Hi, I'm Skinny

Blog 7
I’m skinny. I get it. I have no fat on my body and that makes other girls not like me. My current girlfriends yell at me often. “Eat a cheeseburger!” My mom always says if there is ever a stomach transplant she has dibbs on mine. No I don’t work out. I eat whatever I want. I don’t gain weight. Must be great, I assume is what you’re thinking. What it must be like to never have to worry about becoming fat. But would that be so bad?
When I go shopping clothes never fit. I have that 5’7’’ height that models have but I have the waist the size of a 12 year old. Isn’t that what runway models have. Couldn’t I just take this body and sache it down the catwalk? I could make the millions that buy those special clothes that fit people of my size.
“She must be anorexic.” I must be starving myself in order to stay so thin. But I love food so that accusation is incorrect. “Bulimic.” I hate throwing up. I have projectile vomiting so when I throw up it shoots everywhere with no salty taste warning. It feels like I’m being stabbed in the stomach. I don’t have an eating disorder.
“Must be nice to have a body like Kate Moss.” I hate that. I get it I’m skinny. I hate it when people talk like I don’t realize I’m small. I hate it when people want to switch places with me. I hate it when people give me recipes high in all those fatty ways. I hate when people comment on the fact that I like to eat salads. I get I’m skinny!
Why would you want to switch with me. Curves are in. it’s all about the ass these days. Mines rather small, you don’t want it. What’s that? You want to know my trick? Fine. Here it is. The trick to being skinny…
First you have to be born a month premature so that you have what is called calisaya. Then, you have to wait three months in the hospital for your stomach to actually form. Next you have to get the stomach to not absorbed nutrients properly. That means you can’t breast feed as a baby and when you’re on to solid foods after six more months of throwing up and being fed by a tube, then you have to shove a bunch of protein vitamins down your throat. After that you will see a nutritionist and she will tell you to try and eat a little more each day. But whoops! Your stomach doesn’t agree and again you throw up. So you will grow up on whatever your small, barely developed, barely functioning stomach will allow. You’ll eat things like salads, soups, anything easily digested. I promise then, after puberty you’ll be skinny.
I better give you the warnings. Every diet has warnings right?! Your entire life will be spent with many doctors’ visits taking blood and trying to figure out how to get all your nutrients. Your stomach will next trick your pancreases into thinking you have too much sugar in your body and it will stop producing insulin. Then your brain will produce less serotonin and bam! You’re skinny but you will have seizures. No biggy for the price of being skinny. Oh I almost forgot, you will also always be tired. You can sleep 9 hours a night and by noon you will need a nap because you can barely move your body. But hey it works. If you want to be skinny this is my trick. Get a disease before you were born that affects the way you eat. It’s great, really. I love being able to have my niece call me Jack from the “Nightmare before Christmas. Well, I’ve got to go. Time to take the celexa, sugar pills, protein vitamins, check my blood sugar, and not forget the diazapane. All in a day’s work to be skinny.

On death

The week before my twenty-first birthday I found myself face down in the parking lot of my apartment. I remember only the way the pavement sparkled in the light of the street lamp and thinking “is this going to hurt.” The man holding a sod-off shot gun to my head was patting down my pockets to make sure he didn’t miss any of my goods. He had my purse in his hands already but he figured I must have had something hidden in my jacket pockets and even my shoes. There was no cliché of my life passing in front of my eyes. There wasn’t time for that. The only thought was of death. What is death like? What if no one is watching and in these next few moments what if I become nothing?
Martin Heidegger said death is not inevitability but a probability. He thought it was redundant to describe death as a termination that will happen because of course death will happen. It is not a question if it will happen it is a question of when. “Death is an activity that can happen at any moment.” Death is not something that happens at the end of a life when all is said and done, it can happen in the middle of life when accomplishments are only in the works. Perhaps this is why we have Diem to carpe.
The cold steal of a gun never goes away. Eight years later I can still feel it both above my right eyebrow and at the crown of my head. It feels like doom. Without even being fired you can feel the bullet piercing the skull. You can imagine it traveling through the hemispheres of your brain. And when confronted by that gun whether fired or not the bullet becomes lodged inside of you. Counseling does not carve it out. Stepping out into the world again does not stitch it up without scars.
Everything in the world exists by following certain laws. Is not that our lives are planned out for us as in predetermination but that there is causation. When a ball is thrown it will descend at certain intervals because of velocity and gravitational pull. Every plant life goes through a process of growth and decay. These are physical laws and why should our time spent here be exempt from them? Are we not to decay? Should decay come only once we have bloomed are is it possible that we will never sprout?
The robber hid behind the cars. He had followed me for months mapping out when I went to and returned from work. Every Tuesday evening I worked at Pier 1 Imports for extra cash. He knew I’d be home late tonight. When he approached I said “Hi” assuming he was one of my neighbors. He gave no care if I was a good person. His only concern was that I seemed weak. Too weak to fight back at least.
B.F Skinner developed the notion of behavioral momentum. It is the notion that given certain genetic material and certain environmental conditions that the path of a person’s life could be mapped out under the laws of causation. So, if someone had an aggressive gene and was raised in a violent neighborhood then he would have no choice but to become violent himself. If I grew up in the same neighborhood but I had a genetic marker of kindness then it is possible that I would not be violent and try to change my environment to suite my genetic makeup.
Once he had finished patting me down I waited for the shot. I prepared for the pain, the nothingness. “Step, step step….” He ran away. I was alive.
Socrates believed that death was the separation of the soul from the body. The body is concerned with that of materiality and desire while the soul was concerned with thoughtfulness and reasoning. “The soul reasons most beautifully when she is all by herself separate from the body.” In death the soul can find the truth.
It took me 6 months to be able to be alone during the day. It took me 3 years to be able to be alone at night. I did not die. But I have found myself questioning my life and death ever since. I find myself admiring one quote of Socrates but am plagued by it….”others are apt to be unaware that those who study philosophy rightly are in preparation for death and dying.”… Did I miss my chance for truth?

