Antonia Crane Spent A Memoir (epub)

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.I figured she was playing the baby fat game where she pinched my sides and cackled like a scarlet macaw.“God! You’re so sexy,” she said.I was embarrassed but not sure why.“Look!” she called out to my big brother.“How sexy she is.”“Mom, don’t,” I said.Alan sprinted downstairs with his Walkman on.Whatever sexy was, it must have been the worst thing in the world, like being boiled alive with my nerves still intact, or the best thing ever, like winning a game of kick-the-can.I wanted to swat her hands away so I could breathe, but I held my breath so I could glow in her grasp.She saw me as sexy, and that meant I existed.It meant I existed even after Dad left.It meant I could breathe again.“Alan said I’m fat,” I said, wriggling away from her.“You’re not fat, honey, you’re chunky.It’s sexy.” I didn’t want to be chunky.I wanted to look like Christie Brinkley, have a twenty-five inch waist, and marry David Bowie.I was haunted by fat, always pinching the blubber on my hips.I hated mirrors.I compared my thighs to the skinny girls in Jazzercise whose bodies were sharp points of perfection.I was tall with oddly long, flat feet.I was the opposite of them: loud and thick and wore all blue instead of pink.With my dad’s muscular thighs, I was too fat for ballet.I willed myself to be skinny, but the only diet I saw work was divorce.After Mom’s friends got divorced, they got thin.I didn’t want to wait that long.I begged my mom to let me watch Family, a show about a troubled teenager, which came on at 10:00 p.m., past bedtime.I hadn’t noticed it happening, what with the divorce and the new circumstances, but Kristy McNichol was my idol, and I’d become obsessed with her.Kristy played the teenage star, and I loved her feathered hair and the chocolate chip mole on her lip.And I increasingly loved her tight bell-bottomed jeans and the blue satin jacket that unzipped to show a tight baseball T-shirt.Kristy played Buddy, a tomboy whose legs dangled from the swing set on the front lawn; a lip glossed, tough girl with mental problems and a gap in her teeth.I thought about her in Little Darlings when I masturbated on my pillow.I read rumors in the tabloids that she was a bipolar lesbian, and it took a couple of consultations with a dictionary to figure out what that meant.This made her seem hotter to me.She was the most beautiful woman on earth and had the best body on television, hands down.It didn’t occur to me to question my own sexuality; what I felt for Kristy felt right, and it didn’t interfere with my interest in boys.It wasn’t in the least confusing.I preferred being with my girlfriends.I took baths with them in Mom’s Avon scented bubble bath and slept in their beds with them, praised their soft skin, played with their hair, and borrowed their clothes.I didn’t think about the term “bisexual” or apply it to myself—at least not yet.Sexuality felt like a space I stepped into and out of like a mud puddle.I wanted to be chased by boys in the worst way and my body ached when they ignored me.But when they chased me I got scared and quiet, my face flushed, and my body heated up.I wanted to be chased by boys, but I wanted to kiss girls.I admired their strength and soft pillow-like beauty.I wanted to keep their secrets and sleep next to them.I glided between sexes and needed them both.I didn’t hate one and run to the other in refuge.I loved both and rejected both—two forces tugged inside me, and I didn’t yet know enough to be ashamed.It was during a commercial break of Family that I first stuck my finger down my throat.I’d read about bulimia in Seventeen.Bulimia was the ticket to losing weight, at least according to the girls in Jazzercize class.My blonde, small-boned Mormon cheerleader friends did it, and their moms all looked like Loni Anderson on WKRP in Cincinnati.I polished off a gallon of Rocky Road ice cream and worked my way through a bag of Zingers then I ran bathwater extra loud and puked until my knuckles had red cuts and blisters from my teeth.Loni Anderson’s wide bleached smile mocked me from the television after I washed the slime from my mouth.I thought about kissing Kristy.I wondered if she was born with a perfect body or if she too stuck her finger down her throat five times a day.I liked having a secret, even then.It’s something that hasn’t changed.Other peoples’, as well as my own.One effective way to keep my secrets was to tell on other girls.I called Janine Elm’s parents and told them she was bulimic because it took the focus off of me.“You did the right thing, honey.She could die,” Mom said, and made me a roast beef sandwich, which I later threw up.Kristy McNichol was sexy, but Madonna was the sexiest, prancing around in fishnets with messy, blonde hair and eyeliner.I wanted her to guide me, so I memorized all of her songs.By fourteen, my boyfriend was a varsity football player who looked exactly like Sylvester Stallone and I was a cheerleader with pizza-puke breath.I was a couple years younger than Jeff and was desperately in love with him.I even made a heart-shaped wooden sign that said so and screwed it to a telephone pole near his house on Valentine’s Day.He broke up with me shortly after.I barfed my way through high school, chasing an impossible standard of beauty.I embraced and fought the cravings inside my body—stuffing it down, then throwing it up.Both men and boys began paying attention to me, and I began to pay attention to what worked, to what kept them interested.I became an outrageous flirt, destined for laps across America.I was an inevitable stripper—barfing, teasing, aching to be seen [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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