Ftrain, by Paul Ford

I feel like I should have something to say about Frank Bruni's memoir as excerpted in the Times. But I don't. It's a self-contained narrative; I can recognize Bruni, a little, but his mother is simply an aspect of his appetite, and his father is a ghost. We know, reading it, that he became a legendary restaurant critic for the New York Times. It's like Titanic; you keep waiting for it to sink. He does discuss, but far too briefly, "Husky" pants-- the Sears rack of shame. That's a strong memory for me as well, the rich maroons and navy shades so unlike the colors of other pants, the scratchiness of a new elastic waistband against the smoothness of ten-year-old skin. Snap.

Mostly I was invisible. I was picked on, sure, but did my share of picking, fighting. I was slow but sharp-tongued. Adolescence is when the ape is out and hungry and told forever to wait while being beamed signals of what immense pleasure would be involved in not waiting. Being heavy requires one to wait even longer, and certain signals are clearly not intended for your apparatus. But still you hear them, like a shortwave radio at night, listening to the dispatches from planet handjob.

The world says to an adolescent: We have taken away the power you feel as your right; you will be able to earn it-- independence, privacy, sex, power-- not by savagely beating down the more powerful with a bat, but only by complying with the system you currently hate. Of course appearance is part of that; it's in adolescence that the importance of looks becomes apparent. And the fat have shown a demonstrable lack of will and must be ritually humiliated. Or, since you're up anyway, you can walk across town at night after your mother has gone to work and buy a pack of donuts at the 7-11. An adolescence that never ended.

The system, it works.

Like Bruni, I always wanted to be bulimic; when I came up it was much in the air as a deadly syndrome of victimhood. But I could never pull it off. I remember one era, maybe I was fifteen, when everyone around me was in various Anonymous/Anon groups. Me too. I realized this desire to vomit and I was worried about it.

I tested myself with increasingly lengthy items-- a pencil, a butter knife, a long stick-- shoving them down my throat, training my gag reflex not to work. I can still put my fist in my mouth and wiggle my fingers. Once a year or two later I determined to vomit up my dinner, after a particularly egregious binge, and did everything I could, jamming my finger down my throat until it was scratched. But no dice, and thus I am not bulimic.

Anecdote: A decade ago I was working in advertising and watching a focus group from behind the mirrored wall. That back room was a cruel domain for the hungry-- jars of snacks and candies appear unbidden, all day; I must have downed 30,000 calories in Chex Mix alone. Our client, Susan, was a difficult and demanding woman and we hated her. I can't remember what product she represented, only that she had tired hair and a shivering, sparrow-like aspect. My boss, Lana, was convinced Susan had an eating disorder; this she explained to my other boss, Don. One day we all watched as Susan chowed through a small bucket of M&M's and then quickly ran from the room.

I remember reading P. J. O'Rourke on fat people in the National Lampoon. I was fourteen or so. "They are premature old people," he wrote. That made sense. I took it as gospel; I felt old.

But no. Fatties are forever young, baby-faced, round, grasping, told to wait, delay gratification, while having images of immense salty pleasure drilled into their brains by marketers with the force of an icepick lobotomy. They walk funny and bump into things and break them. They tumble off their splintering chairs. Eating intelligently is an adult puzzle, a test of control-- why anorexics seek work in restaurants. The world of adults is willowy, with rope arms. They slide past one another; they can travel by pneumatic tube. I've been smaller and I've been bigger. The thin often try to spin out stories of the gratification and joys that await me as a slighter person, but listen: I was fat for as long as I could be; it was the rebellion left to me, and now you have captured even that, and I don't want to join your side as much as I want revenge.