Big Beautiful Dreamer
03-27-2006, 10:28 AM
A response to positive feedback given on the "Is this too weird a story idea?" post. Enjoy!
This is not a typical WG story. There is not as much description of food, WG or eating in it as I usually have, and most of the story is in flashback. The protagonist is a BHM who was once an anorexic. Men can and do get anorexia, and a lot of what follows is based on what I’ve read about it, including some first-person accounts. I am grateful to those who had the courage to post them.
My intent is not to minimize or criticize eating disorders. Instead, I found myself exploring Chip’s journey into BHM-hood from an emotional standpoint as much as a physical one. There is some (I hope) good description in here, and I hope you enjoy reading this long story as much as I enjoyed writing it. BBD.
Francine watched Chip as he napped peacefully on the porch of their time-share cottage on Martha’s Vineyard, smiling, as always, at the sight of his prominent belly. Gleaming with sunblock, it lay round and bright in the afternoon sun, the sides of his thin guyabera, unbuttoned, falling to either side like curtains framing an art masterpiece. His soft, plump face, slackening to his double chin, was relaxed. Chip was a much happier – and larger – guy than the fretful, furtive, tormented law student she had first encountered in their study group.
It was only after she had gradually won his trust that she learned why he had never kissed a girl, much less gone on an actual date. She closed her eyes, remembering the first time they’d gotten together after a study group session in summer school between their first and second years. She’d invited him for coffee. Blushing furiously, he’d accepted and they’d strolled across campus to the coffee shop.
He acted as though he’d never been on a date, so she jokingly said, “First date, huh?”
He’d stared down at the floor. After an eternity he looked up. “Yes.”
“I meant, first date in law school.”
The floor again. “No,” he said to his shoes. “First date … ever.” He kept staring at the floor. Finally, he looked up. His face was stone blank.
Francine laid a hand on his arm. That silent gesture seemed to undo him. Over a very long session, starting in the coffee shop and ending in her apartment, he told her his story.
In elementary school, he’d been chubby; in junior high school, “just plain fat,” he told Francine. “I was 5 feet 3 and weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. I swear I was wider than I was tall. When I was 14, my parents moved us from Greenwich to the Chestnut Hill section of Boston. The day I found out we were moving was the first day I heard my father call me ‘son.’ He laid his hand on my shoulder and put a copy of the Atkins diet book in my hand and said, ‘Son, this may be your chance to start over. You know … it’s who you know as much as how hard you work that gets you ahead in this world.’ ”
Francine stared. “Wow.”
“That summer, as my parents got ready to move, I studied that book cover to cover. I cut out bread, rice, starchy vegetables, fruit, salad dressing, anything that might have carbs in it. I started eating nothing but a chicken breast three times a day, then two times a day. I started jogging. At first I could barely go a block. But I kept going. By the time we moved, I was an inch taller and 75 pounds thinner. I ate half a chicken breast once a day and worked out for four hours a day.
“That August, when I started high school in Boston, I was sure I’d be popular. Instead … I was the new kid and, instead of being a real fatty, I was the smallest kid in school! Wrong again.”
“What did you do then?”
“I swore I’d get even with everyone who called me ‘Squirt,’ ” Chip said. “If I couldn’t be tallest or strongest or handsomest or smartest, I would be thinnest. I stole my sister’s magazines and tore out the pictures of male models. I figured once I was thinner than all of them, I’d be best at losing weight.”
The effort was not without its price. His heart was always racing and he could never get warm enough. His urine stank, and he couldn’t stay awake. It was harder and harder to concentrate. His grades sank. To his embarrassment, he had to go to summer school the year after 10th grade.
In college, he’d been on the wrestling team. His parents had insisted that all three of their children participate in collegiate sports, and at 5’6” and 125 pounds, Chip had only a choice of crew or wrestling. Wrestling didn’t involve icy predawn workouts. “ ‘Make weight’ was about all the coach ever said to us,” he said. “Some of the guys started throwing up to make weight. I thought that was sick. Then one morning before a meet, I had to lose a pound or I couldn’t wrestle. So … I made myself barf.”
Francine was horrified but also enthralled. “What happened?”
“I made it through college at 125, even though I grew four inches,” he said. “I would drink a lot of water and eat maybe a bagel and cream cheese once a day. I was in a study group with a girl who kept yakking about how ‘in shape’ I was and how handsome she thought I was. Emily Colbert.” He sighed. “I could never work up the courage to ask me out. Besides, she had a boyfriend.”
