“Yeah. The wife is American, but the cause is for Croatia.”Part IV: The MeetingFor most of my dating life, my amplitude was something to be overlooked, overcome. Tolerated. I remember one man, an alcoholic who’d begun taking red wine before his morning coffee, sitting across from me as I held a vegetable roll between my chopsticks, and asking, with an earnest obliviousness, if I might consider “eating healthier food.” My suitors were always taken enough with everything beneath my skin — heart and wit and good old-fashioned moxie — but only taken so far. Even if our breakups were rooted in banality of mismatched ambitions, uneven libidos, or just plain stupid youth, there was always a thin tendril muscling up from that root, one that choked our relationships: the stigma of dating a fat girl.
Not this guy. He’d been unabashedly open, enthusiastic even, about his preference for those of us on the Melissa McCarthy end of the size spectrum. He’d reached out to thank me for an essay I wrote about my choice to duck-and-roll off the hamster wheel of constant dieting and accept, even embrace, my size 24 figure. We talked, and wrote, with increasing length and flirtatiousness, about body acceptance and the vanquishing of secret shame, our upbringings (or lack thereof) and aspirations; ours was a courtship knit by the camaraderie of misfits, an affection that felt as easy and natural as spring grass, and as vital as rain.
That affection ends with a confession like a record skipping just before the bridge in my favorite song. He would touch me everywhere; he just wouldn’t hold my hand. And he’s telling me now, because he doesn’t want me to get the wrong idea, to think that his unwillingness is “a matter of optics.” A matter of how a thin man — any man, really — looks when he shows up with his hand in mine.
I could come to New York where I can better explain why I felt I had to go along with a plan that went so wrong. You are an amazing, compassionate person, and I am looking forward to meeting you in person.
We agree on O’Neal’s Restaurant across from Central Park, and as I walk along Eighth Avenue I have doubts. What if it was a big mistake to write to the parole board? What if she commits another crime?
While I wait for her, my stomach is in knots. A tap on my shoulder startles me and I turn to see a tall woman, and pause for a moment before I can take in that I am looking at Julie Busic.
She takes me off guard and takes away the words I had practiced. I stare at a stunning woman, taller than my 5-foot-6 inches, slender, in a lovely blue dress. We are now both 41, and lines are beginning to appear around my eyes. I had pictured what she looked like and wondered if prison life had turned her old and gray, but the woman in front of me is much prettier than her photos, a natural blonde with blue eyes and even white teeth. She certainly doesn’t look like a hijacker, or prison-worn. She seems sophisticated and worldly in a way I will never be.
Two women at the next table laugh over a secret and I wonder what they would think if they knew our story. “What are your plans now that you’re free?” Julie’s eyes light up. “I’m going to Croatia to wait for Zvonko’s release.”
In another person I might have admired such steadfast loyalty, but Julie Busic had taken up a place in my life that has drained me, and now I feel hollowed out.
“I thought you were divorced.” I look toward the door and contemplate the walk across the room.I’d been hoping that “And So Did the Fat Lady,” the much-ballyhooed episode of “Louie” that ran earlier this year, might show a fat woman’s desire as real and valid, not played as a half-measure or a joke. This kind of visibility can be lifesaving, soul-sustaining when women like me are most commonly casualities of the 6 o’clock news, our heads and faces lopped off the screen to render us a freak show promoting some new obesity drug or study — never as people whose hands and thighs and rolling bellies can give, and receive, great pleasure.
Louie has a great time with Vanessa, his date and the titular fat lady, until he “compliments” her by saying she’s not fat. Vanessa tells him that she’s going to make him “represent all the guys” when she unloads about a lifetime on the sidelines: “Why do you hate us so much? What is it about the basics of human happiness, feeling attractive, feeling loved, having guys chase after us, that’s just not in the cards for us? Nope. Not for us.”
When she says this, I’m with her. I’m sitting at lunch with friends who express their puzzlement at my chronic singledom, but who don’t offer to set me up with anyone they know. Which may very well be just as well, since I’m watching the face of the one friend who’d been excited to set me up with a horror-loving aspiring writer in her department cycle through a calculated array of micro-expressions as she wonders how to tactfully tell me that — after seeing my full-body picture — he’s not interested; and, from the suppressed anger that makes her features as taut as a bow string, that he didn’t express this lack of interest kindly. And I’m wondering how to tell my wonderful friend — who doesn’t see me the way that any guy who has been socialized to believe that there’s a supermodel for every schlub sees me — that I was expecting this all along.
I was with Vanessa until her cry-to-arms goes limp-wrist: She tells Louie that she doesn’t even want a boyfriend or a husband. She just wants someone to hold her hand. This plaintive plea is (perhaps) meant to move the civilian viewer, the person who doesn’t have to move through the world in a body that can provoke such hatred. But it struck me as an insult, telling me to settle for crumbs when I deserve cake: someone to hold my hand, and so much more.
But that so much more seems impossible to come by when I can’t even get a man to slip his fingers inside mine when we’re off our backs and in daylight. Still, touch has a power like a ringing bell’s — it reverberates under skin, becomes a song playing through our cells. I haven’t found what I’m looking for yet, but in those moments with Mr. Optics, I got what I needed. Not from him, but for me.
A few weeks ago, I saw my mother; I wore a cotton dress with short sleeves that rode up my arms. “I hate that,” my mother said as she jerked my sleeves down. Her nails raked my skin; I pulled away sharply — and with a pointed remark about the “that” she was referring to: “Oh, you mean my body?”
