2 March 2004 | Vol. 4, No. 1

Cameo

by KATE KOSTELNIK

"Pat, you should start doing the wangs now so that the sass is nice and tacky," Tom says to me as he pumps the keg. Tom is wiry and handsome. I'm neither of these things.

"I prefer, Patrick," I say. Raw egg yolk bursts and then gushes up through the spaces between my fingers as I massage it into ground meat. It's a sensational texture, fleshy and wet. Next, I work a ball of pink meat and breadcrumbs over in my palm and place it into the frying pan. "Actually, the buffalo wings have been in the oven for over an hour now and the sauce is going to be magnificent. Just how you like it, I hope."

"Cool," Tom says adjusting the zipper on his pants. With the same hand he swats at a tendril of his long curly hair that has bounced onto his forehead. I watch Tom walk away as I wash my hands before tending to the rest of the food. I hope he doesn't come back soon. I get awkward and nervous around him, and I hope it doesn't mean what I think it does. My mother would disown me if it were anything as unsavory as that. But then I spot Ali and feel an entirely different brand of panic and disorientation.

I nearly knock the deviled eggs from the sill when the three girls walk into the party. Ali is standing in the middle of two others and she's tiny, in a new body. I recognize her cameo necklace first, and then her face, however uncomplicated by folds of flesh, becomes familiar. She seems like a sapling bolstered by two stiffer stakes on either side. The outer two girls don't give me a second look. Ali does. She narrows her eyes at me as I use my other hand to support the tilting tray of eggs. I use Tabasco sauce and sometimes chili powder in the mix. It makes mine distinct. Only a few have fallen onto the snow two stories below. I need to occupy myself with the food, rather than her reappearance or metamorphoses, or whatever has happened to Ali.

It's sort of a shame that I have to put my deviled eggs in the window. But the fridge of course is full of beer. It's late January, specifically Super Bowl Sunday, so they'll stay plenty cold on the sill of Tom's second floor Jamaica Plain apartment. Tom asked me to help with the cooking, said he'd rather get drunk and high and watch the game than fuss with the "squaw work." I agreed. I'm an excellent cook even if it is simple fanfare, you know: boy/bar food.

The party is filling up with people, trays of cellophaned food, and bags of chips. Ali backs away from the table at the center of the kitchen as the fifth platter of seven-layer dip is laid down. There are thirty-five layers of toppings oozing with orange grease and only three bags of tortilla chips. This is going to be a problem, maybe I should run out to the store now before my meatballs brown. No, because then I'd have to pass Ali standing in the vestibule. And what am I going to say? The last time I saw her she was fatter than I am and put me in a rather awkward situation. I don't really know how to phrase this appropriately; she wanted to engage in intercourse.

I replenish the baby carrot pile in the veggie platter and then check on the wings. They're a brighter orange than the carrots. The meatballs are beginning to look exquisite, but it's getting harder to maneuver around the kitchen amongst the party guests. The keg line is inconveniently close to my work area and a tall broad-shouldered blonde steps on my foot as she crosses in front of me en route to the beer. There are a lot of girls here.

Tom has a lot of girlfriends. At least that's what he tells me from over the cubicle wall that divides us at work. He says things about them, the things they can do and the things they let him do to them; things that I couldn't repeat without blushing or laughing. He tells all the guys at work and most of them are here today. We write code for a firm near Faneuil Hall. Our drab sweaters and smudged glasses set us apart from the rest of the party crowd, but I'll get to them in a moment.

Matt, in encryption, is already drunk on wine coolers. He punches my arm. Some fraternal gesture intended for my bicep; instead it lands on my elbow. It hurts.

"Nice balls, Patty," he says as he lifts a meatball from the pan. His glasses fog up as he dips it into the sauce on the back burner. He dribbles on both his shirt and the stovetop. "So, Buccaneers or Raiders?"

"Um, Raiders. Yeah, of course," I say, as soon as I realize that he's talking about the teams contending for the title. Do they win an actual bowl? Is that why? I never cared enough and I still don't. I want him to leave so that I can focus on seasoning the sauce. He's always makes me nervous. I'm stuck making superfluous banter with Ali only feet away.