Then Chip said: “Do you remember, in April, I kind of dropped out for a while?”
Francine frowned. “Yeah. I heard you had mono or something. I remember you fainted in class.”
“It wasn’t mono,” Chip said. He sighed again. “It was anorexia.”
“What?” Francine couldn’t help exclaiming.
“I know,” Chip said ruefully. “Anorexia is for teen-age cheerleaders, right?”
“Well … well …” Francine was flustered.
“It’s OK,” Chip said. “I’ve had a LOT of therapy to deal with this,” he smiled.
“Over Christmas break that first year here, I worked up the nerve and made a date with Emily. It didn’t go well. She took one look and said, ‘Oh, my. Law school’s made somebody a chubby Chip.’ She poked me in the stomach. Then she ‘suddenly’ remembered that she had to be somewhere else.”
Chip had closed his eyes, remembering that second semester. Taking Emily’s words to heart, he’d returned to the skimpy eating habits of his college wrestling days. It wasn’t working! The scale stayed stuck at 150, and all he could see when he looked in the mirror was flab. His flat stomach seemed huge, monstrous, a whale-size belly. His sharply defined hips taunted him, seeming to bulge with flab. He turned his face this way and that, coaxing up a nonexistent second chin. Now 5 feet 10, he was absolutely normal – ideal – by medical standards, but all he saw was Chubby Chip growing more obese by the day.
That was when he stopped eating. He would drink water and pop to keep himself going, but if it was food, it didn’t go in. He remembered having to poke pizza around his plate, to claim not to be hungry. He dove into his books as an excuse not to eat. His weight dived, the scale finally going in the right direction. 140. 130. 120. His ribs protruded, his belly curved inward, forming an increasingly deep bowl. Shoulder blades and hip bones jutted. But whenever Chip looked in the mirror, he saw flab hanging from his chin, gut, behind. Once he went to bed in tears at how fat he was and cried himself to sleep.
The day he got to two figures, 99, he spent an hour in front of the mirror, wondering how he would look at 90. He went to bed and lay awake all night, running his hands down his prominent rib cage, concave belly, bony hips.
He never got there. The next day, he’d stood to answer a question and fainted. He woke up in the hospital, his parents huddled by his bed. “Chip,” his father said, “What are you doing to yourself?” His mother started to cry. Stiffly, his reserved father managed to say, “Son, we … care … about you. We don’t want you to put yourself under this kind of pressure.”
Francine frowned herself, hearing Chip recount the story. “Did your parents care about your health?”
Chip sighed. “I think they cared more about the image problem of having a son with anorexia. It was very much hushed up. The story they’d put out was that I was ‘taking a break’ from law school.”
“So that’s why you’re in summer school.”
“Right.” Chip made a face, making Francine laugh. “The professors gave me Incompletes on the condition that I do summer school.”
“But … are you …”
“Cured?” Chip raised an eyebrow and wiggled it comically. How could he laugh about this, Francine wondered.
“After two weeks, I started eating again. It wasn’t easy. The first time I ate something, it was the first solid food I’d had in four months. I ate four bites of chicken and a forkful of green beans and I felt like I’d swallowed a basketball.”
Repelled, he’d pushed the table aside and tossed back the thin blanket. His shrunken stomach was now huge! Bloated and swollen, it made a spherical distortion under his hospital gown. What had he done? He was huge … fat … he could feel himself swelling. Stiffly, he got out of bed, intending to go throw up.
As if on guard duty, the nurse came in. “Where are you going?” Her tone was just sharp enough so that Chip knew they were watching him. They were all watching him … whispering at the nurses’ station about the fatty in Room 308 …
“Bathroom,” Chip mumbled. The nurse helped him to the toilet, then turned her back but left the door open. Cripes. Thwarted, Chip used the toilet, then went back to bed.
“Chip,” Francine said softly. Her blue eyes were brimming with tears. She shook her head. “What happened after that?”
“I kept talking to the psychiatrist. He helped me realize that I wasn’t that huge. We talked … sometimes he’d show me pictures and ask me to tell him if the person was fat. Then he’d tell me what they weighed. It was always more than me.”
“How long were you in the hospital?”
“A month,” Chip said. I got from 99 up to 105, and they said I could go home but come back as an outpatient to see the guy. I’m still going there.” A slight defensive edge entered his voice. “He’s good.”
“Does he stroke his beard?”
“No,” Chip laughed. “He strokes … nevermind!” They both laughed. After such a grim tale it felt good to laugh.