“Yeah. The wife is American, but the cause is for Croatia.”Part IV: The MeetingFor most of my dating life, my amplitude was something to be overlooked, overcome. Tolerated. I remember one man, an alcoholic who’d begun taking red wine before his morning coffee, sitting across from me as I held a vegetable roll between my chopsticks, and asking, with an earnest obliviousness, if I might consider “eating healthier food.” My suitors were always taken enough with everything beneath my skin — heart and wit and good old-fashioned moxie — but only taken so far. Even if our breakups were rooted in banality of mismatched ambitions, uneven libidos, or just plain stupid youth, there was always a thin tendril muscling up from that root, one that choked our relationships: the stigma of dating a fat girl.
Not this guy. He’d been unabashedly open, enthusiastic even, about his preference for those of us on the Melissa McCarthy end of the size spectrum. He’d reached out to thank me for an essay I wrote about my choice to duck-and-roll off the hamster wheel of constant dieting and accept, even embrace, my size 24 figure. We talked, and wrote, with increasing length and flirtatiousness, about body acceptance and the vanquishing of secret shame, our upbringings (or lack thereof) and aspirations; ours was a courtship knit by the camaraderie of misfits, an affection that felt as easy and natural as spring grass, and as vital as rain.
That affection ends with a confession like a record skipping just before the bridge in my favorite song. He would touch me everywhere; he just wouldn’t hold my hand. And he’s telling me now, because he doesn’t want me to get the wrong idea, to think that his unwillingness is “a matter of optics.” A matter of how a thin man — any man, really — looks when he shows up with his hand in mine.
I could come to New York where I can better explain why I felt I had to go along with a plan that went so wrong. You are an amazing, compassionate person, and I am looking forward to meeting you in person.
We agree on O’Neal’s Restaurant across from Central Park, and as I walk along Eighth Avenue I have doubts. What if it was a big mistake to write to the parole board? What if she commits another crime?
While I wait for her, my stomach is in knots. A tap on my shoulder startles me and I turn to see a tall woman, and pause for a moment before I can take in that I am looking at Julie Busic.
She takes me off guard and takes away the words I had practiced. I stare at a stunning woman, taller than my 5-foot-6 inches, slender, in a lovely blue dress. We are now both 41, and lines are beginning to appear around my eyes. I had pictured what she looked like and wondered if prison life had turned her old and gray, but the woman in front of me is much prettier than her photos, a natural blonde with blue eyes and even white teeth. She certainly doesn’t look like a hijacker, or prison-worn. She seems sophisticated and worldly in a way I will never be.
Two women at the next table laugh over a secret and I wonder what they would think if they knew our story. “What are your plans now that you’re free?” Julie’s eyes light up. “I’m going to Croatia to wait for Zvonko’s release.”
In another person I might have admired such steadfast loyalty, but Julie Busic had taken up a place in my life that has drained me, and now I feel hollowed out.
“I thought you were divorced.” I look toward the door and contemplate the walk across the room.I’d been hoping that “And So Did the Fat Lady,” the much-ballyhooed episode of “Louie” that ran earlier this year, might show a fat woman’s desire as real and valid, not played as a half-measure or a joke. This kind of visibility can be lifesaving, soul-sustaining when women like me are most commonly casualities of the 6 o’clock news, our heads and faces lopped off the screen to render us a freak show promoting some new obesity drug or study — never as people whose hands and thighs and rolling bellies can give, and receive, great pleasure.
Louie has a great time with Vanessa, his date and the titular fat lady, until he “compliments” her by saying she’s not fat. Vanessa tells him that she’s going to make him “represent all the guys” when she unloads about a lifetime on the sidelines: “Why do you hate us so much? What is it about the basics of human happiness, feeling attractive, feeling loved, having guys chase after us, that’s just not in the cards for us? Nope. Not for us.”
When she says this, I’m with her. I’m sitting at lunch with friends who express their puzzlement at my chronic singledom, but who don’t offer to set me up with anyone they know. Which may very well be just as well, since I’m watching the face of the one friend who’d been excited to set me up with a horror-loving aspiring writer in her department cycle through a calculated array of micro-expressions as she wonders how to tactfully tell me that — after seeing my full-body picture — he’s not interested; and, from the suppressed anger that makes her features as taut as a bow string, that he didn’t express this lack of interest kindly. And I’m wondering how to tell my wonderful friend — who doesn’t see me the way that any guy who has been socialized to believe that there’s a supermodel for every schlub sees me — that I was expecting this all along.
I was with Vanessa until her cry-to-arms goes limp-wrist: She tells Louie that she doesn’t even want a boyfriend or a husband. She just wants someone to hold her hand. This plaintive plea is (perhaps) meant to move the civilian viewer, the person who doesn’t have to move through the world in a body that can provoke such hatred. But it struck me as an insult, telling me to settle for crumbs when I deserve cake: someone to hold my hand, and so much more.
But that so much more seems impossible to come by when I can’t even get a man to slip his fingers inside mine when we’re off our backs and in daylight. Still, touch has a power like a ringing bell’s — it reverberates under skin, becomes a song playing through our cells. I haven’t found what I’m looking for yet, but in those moments with Mr. Optics, I got what I needed. Not from him, but for me.
A few weeks ago, I saw my mother; I wore a cotton dress with short sleeves that rode up my arms. “I hate that,” my mother said as she jerked my sleeves down. Her nails raked my skin; I pulled away sharply — and with a pointed remark about the “that” she was referring to: “Oh, you mean my body?”
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