Wear it like it fits

THE FIRST THING I DO when I get to the What Would Jesus Eat? Clinic, is insist on being weighed, and having my body fat ratio assessed.

“I wish to have a body stat ASAP,” I say, signing myself in.

The woman behind the counter isn’t helpful.

“I thought the editor was coming,” she says, disapprovingly checking her list. “I don’t think we are doing all our usual treatments anyway, this weekend,” she adds brusquely. “We are all about the What Would Jesus Eat? Clinic, which is more about health than weight. It’s holistic nutrition, not a diet.”

“Yes I heard,” I say, and I think that editor or not, I am still the client here. “But I must be measured and weighed. I want a full body stat.” I lean on the counter and stare at her unblinkingly, having learnt a few Maia tricks along the way.

She looks at me and sighs.

“Let me show you to your room, then I’ll get a nurse to come and find you,” she says, sensing she has no choice. I thank her.

“Please don’t measure my knees,” I say to the nurse later. “I have very fat knees.”

She ignores me and carries on measuring and pinching. The room is freezing and I am covered in goose bumps. I hug my arms to my chest.

“You are underweight, and your body fat is very low,” the nurse tells me tonelessly. “I’ll have printouts for you tomorrow with regard to BMI and the like. I’ll come and find you.”

She leaves and I hop happily around the freezing room and get dressed. I am underweight.

I take my moment of happiness and head out to get a read on who else might be attending the weekend seminar. I see groups of cliquey folk chatting earnestly, all of them looking organic and dedicated. I suddenly feel miserable. I sit down on one of the easy chairs in the glass-fronted lobby and try to befriend one of the many fellow spa-attendees but it seems like they are going out of their way to ignore me.

Two nights and two full days of this? I sigh.

I go back to my room, which, contrary to Maia’s promises, is barren: a nun’s cell with an ugly floral coverlet and industrial grey carpet. There isn’t a free gift in sight. I pick up the phone and call Mathew who sounds irritable. I want him to come and fetch me.

“It’s hardly started,” he says. “Hang in there little girl, you’ll have fun, you always do. Remember everybody there feels as lost as you, so take charge and it’ll all be humming along in no time.”

I place the phone down and don’t feel much better. I am disconcerted by Mathew’s suggestion that I feel lost and I wish his unexpected reassurance had more to do with genuine kindness than a lack of desire on his part to come and fetch me. I wonder, with a feeling of uneasy embarrassment at having being exposed, how often he has noticed I feel lost and uneasy in social situations. But more than anything I just wish I hadn’t accepted his offer to drive me. Now I am here with no means of escape. I had thought it would be nice – he and I having a chat during the drive up. It seemed like all he’d been doing lately was working, although admittedly I had too.

He had seemed tense though, not in a talkative mood at all and I wondered why he hadn’t just let me come on my own. I wouldn’t have minded. I love being in my car, flying along, music blaring, able to come and go as I please.

So I am not a happy camper. I exit my room and bump into a tall woman. I am apologizing to a buxom set of breasts when I hear a familiar voice saying my name in delight.

It’s Magda, from my old job, who has been sent to cover the story by Shanda.

We cling to each other in gratitude.

“Isn’t it horrible?” Magda asks. “Why are they all so unfriendly? I just want to go home but Butch dropped me off and so I’m stuck. And they aren’t even doing any massage therapy or anything. How are we going to survive? And they have one lecture after another. How can they possibly take up two full days?”

I agree wholeheartedly, immensely relieved to see her. We make our way to the lecture hall and find our seats.

The room is buzzing with excitement. It is filled with enthused Jesus acolytes punctuated with grim-faced magazine underlings who look ready to bolt.

“Whatever it was that Jesus ate,” Magda comments, getting a good look around the lecture hall, “the editors of the world don’t seem to think it’s that interesting. Only the minions like us are here, none of the power-players. The Jesus people must be very disappointed that they rate so poorly.”

“They don’t even seem to notice we’re here,” I say. “I’m not surprised there aren’t any editors. It’s not exactly fun, what they they’re offering. Editors want nice things, gifts and the like. I tell you now, if they were offering free Botox, liposuction, or anything like that, we wouldn’t have stood a chance. Maia and Shanda and the lot of them would have trampled over us to be here.”

