Girls With Eating Disorders, by Roxane Gay
Peter loved to date girls with eating disorders—anorexics, but not the ones on death’s door who had to be fed through a tube in their stomach. The sight of that sort of thing upset him. He preferred the tall girls who hovered around 105 and spent most of their time sucking their bodies toward their spines. Those girls were generally hot and so busy counting calories and exercising they largely left him to his own devices. Bulimics were a little more trouble but they gave great head. Neither the anorexics nor the bulimics minded when Peter affirmed their worst fears about themselves by telling them the horrible things they wanted to hear. He was giving them exactly what they needed and that made him feel good about himself.
Vivian had been dating Peter for nearly six months. She was both anorexic and bulimic. She was maybe his soul mate. Peter looked at her terribly slender body lying next to him, her breathing shallow and weak. He poked her between two of her protruding ribs. She moaned softly, turned toward him, opened one eye. “What?” she asked, the words dry and thick. She was a light sleeper. Peter threw his arms apart. “You’re taking up a lot of room,” he said. Vivian sat up, and gasped. “I’ll be right back,” she said and swung her legs over the edge of their bed, slipped her feet into a pair of waiting sneakers, and ran down to the basement. She ran seven miles on the treadmill, paused, took ten minutes to carefully inspect her body in the adjacent mirror, then returned to the black vinyl conveyor belt and ran another seven.
When she returned to bed, sticky and pale, her features even more gaunt than usual, Peter was still awake, watching an infomercial about male enhancement. He looked Vivian up and down. “Better,” he said. Vivian felt the joy spread from the exact location of her heart outward. She smiled at Peter, gently caressed his face, enjoyed the stubble of his beard against the palm of her hand. Vivian climbed back into bed and straddled Peter’s lap, all bone and sweat. He wrapped his large hands around her tiny waist, squeezed hard then flipped their bodies around so she was crushed beneath his girth just the way she liked. She spread her legs wide. Peter pressed his lips against Vivian’s neck. His lips were dry and peeling and it made him uncomfortable. As he came, he said, “Babe, could you get me some Chap Stick tomorrow?”
The next afternoon at the grocery store, Vivian bought a gallon of ice cream, some Betty Crocker frosting, Ritz Crackers, soy milk, a Snapple and Peter’s Chap Stick. In her empty kitchen, she made a milkshake with everything but the Snapple. She coated her lips generously with Chap Stick. Her lips were chapped because of the frequency with which stomach acid passed between them. Peter’s lips were chapped from kissing her. It was a vicious cycle. Vivian drank her milkshake, savoring every last drop and afterward, she stared at herself in the mirror. Her stomach was bloated and bulged away from her body, swollen with a food baby. She loved making food babies. She lovingly rubbed her hands over her food baby belly and waddled around. She smiled for a brief moment as she imagined what she would look like if she were pregnant with Peter’s baby and how she would raise that baby to be skinny and beautiful.
Peter was a therapist. While Vivian spent her days making food babies, he spent his days helping girls like Vivian overcome their emotional issues. He tried to teach them to love themselves or hate themselves. Sometimes, he told them they wouldn’t get better and sometimes when they tearfully asked, “What should I do?” he told them what to do. Peter wore jeans and tweed blazers and chic glasses. He sat behind his desk and played games on his iPhone in his lap while his patients sat on a black leather IKEA couch and cried and told Peter about the worst things that ever happened to them. Some of their stories made Peter sick to his stomach, made him certain God hated women. Missy had a standing appointment three times a week at 2:30. She was a mess, would always be a mess, and Peter knew it but she also paid her bills on time and the promptness of her payment really touched him. Today, Missy wore a low cut dress and too much expensive perfume. They spent most of their hour together staring at each other. Whenever Missy looked away, Peter made a small tick mark on his legal pad. He was determined to win the staring contest. He looked up at the clock on the wall behind where Missy sat. In another two hours he could go home. When he returned his attention to Missy, she continued to hold his gaze but her eyes shined triumphantly. Peter felt like he was good at his job.
“We should have a baby,” Vivian told Peter over dinner. “I love my food babies but they never live very long.” They were at his favorite steakhouse chain restaurant and Peter was cutting into a thick, bloody steak with gusto. He nodded as he shoved meat into his mouth at an alarming pace. Vivian was only anorexic at night so she cut her filet into a hundred tiny squares and pushed them around the plate until she grew tired from the exertion. Peter took a sip of wine then paused. “You want a baby?” Vivian set her fork down and nodded. He waved his knife in the air. “Won’t you get fat?” Vivian blushed, looked at the couple sitting at the adjacent table. The girl was too skinny like her. She was hot and had long dark hair and sharp cheekbones and sunken eyes. Vivian felt a stirring between her thighs and then warmth. The girl nodded toward the bathroom and Vivian smiled. She reached for Peter’s hand, brushed her fingers across his knuckles. “I want a tiny little baby, Peter.”
Vivian excused herself to the bathroom where the girl from the adjacent table was waiting. They pressed their skeletal bodies together in the handicapped stall, surrounded by all that tiled, antiseptic space they could never hope to fill. The girl smelled like steak and mouthwash and face cream and cigarettes. They kissed and they weren’t shy about it. They were all tongue and teeth and Vivian moaned and she liked the echo of it. She was silent when she and Peter had sex because he hated silence. Vivian shoved her hand down the girl’s pants. The girl was wearing thong panties, and Vivian expertly pulled them to the side. She had been to college. She knew what to do with girls in bathroom stalls. When they were done, Vivian and the girl each purged while the other politely looked away.
Back at the table, Vivian’s heart pounded painfully. The heart, she also remembered from college, was largely made of water. When the waiter came by, she asked for a glass of water with a wedge of lemon and when the drink arrived, she sipped slowly. Vivian didn’t want to die of a heart attack in a steakhouse chain restaurant littered with peanuts on the floor. She could feel her knees sweating. She could feel the hot skinny girl staring at her. She wanted to stare back but Peter was eating a generous wedge of cheesecake so her attention was torn. “We can have a tiny little baby,” Peter said, “So long as after, you undo the damage as soon as possible.” Vivian smiled and told Peter what he wanted to hear. “Let’s make the baby tonight after you run,” Peter said. He was feeling virile. He talked with his mouth full, his tongue coated with masticated food. Vivian found this repulsive but she didn’t judge. Life was repulsive.
