Part III: What Happens a Cappella? The BIG Diet: Week #10 (Chapter 63)
I feel so light and thin, though the scale says 164.
I think Brian has noticed, but I’m not 100% sure.
Sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, I catch him staring at me, but he
always looks away like he’s flustered.
I asked him about the dream; he said he really didn’t know what it meant –
he doesn’t work with dreams.
He smiled. “It seems you have a terrific sense of humor.”
To me, that’s the highest compliment a man can pay a woman.
I’m definitely walking on air.
Shel and I went to a dinner party this week.
I didn’t want to go.
I tried to wiggle out of it, but Shel said, “Hey, you can’t drop out of
life just because you’ve stopped eating normal food.”
He’s right, of course, but I would have preferred another venue
for my coming out.
No need for the host, a stuffed-shirt colleague of Shel’s, and the other
guests – more shrinks – to know about my diet. It’s bad enough having one
shrink snickering, his analyzing the significance of my liquid sustenance, my
having to hear his sniping comments day in and day out.
Who wants to hear it from a roomful of Freudian, Jungian, and Gestalt
shrinks?
I drank my shake beforehand and warned Shel, under the threat of death
and ostracism (sex went long ago), that he was to keep his mouth shut about my
eating habits.
I told the host’s wife I was having complicated blood work done the next
day, so I had to eat before 6:00 p.m. and was restricted to caffeine-free diet
sodas and mineral water.
Everyone made much of my not eating, offering their appropriate condolences.
Colleen Aiken, Shel’s Jungian colleague: “Samantha, dear, what could possibly
be wrong with you, a strong, strapping woman like you?” (Where have I heard
that before? Why do I get a sense of Deja vu?), Jerry Ludlow, a renegade
Freudian from London: “Oh, luv, it must be such a bore for you.” Penny,
our host’s wife: “Too bad you can’t at least sample some of this lovely
food.”
It was lovely, a spread of bacchanalian proportions, an obscene display of gustatory wealth –
I don’t want to think about it.
Insult to injury: Mona was at the party, and I never saw anyone pork out so
much in my life. She made a pig out of herself, stuffing down raspberry
torte like no one’s business, whipped cream lathered all around her lips.
If I did that, I’d look like the pig I am, but does sweet, little ole’
Mona? No way! She looks smug (I want to smack her!).
Who the hell does she think she is?
I’m about 95% sure she’s fucking Sheldon.