"Well would you look at that sassy wench," Matt says pointing at Ali with a broccoli spear. Matt, or Mathias as he likes to be called on those occasions, re-enacts medieval battles on the weekends. Unfortunately his hobby infects his vocabulary.

"Don't call her a wench!" I protest and swat the spear from his hand. "And stop disturbing the vegetable arrangement."

"Relax, big guy," Matt says picking up the spear from the floor and throwing it away. "It's just food," he says as he heads for the living room.

I shouldn't have come. Parties have never been fun for me. And Super Bowl parties are just so unsavory; all the drinking and yelling at the television screen. Actually this is my first Super Bowl party. And hopefully it will be the first of many parties where I can engage with people my own age, or people in general besides the clerks at William Sonoma and Trader Joes.

I'm twenty-three and my life really hasn't begun. It hasn't because I haven't let it. My mother told me that. No actually she said, "Commence and engage, my son. You can't put your life off waiting to lose that extra baby-fat." I hope that she's right. It's easy to blame my lack of social savvy on the extra weight. I guess I just don't feel like a fully effective person at this size. It's like I have a handicap, a deformity that makes my gravitational pull as strong as two men, rather than one. If I were lithe and handsome, like Tom, I could navigate the room making repartee and handing out beers in red Silo cups. Or maybe I could even work a party now, despite the way I am, but people wouldn't receive me the way they do Tom. He's basically charm-less, but they embrace his crudeness because he's so handsome and warm. He's got lots of friends, both at work and here in his neighborhood.

Now the party is packed with these friends. People spill over from the living room into the kitchen and stand in small clusters with handfuls of chips. I don't know many of them besides the guys from work, but they've all got that Jamaica Plain vibe; liberal, self-righteous, earnest, with hand knit sweaters, and a propensity for world music. I can peg them even more specifically. Compulsively neat law students with fresh haircuts are talking torts and Bush-bashing. A glassy eyed girl isolated in the corner scribbling notes into an empty box of Marlboros—obviously the writer. There are a few freaks from the Berklee College of Music in black turtlenecks making a meal from the hors d'oeuvres, probably their first in a while.

And then there's Ali still slumped in the vestibule by the back door. The friends she arrived with are no longer with her. What is she doing with this crowd? The last time I saw her , maybe a year and a half ago, she was at least 150 pounds heavier. Is that even possible? I peer around the fridge to watch her. I stroke my beard and feel the fold of skin and then the roll of my double chin beneath my facial hair. It's supposed to hide the extra weight on my face. My mother suggested I grow it as soon as I was old enough to carry it off. I'm hiding behind facial hair and a fridge, but I'm still fat. Ali is thin. Ali is so damned thin.

—

I had said it was for the money. Five hundred dollars for one month of what I wouldn't even consider work, is a great deal. I was a senior in college, so of course needing money was a legitimate excuse. But actually, I did it for my mother.

She was thrilled over the phone, and certain that, "this experiment would do the trick." Just like the dermatologist had "done the trick" with my acne as a teenager and the contacts had "done the trick" with the way my old glasses made my eyes seem to recede into my skull. Braces certainly did it too with my snaggletooth smile. I explained to her that it was a study, rather than an experiment and that there was a good chance that I might be given a sugar pill rather than the diet drug, which from what I was led to believe was a cocktail of ephedrine, Ma Huang, and some pharmaceutical grade speed. That in conjunction with some vile cabbage-based diet was going to "do the trick" for my weight problem. My mother isn't beautiful, but she has always thought that she was. She thinks that I should think that I'm beautiful too. She also wants me to meet women.

But I'm overweight, so I enrolled in a study at the New England Baptist Hospital in Boston in order to get some help and try something new. I don't have a problem admitting that I'm fat. I say it aloud to people, and sometimes they're so uncomfortable, they say, "oh, Pat, you're not fat…" and then they can't think of what else to say. I admit, I used to want to believe them. But I know the truth.

