Big Summer(7)
She smiled and bounced on the balls of her feet, a happy little elf who’d just gotten a raise from Santa. We shook and started talking terms—how much she’d pay for how many pictures and videos posted over what period of time and on what platforms. We discussed what time of day was best to post, which settings her viewers preferred. “Still shots are great. Colorful backdrops. Walls with texture, or murals. And fashion people love video,” Leela said with the solemnity of a priest explaining the workings of a crucially important ritual. “They like to see the clothes move.”
“Got it,” I said, practically squirming with impatience. I couldn’t wait to finish my day, get back to my apartment, and model the clothes for my roommate, to see how they worked with my shoes and my necklaces, to think about where I could wear them and how I could make them look their best.
“Oh, and outdoor is better than indoor, of course. Do you have any plans for the summer?” Leela asked. “Any travel?”
I breathed in deeply and tried to keep my face still. “I’m going to a wedding on the Cape. Do you know Drue Cavanaugh?”
Leela nibbled her lip with her perfect white teeth. “She’s the daughter, right? Robert Cavanaugh’s daughter. The one who’s marrying the Single Ladies guy?”
“That’s her. She and I went to high school together, and I’m going to be in her wedding.”
Leela clapped her hands, beaming. “Perfect. That’s absolutely perfect.”
Chapter Two
I had a few hours to kill before my workday began, so I walked uptown on Park Avenue, through the crush of commuters and tourists, past the pricey apartments and boutiques before turning into Central Park. I was excited—I’d have so many new fans and followers! Then I was terrified—I’d have so many new fans and followers! Increased attention meant more scrutiny and scorn. That was true for any woman on the Internet, and maybe extra-true for me. Fat women attracted a special kind of trolling. There were people who were revolted by your body and took every opportunity to tell you so, and the people whose disgust came disguised as concern: Don’t you worry about your health? Don’t you care?
When I looked up, I wasn’t surprised to find that my feet had taken me back to where it had all began. In the daytime, the windows at Dive 75 were dark, the door shut tight. It didn’t look special, but it was, in a way, the place where I’d been born. The site of my greatest shame and my greatest triumph.
I stared at the door for a long moment. Then I pulled out my phone, opened my Instagram app, went into my stories, flipped the screen so I was looking at my own face, and hit the “Go Live” button.
“Hey, ladies!” I tilted my face to give the camera my good side and tensed my bicep so that my arm wouldn’t wobble when I waved. “And guys! I know both of you are out there!” I did have male followers. Just not many. And I suspected that the ones who did like and comment on my posts were less fans than perverts, although maybe that was just me being paranoid. “Let me know if you recognize this spot.” I raised the phone to show the bar’s sign. Already, I could see the hearts and thumbs-up and applause emojis racing across my screen, the comments—OMG and YOU WENT BACK and QUEEN! as fans reacted in real time.
“Yes, this is the bar where it all went down.” I saw more clapping hands, more sparklers and streamers and animated confetti. “And good things are happening,” I announced. “I just got some amazing news. I can’t tell you what, quite yet, but I can tell you that, for me, getting honest, not hiding, being real, and figuring out how to love myself, or at least, you know, tolerate myself, in the body that I had, has been the best decision of my life.” I smiled at the red hearts and party hats, the comments of I LOVE YOU and YOU’RE MY HERO. “If you don’t know the story, go to my bio, click the link for my YouTube channel, and go to the very first video I ever posted. You can’t miss it.” I kept the smile on my face as I let myself remember the night that everything had changed; the night at this bar when I’d decided to stop being a girl on a diet and just start being a girl.
* * *
It began when I’d agreed to go dancing with my friends. That would have been a normal night for most nineteen-year-olds in New York City, home on spring break of their sophomore year of college, with free time and a decent fake ID, but for me, each of those things—bar, friends, dancing—was an achievement, a little victory over the voice that had lived in my head since I was six years old, telling me I was fat, disgusting, unworthy of love, unworthy of friendship, unworthy of existing in public, even of walking outside; that a girl who looked like me did not deserve to have fun.
Most of the time, I listened to that voice. I wore clothes designed to disguise my body; I’d mastered every trick of making myself small. I’d gotten used to the rolled eyes and indignant sighs that I saw and heard—or thought that I could see and hear—when I sat beside someone on a bus or, worse, walked down the aisle of a plane. I’d learned every trick for taking up as little space as possible and not asking for much. For the last two years, my freshman and sophomore years in college, I’d been dating the same guy, Ronald Himmelfarb. Ronald or, as I secretly called him, Wan Ron, was perfectly pleasant, tall and thin with skin the bluish-white of skim milk. Ron had a beaky face and a fragile, narrow-shouldered build. He was majoring in computer science, a subject about which I knew nothing and couldn’t make myself care, no matter how hard I tried to pay attention when he talked about it. I wasn’t attracted to Ron, but he was the only guy who’d been interested in me. I didn’t have options, and beggars couldn’t be choosers.