“So now what? I mean, health-wise.”
“I’m up to 125. People don’t stare so much anymore. I used to think they were staring because I was so fat.”
“Yeah, fat chance,” Francine blurted, then clapped her hand over her mouth. A giggle sneaked out, and Chip was laughing too.
“Hey,” Chip said urgently. “The story I’m still giving out is that it was mono. You’re the only friend who knows. Don’t spill, okay?”
“Not a chance,” Francine assured him. “Hey … want to call in for some Chinese?”
“Okay,” Chip said.
“Do you … like Chinese?”
“Yeah, they’re great on toast,” Chip quipped. “Seriously. I do like Chinese. Anyway. I eat, now. The doctor wants me to get back up to 150. We’re sort of negotiating. It just seems like so much.”
“I think you’d look good at 150. I mean … you look good now …” Francine blushed.
Chip put his head on one side, then leaned in. She leaned in. They kissed, quickly and genteelly.
The summer sessions went by quickly with the two of them keeping company. By August, Chip was up to 135. Something about 140, though was creating a psychological barrier.
Throughout October, Chip hovered at 139. Twice Francine heard him in the bathroom making strange noises. She didn’t want to press, but after it happened a third time, she was waiting on the sofa when he came back into her living room.
“Chip. Are you … throwing up again?”
“No!” Chip’s face darkened. He looked as though he’d just been sick, though, so … “Please, tell me the truth. I want to help you.”
“You do not. None of you want to help me. You just want me to be fat. Well, I won’t!” Chip grabbed his coat and bookbag and slammed out of the apartment. He’d cut class the next day and Francine went by his apartment to bring him her notes.
He recognized her knock. “Go away.” But the door was unlocked. Francine entered gingerly and found Chip in pajamas, hunched up on his futon.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. Francine sat down behind him and stroked his hair. “I just feel so fat. People are staring again.”
“Who’s staring?”
“In class … on the street … everyone.” He stood up and slapped his stomach. Still thin everywhere else, he had, typically for anorexics, regained weight first in his stomach. The effect, of course, was that his belly appeared distended in proportion to the rest of him. It was beginning to even out; his arms, legs and face were less skeletal. But his abdomen was still the biggest part of him. Naturally, it made him upset and self-conscious.
Francine tugged him back down. “Chip,” she said softly. “Do you think your body is supposed to be perfect?”
This is not a typical WG story. There is not as much description of food, WG or eating in it as I usually have, and most of the story is in flashback. The protagonist is a BHM who was once an anorexic. Men can and do get anorexia, and a lot of what follows is based on what I’ve read about it, including some first-person accounts. I am grateful to those who had the courage to post them.
My intent is not to minimize or criticize eating disorders. Instead, I found myself exploring Chip’s journey into BHM-hood from an emotional standpoint as much as a physical one. There is some (I hope) good description in here, and I hope you enjoy reading this long story as much as I enjoyed writing it. BBD.
Francine watched Chip as he napped peacefully on the porch of their time-share cottage on Martha’s Vineyard, smiling, as always, at the sight of his prominent belly. Gleaming with sunblock, it lay round and bright in the afternoon sun, the sides of his thin guyabera, unbuttoned, falling to either side like curtains framing an art masterpiece. His soft, plump face, slackening to his double chin, was relaxed. Chip was a much happier – and larger – guy than the fretful, furtive, tormented law student she had first encountered in their study group.
It was only after she had gradually won his trust that she learned why he had never kissed a girl, much less gone on an actual date. She closed her eyes, remembering the first time they’d gotten together after a study group session in summer school between their first and second years. She’d invited him for coffee. Blushing furiously, he’d accepted and they’d strolled across campus to the coffee shop.
He acted as though he’d never been on a date, so she jokingly said, “First date, huh?”
He’d stared down at the floor. After an eternity he looked up. “Yes.”
“I meant, first date in law school.”
The floor again. “No,” he said to his shoes. “First date … ever.” He kept staring at the floor. Finally, he looked up. His face was stone blank.
Francine laid a hand on his arm. That silent gesture seemed to undo him. Over a very long session, starting in the coffee shop and ending in her apartment, he told her his story.
In elementary school, he’d been chubby; in junior high school, “just plain fat,” he told Francine. “I was 5 feet 3 and weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. I swear I was wider than I was tall. When I was 14, my parents moved us from Greenwich to the Chestnut Hill section of Boston. The day I found out we were moving was the first day I heard my father call me ‘son.’ He laid his hand on my shoulder and put a copy of the Atkins diet book in my hand and said, ‘Son, this may be your chance to start over. You know … it’s who you know as much as how hard you work that gets you ahead in this world.’ ”
Francine stared. “Wow.”