The weight, the heft and shape of it, well that's not what really bothers me. What upsets me is the way people look at me: the disapproving eyes when caught on the street with a Krispy Kreme bag or a steaming pizza box, the shaking heads above my cubicle when spying the stash of goodies I keep in one of my file drawers, and the eyes hot on the back of my neck while in line at fast food restaurants. It's the pity and contempt that's so awful and if I want people to see me, then I'm going to have to get rid of some of the weight.

So, that first Sunday in September, I took the T to the Brigham Circle stop, clumsily maneuvered my girth out of the plastic molded seat and around the other commuters. I remember their scrunched faces as I brushed up against them on the way to the door. I couldn't help it.

But wait, yes, I could help it, and I was going to help it that day!

The hospital was at the top of a rather steep hill. I remember thinking as I began to make my way up the hill that hot day in September, starting that fire of caloric burning, that I was really going to help myself for once. I could change everything. And then my life would actually begin.

But that damned, steep hill might have prompted a cardiac emergency even before reaching the hospital if it weren't for Ali rescuing me in that cab. I was about a quarter of the way up, near the 'Noodle Wok' on Calumet Street when I had to pause and lean against the building. I was soaked and when I looked up at the sun I became dizzy. Was I hungry or sick, or both? Did I need an egg role to fuel my ascent? Little dread-locked children laughed at my exhaustion, and one in a bathing suit referred to me as the "Rowly, Powly, Puller Bear."

I remember being troubled over what one might wear for a study that morning when I dressed. I had on loafers with a sweater vest over my t-shirt. A fat guy in a poor neighborhood going towards the hospital in a sweater vest: of course she picked me out.

"Excuse me, but might you be headed up the hill to the Baptist for the thyroid study?" She called out of the halfway rolled down cab window. She had a big, pretty face. Round and soft, a large place to put many different shades of pink makeup.

"Well, yes, indeed I am." I said. We both knew that the study at the Baptist had nothing to do with glandular function or malfunction. It was a polite way of saying, I'm fat and am going to the same place.

As soon as I got in beside her in the air-conditioned cab I noticed that she was bigger than me by at least 50 pounds. The flesh of her legs spread heavily on the hot vinyl taxicab upholstery. It made me feel superior. I wasn't nearly as far gone and my journey towards happiness would be shorter and easier than hers.

We introduced ourselves with a moist handshake and a series of "Why it's a pleasure to meet you" and "I'm delighted to make your acquaintance." Utterly formal. Neither Ali nor I had that offhand, comfortable quality to our speech. Our conversations commenced in chat-rooms and in hypothetical daydream dialogues.

"This is my third study at the Baptist. I used to go to Mass General, but the Baptist pays so much better. I'm earning money to pay for nursing school," Ali said as we exited the cab at the top of the hill. We were high above Boston and Ali stood large against the blue sky. The Prudential building was the size of crayon behind her. The famous Citco sign lined up below her ear like a delicate earring.

"You've been doing this for quite some time now and you're still—" I stopped myself but it was already too late.

"Well, a few of the studies were sleep depravation trials," she said as her fingers fumbled around in the neck of her blouse. Her hand uncovered her bra strap, wide as duct tape, cutting into her flesh from the burden of her giant breasts. I wasn't at all aroused. Her fingers followed a gold chair around her neck to the cameo hidden in the folds of her shirt. In her hand was the head of a beautiful woman. She fingered the pretty ivory profile and frowned. I was afraid that her swollen thumb would crush the cameo's delicate curls and tiny nose.

She slowed her pace and walked behind me through the entrance of the Baptist's west wing. She was a few paces behind as I checked in at the administration desk.

She didn't speak to me in the lobby during the hour that it took to fill out the twenty-page questionnaire.

How many calories do you consume during the course of a day?

What measures have you taken to improve your cardiovascular health?

What types of medication are you on?

Do you currently have a heart condition you are aware of?

Is there a history of obesity in your family?

She kept her face down as she worked through the paperwork, not even picking it up to acknowledge the room filling with other test subjects.

People wearing sweatpants, wide shoes, anklet bracelets pressing into flesh like sausage ties, and shirts with enough fabric for five shifted on the shallow couches. Some of them talked and joked to one another; laughs and shaking bellies erupte