Native or American

There are secrets kept within the lodge of the Cheyenne reservation in La Junta, Colorado. Our folklore is hidden in oratory only spoken to those with the proper blood. The faith of the Medicine is flawed, beautiful and before its time. It haunts its followers as they come to know it more and more. It is only in the vision quest that the truth is revealed; there are two paths.
The men of animals receive their name by triumph. My brother, Biuantan, received his in the plateaus. A bald eagle soared above him and he put his arm out and the eagle landed it on it. It is said that my brother became the eagle as they gracefully stared at one another. At the end of his quest, Biuantan received a feather to represent his spirit; the sight of an eagle.
The second path is that of prophecy ordained by Medicine. It is given at birth but realized during the quest. Only the Medicine Man is aware of the prophecies. He gives a special ceremony in the prophecy’s honor. But this ceremony is tragic as the history of the tribe is displayed on the walls of the lodge. The people of prophecy are given hand-made trinkets that display their path as well as their duty. I was given a dream catcher.
It is three circles woven together with twine, leather, brown beads and buffalo tusks. And molded tin and feathers hang from it. The outer ring represents what is beyond; that which cannot be told. The inner ring is the earth, the beads are the people. And the ring suspended in the center is the secret. The secret the Medicine Man and I only know. I do not share the secret but not because I am bound by duty. I do not share it because I am embarrassed and ashamed. I am not full-blooded. I left the reservation and entered into the American World. I am not a prophecy. I am just a girl born in March.
This dream catcher does not capture bad dreams but is said to amplify them. But I don’t believe it. It is normal to have dreams of bloodshed and of war. These are just nightmares. It would be unnatural to dream of utopia or a world full of unconditional love. I hang it only out of tradition. Just as an atheist would hang his dead grandmothers cross out of respect.
***
I was in the lodge when my grandfather, the Medicine Man, showed me how to inhale from the peace pipe. The hallucinogen filled my lungs and the lodge began to change. The smoke curled and became the ancestors. As my grandfather spoke I watched the Massacre of Sandcreek. I could see the blood pouring from the men. The women were raped. And the children were scalped as if they were Apaches. It was as if no one ever knew that the word Cheyenne means “Peaceful People.” I ran out of the lodge screaming and crying. My grandfather followed but not to console. He handed me the old dream catcher. He told me it has been in the tribe for many years. And for the first time he called me “Malia Nahala Hateya.”
***
There is no magic in the dream catcher. I do not follow its meaning. I am not a prophecy. I am just a girl born in March.

