Naturally thin means fun, naturally

“I AM JUST NOT HAVING FUN anymore,” says Thin Lisa, Miss World Contender Number One. It’s an arbitrary Monday morning and I am getting tea in the office kitchen.

Pablo has added yet another magazine to his melting pot of publishing mayhem. Namaste, a yoga journal. The new crew work right alongside our mag; our previously empty offices are filling up almost daily.

I have, rather unkindly, dubbed my new colleagues on the basis, of course, of where they fit on the thin/beauty scale of things.

There is the deputy editor, Lisa, Miss World Contender Number One. The art director, whose name escapes me, is Miss World Contender Number Two. Her assistant is Fat Janet, who is four feet wide by four feet high.

I know I’m a bitch, it goes without saying. I’m too hungry to be nice and too tired to care.

“Nope, no fun, nada,” Thin Lisa repeats, opening the refrigerator.

I am stunned. While I experience daily the intimacies of a funless existence, this girl is beautiful, her family’s rich, and most importantly, she’s thin. So I don’t get it. How she can have all that, and be all that, and not be having any fun?

“Two girls were raped in front of my building this year,” she says. “I didn’t know about it but the cops told me, the ones who came to see me about my burglary. They said whoever robbed me had been very vicious, very deliberate. They said this guy, whoever he was, actually sat and had a drink in my living room, looked through all my photographs and spread them around on the floor. Then he attacked my jewelry; he tangled and broke the silver and stole the gold. And all the stuff from my great, great-grandmother that I wanted to give my kids, when I have them, is gone.”

I realize I should be focused on the violence of her story but I am distracted by her admission. She wants kids? I didn’t know that. But of course she would, having kids, having fun; it’s all part and parcel of a perfect life. I look at her. From her perfect Candice Bergen nose to her perfect high-heeled (though slightly large) feet that sit prettily at the end of a ski run of leggy perfection, is there any part of her that is not perfect? Of course she would want children.

I, on the other hand, find it hard to imagine having a child. I also know that there isn’t one cell in my body capable of having fun. I sometimes tell Mathew I am not a fun person, and I can see he doesn’t believe me.

“But you laugh a lot,” he says, confused.

Anybody can laugh, I want to tell him, look at you.

No fun is why Butch left Magda. I heard it at one of Mathew’s events, from an old school friend of mine who worked with Magda and stayed in touch with her. Apparently Magda said it had been the worst day of her life when, after five years of marriage, Butch turned to her, quite out of the blue, and said, “You are not a fun person, Magda, and I’ve found someone who is.”

But the good news, according to my old school friend, is that Magda’s having a blast. She’s having a lot more fun than she ever did with Butch.

Anyway, so Thin Lisa, the tall, thin, blonde Miss World Contender Number One, is resentful because she isn’t having fun. And I am incredulous because her life, unlike mine, should be fun. Why? Because she can, and does, eat apple pie for breakfast. Imagine that. Apple pie for breakfast with ice cream.

I watch her eat the pie, followed by two chocolate bars and a ham and cheese sandwich. Later, she goes out to buy lunch and comes back carrying all kinds of breads and cheese and toffees. Toffees. For after dinner, she says.

Oh, dear God, how I want to eat all those things. Who wouldn’t be a fun person if every day meant a food party?

Who the hell can be expected to have fun when life is an apple until lunch, then boiled vegetables with no dressing for lunch, then a plain baked potato and a slice of tomato for dinner? And I have been this way since I can remember because I wasn’t born naturally thin.

Oh God, the envy I have for those two heaven-sent, heaven-blessed words. Naturally thin. Thin Lisa is, of course, naturally thin. If I could drink wine every night, I’d have fun too. I love my wine but do you know that even though wine has no fat, it gets metabolized as if it were pure liquid fat? So there goes my one glass of exquisite, ice cold, dry white wine at the end of a bad day. God knows I can’t drink liquid fat because I am not a naturally thin person.

So, here I am, in my imagined Hallmark moment, sitting on a deck on the edge of a lake. It’s summertime and the living’s easy. I raise a glass of water with a slice of lemon and say, here’s to fun times, baby. No doubt about it.