Magda laughs. “You are so right,” she says. “Speaking of devilish editors, how’s it going with Maia? You’ve been there what, three or four months?

“I’ve been there almost five months now.” I am amazed by how quickly the weeks have passed.

“Maia is total hell on wheels,” I say. “She’s psycho. I can’t put it any other way. She can be really nice about one percent of the time but, mostly, she’s just awful. When she’s not stealing all the beauty products, she’s taking all the free trips, which means she’s out of the office for two weeks every month. Which is fine but then she comes back and changes everything, every single thing. I have no idea why we even do anything in her absence because she changes it all. So we are always behind schedule, which makes things very tense.”

I am trying to be tactful yet honest. “And I really don’t think her chemical partying, if you can call it that, is good for her. Her moods swings are increasingly erratic. She seems to think there are conspiracies going on, that we all want to get rid of her or something, so she stalks around and appears out of nowhere and glares with her big bulging eyes. It can be quite scary.”

Magda laughs. “Yes, I have heard that. I do admire her for one thing though,” she says and I lean in, curious. I had yet to find anything to admire about Maia except for her skillful political game playing and her ability to hang onto her primo position.

“Well, let’s put it this way,” Magda says, “she’s hardly shaped like a supermodel okay? And even though she’s had a lot of surgery, she’s still pretty much like she was before, with a bit less of a tummy, and a tighter-looking face. Now she’s a good height but she’s got a thick neck, sloping shoulders, immense breasts, a tiny waist, massive thick arms, a huge round butt, big thighs, thick legs and no ankles, things that not even plastic surgery can fix.”

“And you admire her for all of that?” I ask.

“Well, no, since she had nothing to do with her shape, she was born with it. So you can’t admire or not admire her for it, it’s just a fact of her life. The reason I admire her is because despite her limiting shape, shall we say, she wears whatever she likes. She wears haute couture like it’s nobody’s business and she struts it like she’s Linda Evangelista.”

“Hmm,” I think about it. “Well, she insists everybody send her their latest stuff for free. She says it’s good publicity for them, which I’m really not too sure about. We are constantly getting boxes delivered to her office. And honestly, I’m not sure if I agree with you that she should wear whatever she wants. I mean, there are times I really can’t concentrate when I’m in a meeting with her because the combination of her and her clothes is just too bizarre. Most of the time, she just doesn’t fit in to them; they bulge in all the wrong places or they’re loose in the wrong places. It’s like watching Cinderella’s step-sisters try to force their feet into shoes that don’t fit and then limp around. It’s really uncomfortable to see.”

“I admire her,” Magda insists. “She is her own woman. She does whatever she wants and I think she’s great for that.”

“If she really was her own woman, would she be as totally promiscuous as she is?” I ask. “She’s jumped everybody there is, men, women, young, old. I heard she’d even got it on with Mr. Bullard. Her first job was with him, years ago.”

“Yes, but then he fired her because he caught her having sex with his son, Hank, on the boardroom table,” Magda adds laughing. “You are right, no self-respecting woman would have sex with either Bullard, the flaking-skinned senior, or crossed-eyed junior, no matter what. But then, just when it looked like she was history, she clawed her way to a big comeback and was even gracious enough to help Bullard out when Jean left. She came back and rushed in firing all cylinders at once.

“Fuelled by God only knows what,” I say. I think about what Magda has said about Maia and her clothes. I wish I could agree that Maia was right for wearing things that didn’t suit her or fit her just because she liked them. I look down at my ankle-length black skirt and my loose fitting thigh-length black top and I sigh.

No, I think to myself, I like this, I chose this. This is my style. Hmmmm, maybe.

“Hey Magda,” I finally realize something. “You don’t have your braces anymore. You look great. Butch must be so happy.”

She smiles shyly. “Took you a while to notice,” she teases me, poking me with a glossy red fingernail and I apologize. I am always so busy thinking about my own body and wondering whether people are hating me for being fat and weak that sometimes I miss the obvious details of other people’s appearances.

“Ah, here comes Jesus’s dietician,” Magda drawls and arranges her notepad on her lap. “Look, she’s got a huge rash all over the whole one side of her face, that’s hardly compelling advertising. All I can say is when do we get to test the food part of this? I am starving.”

I agree and we sit back to hear all about What Jesus Ate.