My LA life began with a job waitressing at a vegan diner on La Brea, followed by the realization that I was a terrible waitress. I was too easily distracted, obsessing about what the customers were eating: seitan-chorizo nachos, avocado tostadas, spinach-artichoke dip. I didn’t have the energy to be on my feet all day. Sometimes, when no one was looking, I would stand there and touch all the food: stroking a bun, caressing a stuffed potato, massaging a warm flour tortilla. When somebody’s uneaten soysage patty made its way into my mouth, I went home and applied to all of the sitting-down jobs I could find online.
I interviewed with Ofer, feigning excitement about “supporting” other artists—the same actor types I’d fled in college. Really, I just wanted a chair for my ass, a place of refuge from the avalanche of vegan donuts that threatened to suffocate me.
CHAPTER 6
I was required to burn 3,500 calories a week, a number I’d arrived at via an interactive equation of old Weight Watchers data, my daily caloric intake, and the way my clothes fit over time. I clung to my 3,500 like a winning lotto ticket. No one could lay a hand on it. The number guaranteed my security, physically and emotionally.
I was no athlete. I didn’t run, swim, ski, or play soccer. I didn’t fuck around with anything that could be defined as “sport” or “game.” I was devoted to only one thing: the green glow of ascending numbers—147 cals, 215 cals, 319 cals—as I pedaled nowhere frantically on the stationary bike or elliptical machine.
I went to the gym every night, even Thursdays, when I’d change into spandex after work and then change again into an all-black outfit for cold-shouldering by the neon visors at This Show Sucks. I spent a good three hours at the gym most days: an existence defined by calories per minute, time elapsed, and stride length. My gym schedule, conveniently, precluded me from having to engage in any real human intimacy. Even if I’d wanted that, there simply wasn’t time.
It was only after I’d served my gym sentence for the day that I could soften a little. Hunkered down at night, alone at home, having successfully completed the day’s calibrating and calculating, I could reward myself with a culinary parade, a procession of delicacies rolling in one after the other.
First came a 240-calorie light frozen spaghetti dinner mixed with one tablespoon of Sriracha. Next was a medium sweet potato, microwaved for seven minutes, with three packets of Splenda poured into its guts. If I ever seemed to be gaining weight, the primary suspect was the size of the sweet potato—and so I would be forced to downgrade to a smaller potato for a few weeks: a sad, but necessary, alteration.
Following the sweet potato came Dessert One: a 100-calorie diet muffin top crowned with four tablespoons of Cool Whip Lite. All of this was eaten standing up in my empty galley kitchen, on paper plates, with plastic silverware. I owned no dishes or cutlery, no pots or pans. I did have a set of four extra-large Christmas glasses—printed with a lovely holly and berry motif—which had been left behind by the prior tenant.
Right before bed, I capped off the orgy with a pint of 150-calorie diet chocolate ice cream, microwaved for 45 seconds then mixed with half a cup of Special K Red Berries cereal. This delicacy I consumed under the covers in bed, converting my sheets into a temporary tablecloth.
Ending each day on such an abundant high note felt like freedom. Was it real freedom? Unlikely. But my rituals kept me skinny, and if happiness could be relegated to one thing alone, skinniness, then one might say I was, in a way, happy.
CHAPTER 7
“Can you believe how well I’m doing?” I asked Dr. Mahjoub.
It was day 3 of the detox, and I was still holding strong, but I’d come to her office for an extra reinforcement session when the weather alerts from my mother suddenly took a darker turn. Now I was receiving allegations of ungrateful daughterhood in the form of rhetorical questions:
Who took you to Baby Thespian classes at the Paper Mill Playhouse?
Who was there for you when you didn’t get Éponine??!
Who cheered for you when you got into Wisconsin??
Am I such a horrible person!?!!
She texted repeatedly, then stopped and waited a few hours, then texted again. The silent times were the hardest. That was when I had to mourn. I would close one eye and look at my phone, imagine it cracking in half, the way people sitting shiva ripped a piece of clothing. I didn’t want to mourn. I didn’t want to accept my loss—not only the loss of communication, but the loss of an idea that my mother was going to be the one to change. It made me feel like a loser. It meant I had wanted something and hadn’t gotten it, that I’d been, in some way, rejected. It meant my needs were too big for this world.
“This is a good first step,” said Dr. Mahjoub. “But if you’re really serious about getting free of your mother’s voice, we’ve got to work on your eating.”
I could tell by the breathable cotton tunics she wore, the cropped, wide-legged pants in organic linen, that Dr. Mahjoub was a woman who ate when she was hungry and stopped when she was full. Occasionally I spotted a package of Fig Newmans on her desk. She was probably someone who genuinely enjoyed a nice pear.
“Why can’t I leave things the way they are?” I asked.
“Are you satisfied with just surviving?” asked Dr. Mahjoub. “Or do you want to get well?”
I glanced at a papier-mâché elephant kneeling on her end table with his trunk in the air, then at a multicolored elephant triptych hanging on the wall. She’d definitely bought all the elephants at once.
“I’m well enough,” I said.
On my way out of the office I checked my phone again. No new texts. What would happen if my mother just showed up at my apartment? Rationally, I knew this was unlikely. She was terrified of flying and had not been on a plane in over ten years. But all night, I kept expecting her to materialize. In some way, I even wished she would just appear.
I was aware that the mother I truly desired would not be the one who appeared. I’d learned that from Dr. Mahjoub, who I never wanted to see again. I felt resentful toward Mahjoub, exhausted by my mother. I wished that I could procure, from nowhere, an incarnation of a mother I wanted. This interplay between hope and reality was also part of the mourning.
CHAPTER 8
Ana was the only maternal figure I had left. I wanted to please her more than ever. I wanted her to soak me in praise. I also recognized that I was physically attracted to her. This was something I’d tried to conceal, especially from myself, but it was bursting out of me. Every time I masturbated, Ana popped into my head; and when she surfaced—her giant breasts and slender waist, the little bulge just above her pussy, her heady white floral perfume—I always blocked her image out. I felt ashamed, as though it were my own mother I was fantasizing about. But on night four of the detox, as I masturbated drowsily in bed, I allowed myself to imagine being with Ana fully for the first time.
I was her daughter and had menstrual cramps. Mommy Ana had cajoled me into bed with a cup of Harney & Sons tea. I lay still under the cool sheets as she spoke to me in a hushed voice, almost a whisper.
“Can I rub your belly?” she asked.
She was wearing a pink bathrobe, which was slightly open, and I could see the length of her abundant breasts in the dim light.