Wendy McClure - Im Not the New Me

im not the new me

Wendy McClure

im not the new me

Riverhead Books
New York

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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Penguin Group (Canada), 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M4V 3B2, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

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While this is a memoir, some events have been compressed and some characters are composites. I have changed the names and identifying characteristics of some of the people who appear in these pages. Including you.

Copyright 2005 by Wendy McClure

Cover design by Megan Wilson

Book design by Claire Vaccaro

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

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The RIVERHEAD logo is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

PRINTING HISTORY

First Riverhead trade paperback edition: May 2005

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McClure, Wendy.

Im not the new me / Wendy McClure.

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-1-101-65808-6

1. McClure, Wendy. 2. Overweight womenUnited StatesBiography.

I. Title.

RC552.O25M396 2005

362.1963980092dc22

[B] 2004061480

For Mom and Dad,
and for my grandmother Vilma McClure,
with love and candy.

You need to be brave to tell it. Very brave! Youre fat, after all. Everybody can see that. Its assumed that your ability to recognize fat must be impaired for you to have become so damn fat in the first place. But it turns out youre not blind. You can cop to the truth. Youre fat. How big of you to say so.

Which brings us to our next question.

You weigh how much? 173, maybe? Or 156? Or 217? 302? 195? 260? These are only suggested numbers, of course. You will have to actually get on the scale and see for yourself.

Dont worry. Once it has been established that Youre Fat, this weighing thing is really more of a formality than anything. Because youre about to go on a journey to find yourself, to find out who you are when youre, you know, not fat; youre embarking on a sometimes painful odyssey through the Valley of the Shadow of Your Really Big Ass, No Offense, and itll be a long and difficult road full of temptations and weak moments, and the territory is for the most part unmapped. So we hope youll understand well just need some way to keep track of you: well need that number.

Oh, and you can tell us your height, if you want, but really, theres no height requirement: if youre a female and weigh more than 125 pounds, then you can have a Fat Girl Story.

So anyway. Youre fat. Go on. You had to have done something to get that way.

You need to tell the world what you did. That seems like a good idea: that way, maybe people wont get fat the way you did. Theyll be more vigilant the way you should have been; they wont go through life the way you did for years, paying too much attention to other things: Echo & The Bunnymen songs; your film studies papers; the light from the window eclipsing along the wall of your room.

Oh, whatever. Thats not really why were here.

We know how it happened. We get theate too much part. Now tell us the rest. Tell us where the food came from, where you kept it, how greasy it was, or how sweet, or how much butter was involved. Dont skimp on the butter.

What else happened? What else couldnt you help eating? A Philadelphia cheese steak? Can we imagine you chewing it in slow motion and getting cheese on your face? Did it bitch-slap you, that cheese steak? And did you love it or what?

What about pie? Was there ever pie?

Dont be shy. Remember youre brave. Youre ready to begin. In order to tell a Fat Girl Story all you need to do, for starters, is find a fat girl.

Really, its that easy. The only catch is she cant quite be you.

I get fatter than Ive ever been in my life and then I go off to Vegas for my international karaoke debut.

It happens in a place called Tongs Palace. The Chinese restaurant part of Tongs is too brightly lit and deserted; the back lounge, where we are, is dim; there are sticky tables and wobbly red chairs and strings of Christmas lights around the bar. Its four oclock in the morning.

Were down the street from the Stratosphere hotel, where I guess theres some kind of roller coaster on the roof. Were staying at the Luxor, the hotel shaped like a big pyramid, a pyramid with a light on top that you can see from space. From space, so I cant possibly be trying to escape.

Though theres a moment right after I sign up to sing that I consider making a break for the bathroom or the door or the part of my head that forgets what I look like.

* * *

Okay, shut up. You. Youre? Richard pauses here like its a question.Beautiful. Okay? And you need to know that.

The whole summer before my trip to Las Vegas, my friend Richard and I hang out at a neighborhood place we call Little Nut Hut, which is not the actual name of the establishment but rather of the dusty nut machine behind the bar and alsosometimes, depending on how pathetic I getthe nickname of the last guy I dated. Lately, Id decided I didnt want to keep talking about him so Richard has had to come up with a new topic when we get drunk and maudlin, and to my horror its You, Wendy, Are Fucking Fabulous, Okay? Except I dont think its Richards job to tell me this and I keep saying so.

Yeah. Thanks. Im fine. Im mumbling. Thats not I dont want to be having this conversation again. We have it every time were drunk. I feel perfectly

No. Shut up, he says. I do. But then I sigh a little too emphatically for him. Shut up!

You, he says. You deserve better. You dont even know. Shut up! You dont.

Thanks. No. Really. I know Im not, you know, ugly.

Its always sort of like an argument and I always sort of lose. Which, I think, defeats the whole point of the conversation.

* * *

Possible reasons for why I am fat: genetics; childhood issues; predisposition to depression; the Pill; Kraft Macaroni & Cheese; sedentary lifestyle; obscenely huge restaurant portions; job at bakery counter in 1985; curious grade-school diagnosis of low blood sugar; fears of intimacy; Western notions of Manifest Destiny; voices in my head. I mean, I dont know.