“That summer, as my parents got ready to move, I studied that book cover to cover. I cut out bread, rice, starchy vegetables, fruit, salad dressing, anything that might have carbs in it. I started eating nothing but a chicken breast three times a day, then two times a day. I started jogging. At first I could barely go a block. But I kept going. By the time we moved, I was an inch taller and 75 pounds thinner. I ate half a chicken breast once a day and worked out for four hours a day.
“That August, when I started high school in Boston, I was sure I’d be popular. Instead … I was the new kid and, instead of being a real fatty, I was the smallest kid in school! Wrong again.”
“What did you do then?”
“I swore I’d get even with everyone who called me ‘Squirt,’ ” Chip said. “If I couldn’t be tallest or strongest or handsomest or smartest, I would be thinnest. I stole my sister’s magazines and tore out the pictures of male models. I figured once I was thinner than all of them, I’d be best at losing weight.”
The effort was not without its price. His heart was always racing and he could never get warm enough. His urine stank, and he couldn’t stay awake. It was harder and harder to concentrate. His grades sank. To his embarrassment, he had to go to summer school the year after 10th grade.
In college, he’d been on the wrestling team. His parents had insisted that all three of their children participate in collegiate sports, and at 5’6” and 125 pounds, Chip had only a choice of crew or wrestling. Wrestling didn’t involve icy predawn workouts. “ ‘Make weight’ was about all the coach ever said to us,” he said. “Some of the guys started throwing up to make weight. I thought that was sick. Then one morning before a meet, I had to lose a pound or I couldn’t wrestle. So … I made myself barf.”
Francine was horrified but also enthralled. “What happened?”
“I made it through college at 125, even though I grew four inches,” he said. “I would drink a lot of water and eat maybe a bagel and cream cheese once a day. I was in a study group with a girl who kept yakking about how ‘in shape’ I was and how handsome she thought I was. Emily Colbert.” He sighed. “I could never work up the courage to ask me out. Besides, she had a boyfriend.”
Then Chip said: “Do you remember, in April, I kind of dropped out for a while?”
Francine frowned. “Yeah. I heard you had mono or something. I remember you fainted in class.”
“It wasn’t mono,” Chip said. He sighed again. “It was anorexia.”
“What?” Francine couldn’t help exclaiming.
“I know,” Chip said ruefully. “Anorexia is for teen-age cheerleaders, right?”
“Well … well …” Francine was flustered.
“It’s OK,” Chip said. “I’ve had a LOT of therapy to deal with this,” he smiled.
“Over Christmas break that first year here, I worked up the nerve and made a date with Emily. It didn’t go well. She took one look and said, ‘Oh, my. Law school’s made somebody a chubby Chip.’ She poked me in the stomach. Then she ‘suddenly’ remembered that she had to be somewhere else.”
Chip had closed his eyes, remembering that second semester. Taking Emily’s words to heart, he’d returned to the skimpy eating habits of his college wrestling days. It wasn’t working! The scale stayed stuck at 150, and all he could see when he looked in the mirror was flab. His flat stomach seemed huge, monstrous, a whale-size belly. His sharply defined hips taunted him, seeming to bulge with flab. He turned his face this way and that, coaxing up a nonexistent second chin. Now 5 feet 10, he was absolutely normal – ideal – by medical standards, but all he saw was Chubby Chip growing more obese by the day.
That was when he stopped eating. He would drink water and pop to keep himself going, but if it was food, it didn’t go in. He remembered having to poke pizza around his plate, to claim not to be hungry. He dove into his books as an excuse not to eat. His weight dived, the scale finally going in the right direction. 140. 130. 120. His ribs protruded, his belly curved inward, forming an increasingly deep bowl. Shoulder blades and hip bones jutted. But whenever Chip looked in the mirror, he saw flab hanging from his chin, gut, behind. Once he went to bed in tears at how fat he was and cried himself to sleep.
The day he got to two figures, 99, he spent an hour in front of the mirror, wondering how he would look at 90. He went to bed and lay awake all night, running his hands down his prominent rib cage, concave belly, bony hips.
He never got there. The next day, he’d stood to answer a question and fainted. He woke up in the hospital, his parents huddled by his bed. “Chip,” his father said, “What are you doing to yourself?” His mother started to cry. Stiffly, his reserved father managed to say, “Son, we … care … about you. We don’t want you to put yourself under this kind of pressure.”
