I Am Not A Vomit Person

Caw--these dietary supplement drinks aren't half expensive! On my budget, I'd have to buy them instead of food, which would

a) rather defeat the purpose, and

b) deprive me of one of my greatest pleasures in life: potatoes.

Nonetheless, I simply must gain some weight. This doctor from Saint Paul's, she seemed nice enough, but she and her resident both appeared to suspect that I'd gone all this bony way on purpose. Kept asking questions about diets and eating disorders and sexual abuse. (Sexual abuse--can you imagine? These doctors think they can just ask you any old thing! And if you tell 'em to arse it...well, have you seen that Seinfeld episode, where one of 'em sticks a "difficult patient" flag on Elaine's chart, and she ends up having to go to a vet? Bow-wow; no thank you. It doesn't do to antagonize doctors, no matter what nonsense they come out with. This goes for completely unrelated doctors, as well, ones you just bump into on the street. Who knows what sort of power they have? Dent a psychiatrist's car, and--bam!--mother issues, on the chart. Bump a proctologist's cart at the Super Valu, and suddenly you're the new poster child for rectal foreign bodies: And there were three Tonka trucks and a mouse up there, if you'd credit it!)

So I can't go getting all that snarly way I do. I can't moon her my sad, deflated rat's arse, and ask if she thinks I like looking like a teenaged boy. I can't ask her if these are my kneecaps, or if I'm maybe storing lightbulbs up my trouserlegs. I can't be impolite at all, entertaining as it might be to write about later.

It's not a matter of vanity, either. I mean, what do I care if someone I'm unlikely to see more than five or six times a year thinks I've got an eating disorder? I'm sure people have thought much worse of me. No--the problem is that as long as she's looking for some kind of airy-fairy psychological explanation for my symptoms, she's not devoting proper attention to finding the actual problem, and fixing it. I'm not causing myself respiratory distress by eating too little. I'm eating too little because--well, partly because I'm always broke, but mostly because I'm not feeling well. When you can't breathe properly, eating is unpleasant. Having a mouthful of food feels like drowning. And then, there isn't enough blood getting to the digestive system, and you've got heartburn and indigestion to contend with. Lung patients often lose a fair amount of weight. Doctors ought to know this. Even Google knows.

The thing that worries me most, though, is that I don't think I have been eating too little this month. I had some extra money, so I bought a great fat-marbled lump of roast beef. It was scoffed within a week, doused with ladle after ladle of gravy. And there have been potatoes, and walnuts, and pasta, and all manner of snacks involving goat cheese and avocado. I ought to be Ten Tonne Tessie by now. I told the doctor this, and all, but I felt she brushed it off. Could be she was simply too rushed to respond, but she kept right on asking about diets and past trauma, as though I hadn't said a thing.

I wish I knew how much I weighed before. Maybe six months ago, a year ago--was I really much heavier, or was I imagining things? Is it just that I look skinnier now that most of my bulky sweaters have come unraveled, and I'm wearing short sleeves more? Was I ever more than a hundred pounds, at all?

Let me think. I weighed myself in December of 2000--or was that 1999? I was in Sweden for a holiday visit, and there was a scale in the bathroom at Joe's mum's. I weighed forty-seven kilograms, then. That's, what, seven-and-a-half stone, which is about a hundred and five pounds. I had on my coat and shoes that day, too, so I can compare my old weight and my new one with a fair degree of accuracy. Eight pounds' difference. Well, that's not so bad. I'd been thinking I'd dropped at least ten or fifteen pounds, if not a full twenty.

It shouldn't be too much trouble, gaining eight pounds. If I buy some two percent milk, and use that for my hot cocoa instead of water, and carry on sucking down the gravy, I should gain at least two or three. I'll have some Nutella, too, and all those Ryvita crackers you get. I remember my father saying those were healthy. Except--except, was he trying to lose weight? I don't remember. It's all so bloody complicated. Why can't I just eat whatever tastes good and get comfortably pillow'd like everybody else?

I wouldn't be bothered, anyway, but I've got to get this doctor to drop her damn waste-of-time eating disorder investigation. I ought to tell her about my run-in with the Vomit People, back in 2003. Maybe then, she'd believe me. Of course, there's no good way to work something like that into the conversation: "Well, a couple of years ago, I discovered a website that was promoting bulimia as a viable lifestyle choice. I was so horribly disturbed by the notion of holding up mental illness as something desirable that I decided to make fun of the people responsible on my own website. Then, they made fun of me. Then, I made fun of them. Then, they made fun of me again. I got tired of it before they did, but now I'm relating the whole sorry experience to you so you'll stop making these silly assumptions based on my weight, age, and gender. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll be here as little as possible."

In conclusion, I'd like to mention that my dinner tonight consisted of half a plate of French fries, two broiled chicken breasts, two scoops of ice-cream, and half a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. Faugh, that dairy rubbish! My throat is burning! Burning!

Talk about suffering to be beautiful.