Dropping Like (Anorexic) Flies

Quick! Hide these diamonds in your...um...

"Sex is like the death penalty: one outcome, so many different ways of carrying it out."
~Stephen Colbert

Holy scheisse!

Last Monday, we were at full capacity in Day Program. 14 anorexics were crammed in around the Dining Room table, using our sharp, pointy elbows as weapons to jostle each other for more room.

When I walked into the dining room with my brekkers on Friday morning and sat down to eat, I was surprised by the number of people that smirked back at me.

We were down to seven - which included one new girl.

Physio had gone on ‘Reflection’ last week (ie: Adult Timeout). She apparently came back in yesterday to tell the facilitators to go fuck themselves (haha! I hope that's what she did) though I never got to see her. Which sucks, cuz I never got her number, and I'll prolly never see her again. Mumbles is currently in hop-sital again, back in good ol’ Unit 32, cuz her heart and her potassium levels are both shite. Big Red, Cute Cate, and Sunny Sienna have all done a bunk too, which leaves only: myself, Day Program, Buchenwald-the-Lifer, Mazda-3, the Beautiful Cutter,Very Tall, and the Only Obese One, who is the new girl.

Though I have just realized, I haven’t actually bothered to introduce you to any of the players in Day Program yet, have I? Prolly cuz, as the title suggests, they are dropping like fucking flies. So why bother, hey?

And guess who might be next on the chopping block?

Your favorite mentaler and mine...ME.

Yup, tomorrow morning is my weigh-in for Week Four, and since I have been struggling for the past week and a half, I have a serious sense of foreboding about this.

I have to gain 1.1 lbs a week to stay in the program. After lunch yesterday, I trotted upstairs to me mum’s room and stepped on the scale (she can’t be arsed to hide it anymore), fully clothed.

It said 132.5 lbs.

Which would mean that I have only gained 0.6 of a pound since last week - and I wasn’t even butt naked, as I will be in the nurse’s office (well, in a paper robe). Which means I prolly haven’t gained that weight at all, it was just the jeans and the belt and the sweater. It is entirely possible, then, that actually, I have lost a bit of weight.

Yes! No! Fuck! ARGH! Shit! Hooray! FUCK! Yay!

Ah well. At least I’m not conflicted about it.

So of course I spent the weekend NOT eating more so I could gain the weight and stay in the program, but instead continuing with my shitty behaviours while trying to come up with an alternative. Rolls of loonies down my panties? Hmmm. Maybe. Rolls of loonies up my shazzer? NO. Okay, okay, what else? Um...ankle weight wrapped around my waist? That would have to be a fat fucking ankle weight, haha! Do you have any better ideas, fuck face? No, I don't. Yeah, I didn’t think you did, so shaddup.

I was sitting at the kitchen table in my parents house this afternoon, eating a plate of steamed veggies and trying to figure out how I could wear 25 pounds of shiny gold bling to program tomorrow, without arousing suspicion that I'd turned to a life of crime. Mum walked in and clocked me brooding, and pounced.

“So? What’s your weight?” she asked casually, pretending she needed to wash her hands in the sink. (I knew better, she was just being nosy concerned).

“132.5,” I mumbled through a mouthful of carrots.

“And? Is that enough to stay in program?” she asked.

“Nope.”

“I just finished reading this story by Bryce Courtney,” she said, leaning against the counter, and I thought, What the fuck does that have to do with anything? “It was called The Potato Eaters.”

I am not eating a bunch of fucking potatoes, I thought, eyeing her mutinously. Or if I was, I was just gonna throw ‘em back up again. Which sort of defeated the purpose of anything, here.

“They were trying to smuggle diamonds out of England. So they hid them in the woman.” She gave me a pointed look. “Kage?”

“Huh?” I looked up. I hadn’t been listening. I hate Bryce Courtney books, they're utter dross.

“I said they hid them in the woman,” she repeated.

“Hid what?”

“The diamonds,” she said.

“What diamonds?” I asked.

“The diamonds they were smuggling out of England. They hid them in the woman.”

“In the woman?” I repeated. “Where in the woman?”

“In her vagina,” Mum stage-whispered, and I recoiled in horror.

“Ewwww, Mum! You're not supposed to know what a vagina is!” I screamed. Then I was struck with an even more horrible thought, and I stopped short. “Wait a minute. Just what the buggery hell are you suggesting here, anyway?”

“Nothing,” Mum said smoothly, wiping down the counters quickly and efficiently. “Just maybe you should wear lots of extra clothes tomorrow.”

“We get weighed in our pelts, Ma.”

“Oh. Then you should wear really heavy jewelry,” she suggested brightly.

“I don’t think that’s gonna cut it,” I sighed.

“Well,” she tossed the rag into the sink, and wiped her hands on a tea towel. “If this program really means something to you, Kage, you’ll find a way to stay in it.”

And she walked out of the room.

I just sat there, and stared after her, and wondered...

Did me mum just tell me to shove rolls of loonies up my shazzer?!