Francine frowned herself, hearing Chip recount the story. “Did your parents care about your health?”
Chip sighed. “I think they cared more about the image problem of having a son with anorexia. It was very much hushed up. The story they’d put out was that I was ‘taking a break’ from law school.”
“So that’s why you’re in summer school.”
“Right.” Chip made a face, making Francine laugh. “The professors gave me Incompletes on the condition that I do summer school.”
“But … are you …”
“Cured?” Chip raised an eyebrow and wiggled it comically. How could he laugh about this, Francine wondered.
“After two weeks, I started eating again. It wasn’t easy. The first time I ate something, it was the first solid food I’d had in four months. I ate four bites of chicken and a forkful of green beans and I felt like I’d swallowed a basketball.”
Repelled, he’d pushed the table aside and tossed back the thin blanket. His shrunken stomach was now huge! Bloated and swollen, it made a spherical distortion under his hospital gown. What had he done? He was huge … fat … he could feel himself swelling. Stiffly, he got out of bed, intending to go throw up.
As if on guard duty, the nurse came in. “Where are you going?” Her tone was just sharp enough so that Chip knew they were watching him. They were all watching him … whispering at the nurses’ station about the fatty in Room 308 …
“Bathroom,” Chip mumbled. The nurse helped him to the toilet, then turned her back but left the door open. Cripes. Thwarted, Chip used the toilet, then went back to bed.
“Chip,” Francine said softly. Her blue eyes were brimming with tears. She shook her head. “What happened after that?”
“I kept talking to the psychiatrist. He helped me realize that I wasn’t that huge. We talked … sometimes he’d show me pictures and ask me to tell him if the person was fat. Then he’d tell me what they weighed. It was always more than me.”
“How long were you in the hospital?”
“A month,” Chip said. I got from 99 up to 105, and they said I could go home but come back as an outpatient to see the guy. I’m still going there.” A slight defensive edge entered his voice. “He’s good.”
“Does he stroke his beard?”
“No,” Chip laughed. “He strokes … nevermind!” They both laughed. After such a grim tale it felt good to laugh.
“So now what? I mean, health-wise.”
“I’m up to 125. People don’t stare so much anymore. I used to think they were staring because I was so fat.”
“Yeah, fat chance,” Francine blurted, then clapped her hand over her mouth. A giggle sneaked out, and Chip was laughing too.
“Hey,” Chip said urgently. “The story I’m still giving out is that it was mono. You’re the only friend who knows. Don’t spill, okay?”
“Not a chance,” Francine assured him. “Hey … want to call in for some Chinese?”
“Okay,” Chip said.
“Do you … like Chinese?”
“Yeah, they’re great on toast,” Chip quipped. “Seriously. I do like Chinese. Anyway. I eat, now. The doctor wants me to get back up to 150. We’re sort of negotiating. It just seems like so much.”
“I think you’d look good at 150. I mean … you look good now …” Francine blushed.
Chip put his head on one side, then leaned in. She leaned in. They kissed, quickly and genteelly.
The summer sessions went by quickly with the two of them keeping company. By August, Chip was up to 135. Something about 140, though was creating a psychological barrier.
Throughout October, Chip hovered at 139. Twice Francine heard him in the bathroom making strange noises. She didn’t want to press, but after it happened a third time, she was waiting on the sofa when he came back into her living room.
“Chip. Are you … throwing up again?”
“No!” Chip’s face darkened. He looked as though he’d just been sick, though, so … “Please, tell me the truth. I want to help you.”
“You do not. None of you want to help me. You just want me to be fat. Well, I won’t!” Chip grabbed his coat and bookbag and slammed out of the apartment. He’d cut class the next day and Francine went by his apartment to bring him her notes.
He recognized her knock. “Go away.” But the door was unlocked. Francine entered gingerly and found Chip in pajamas, hunched up on his futon.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. Francine sat down behind him and stroked his hair. “I just feel so fat. People are staring again.”
“Who’s staring?”
“In class … on the street … everyone.” He stood up and slapped his stomach. Still thin everywhere else, he had, typically for anorexics, regained weight first in his stomach. The effect, of course, was that his belly appeared distended in proportion to the rest of him. It was beginning to even out; his arms, legs and face were less skeletal. But his abdomen was still the biggest part of him. Naturally, it made him upset and self-conscious.
Francine tugged him back down. “Chip,” she said softly. “Do you think your body is supposed to be perfect?”