jill screamed. My brother picked me up and hugged me. “You did it, girl,” my father said, giving me a high five. The only person who didn’t react was Julia, and that’s because, as a rule of thumb, Julia, the sarcastic sister, never reacts to anything. “Hi, Elna,” she said deadpan.
For the next half an hour, I watched them watch me at a distance. It was as though they knew that I was Elna, their daughter, their sister, but every gesture I made was being put into a replacement file. Old Elna laughed like this . . . new Elna laughs like that.
I reveled in the attention, but as thirty minutes turned to forty, the novelty wore off. I pulled a water bottle from my bag and started drinking. I have this terrible habit of drinking loudly. I can’t half drink anything. When I drink I throw my head back and gulp so that little bubbles of water shoot back into the bottle and make loud gurgling sounds.
“You sound like a fish,” my dad said.
“Whatever.” I rolled my eyes and took another gulp. Just as the bottle reached my mouth, my dad purposely pressed forward on the gas and then the brakes. Water spilled down both sides of my chin.
“Rude!” I yelled.
They all started laughing. My dad, my mom, Tina, Britain, Jill, even Julia—everyone was laughing. And just like that, the spell was broken. I was Elna—eighty pounds heavier or eighty pounds lighter, it didn’t matter. I was the same person I’d always been, which is what I thought I wanted.
Until the first night of our vacation: We were eating dinner when the owner of the restaurant came up to my father and said, “Your daughter is so beautiful.”
For a second I thought he was talking about me, but then I followed the direction of his outstretched fingers . . .
Tina.
He spoke to my sisterin Greek. Tina served her mission in Greece, so she’s fluent. A minute later, he excused himself, saying something excitedly.
“Where’s he going?” my mother asked.
“He says he’s going to get me a
present
!” Tina said this like it was crazy and unexpected, when really this sort of thing happens to my sister all of the time. Case in point: her expensive bottle of perfume that she yells at me for borrowing. It was a gift from a forty-year-old married man who sat next to Tina on an airplane. According to Tina, the man just needed to spend some of his British pounds before going back to the States, so could he please buy her a bottle of perfume. Tina’s an idiot.
The owner of the restaurant came back to our table holding a red velvet box and grinning like the Cheshire Cat. He presented the box to my sister.
“Os di mo,”
Tina said.
I craned my neck so that I was looking directly over her shoulder as she opened it. Inside the box was a gold necklace with an oval purple stone.
“Ooooh.” Tina gasped. It was hideous. I mean, absolutely hideous. Tacky, gaudy, definitely fake. And still, I felt a rush of envy sweep through me. I wanted to be the pretty child now.
Mine!
I wanted to scream.
That necklace should be mine!
We left the restaurant shortly thereafter. Tina posed for pictures with the owner, and everyone said good-bye like we were old friends. Everyone except for me—I stalked off ahead of the group. I was still fuming when Julia caught up with me.
“Well,” she sighed, “I guess
Tina
will always be the pretty one.” Julia wasn’t saying this to make me mad; she was just being sarcastic.
Unfortunately, I was in no place to receive this information. My face contorted hideously. “NOOOOO!” I yelled (in a voice that resembled Frankenstein’s monster). “ME PRETTY NOW!!!”
It only got worse from there. The next day of our trip we drove to the beach. On the way there, my dad said something about Alexander the Great and elephants.
“Elephants are
ele-funny,”
I piped in. Everyone stopped talking and looked at me. I’d interrupted play time with the unpardonable, a bad joke. And okay fine, it wasn’t the brightest line in my comedic repertoire, but sometimes you say stupid things.
“Elna,” Julia said, point blank, “
you’re not funny
.”
She’s right
, I thought.
I’m not funny. I traded being funny for being pretty, and Tina is still prettier than me.
I completely lost it. Pretty soon I was sobbing audibly. “I’m not funny,” I kept saying through bouts of tears. “I’m not FUNNNNNNY!”
My family sat in stunned silence. Soon I was crying about everything all at once, but mostly I was crying about change and how when you change in one area of your life you open yourself up to changing in all the others.
I didn’t sign up for this.
“Elna,” my dad said, trying to calm me. “
Elna.”
I looked up at him.
Say something to make all of this better,
I thought
. Fix me.
“You’re not funny. . . .” he offered, “you’re hys
ter
ical.”
“
Noooo,”
I wailed.
The tone was set for my final meltdown. Three days and another dozen misunderstandings later, we took a day trip to the Turkish side of Cyprus. We were approaching the green zone, a U.N. patrolled area in between the Greek and Turkish border, when it occurred to me that it was already twelve forty-five and that I usually ate lunch at one. Based on my strict regimen, I’d eaten at one o’clock every day for eight months.
“Dad,” I said. “It’s almost one, I need to eat.”
“You can get lunch on the Turkish side.”
“But it’s
almost one
,” I insisted.
“I eat at one.”
“There’ll be plenty of places to eat once we’re there.”
Lies, total lies
. When we got to the Turkish side every single shop was closed.
“We’ll find a place,” my father said.