Tools to make it

I’m sitting on the other side of the glass where I was four years ago. I use to burn my hands with that solder iron. My clothes reeked of oil, gasoline and brake cleaner. Mechanics use brake cleaner to clean off oil in the engine because of the way it interacts with the oil. It makes it easier to see where a leak is coming from. It’s highly flammable and should only be used when the engine is off. The first year I was a mechanic I didn’t know this. After I had finished a job I raised the lift with the car running and sprayed under the engine compartment to make sure the leak was fixed. The heat of the engine ignited the brake cleaner and fire quickly swirled around me. My arm hair got a little burnt but the mechanic next to me put the fire out before I could even move.
I’m watching them work on my car. It seems ridiculous. I know how to fix it. I can take the tires off, remove the calipers and brake springs and switch out the pads. I can resurface the rotors, assemble everything back together, and tighten the tires in a star pattern to torque them to the proper balance. But I am not. Jim is doing it for me. Ever since I stopped working for Japanese Auto Masters I rarely touch my own car. Once you get paid for something it takes all the fun out of it and really it was a means to an end. It got me off the streets.
As I watch Jim bleed the brake fluid on the right rear tire I remember what is like to be him. Jim works on flat rate which means he has an hourly rate but the hours he gets is by the job. An oil change is .5 of an hour, unless it is on an Audi. A timing belt job on a 97-00 Camry is 7.5 hours. And the brake job on my 2000 Honda Accord V6 with dual exhaust is 3.5 hours. At a base rate he will make $70. If he does two brake jobs today he’ll make $140. As long as cars are broken Jim will make good money. However, I can see that lifting his arms up over his head each day has cause the cartilage in his shoulders to wear. Every time he moves he can feel bone against bone. His boss will come up for braking that brake spring and secretly charge me for it even though Jim knows it’s his fault. That is why mechanics are shady; their bosses make them be that way.
I am an ASE certified L1 Master Tech. I took a bunch of multiple choice tests and gained patches to put on my coat. I worked with a pit crew for an NHRA drag racer. The money I made from being a tech paid for my first year here at Pacific. But I have no cartilage in my shoulders and was harassed daily for being a woman. I still work at a parts store doing diagnostic work and still I am given crap and co-workers inadvertently grabbing my ass.
Three more months and I’ll be out of here with a degree. I’m not really sure where I’ll go or what I’ll do before I’m ready for grad school. And I am terrified. What if what comes next is the same as before? What if I grow tired of philosophical study the way I grew tired of cars? What if the life that follows a single career is a life that fades with the time spent on it?

Marked

Like the causes we believed we fought for, we knew we could make this contraption work. Like every big movement, we had all the pieces but little organization. We had drawn out the plans. The guitar sting hooked up to the battery through leads and was then threaded through a pen. The spring inside the pen had to be bent so that it held tightly to the guitar string while still having its spring capabilities. Seth had the pen in his hand.
“Let’s see if it works.”
Shippley touched the guitar string leads to the battery. It made a buzzing noise and the other tip of the guitar string came in and out of the pen.
“It works!”
Our homemade tattoo gun was up and running.
Shippley went first. I was the only one who could write calligraphy so his tattoo was my task. I drew on his left forearm with a sharpie and used a ruler to make sure it was straight. Seth handled the leads. I dipped the tip into black ink and put it to Shippley’s skin. A guitar sting is thicker than a regular tattoo needle so the outline was thick. It was a good thing I used a sharpie because when we had to wipe the blood from his skin the outline didn’t erase. I added the green and blue shading and before long it was Seth’s turn.
This time I handled the leads and Shippley did the tattooing. We stenciled it on Seth’s lower back and within an hour the second tattoo was nearly finished. Shipp added the blue and green and then it was my turn.
I sat on our kitchen floor next to the kerosene heater. Seth couldn’t draw so we figured it would be best for Shippley to do the tattoo. He touched the guitar string to my left shoulder blade and through the pain I felt the hope of the word being scarred into me. I felt proud that my first tattoo was being created by my best friend. And together we felt we were sticking it to the man because, at this time, tattooing was illegal in the state of Virginia.
When Shippley got to the “I” he was directly on my spine. My right arm moved. We all stopped; Shippley with the needle still in my back. The examined the gun and slowly pulled it out of me. My arm moved again. It turned out that the guitar string had shifted and was going too far into my back.
“See if you can move.”
I slowly got up. I walked around moving every limb and twisting my neck.
“Nope, I’m fine.”
I sat back down and we continued. He added the blue and green and my tattoo was finished. As we each stared in the mirror we became the words. They became our calling cards; what we were known for in the Virginia Beach punk scene. Shippley was “Liberty.” Seth was “Freedom.” And I was “Unity.”

want or can't

I Don’t Want to vs. I Can’t.
Shaun’s kitchen had more counter space and a gas stove which made it easier to cook dinner at his place. We were celebrating that time when you’ve been dating long enough to know the others favorite movie or top five bands. We were young enough to know every freckle and curve of the others body rather than knowing the others point of view about anything remotely important.
“What are we making?”
“Maklooba. It’s a Jordanian dish.”
“What is that?” He pointed to flowers I was pulling apart.
“Saffron threads. Don’t worry, they taste good.”
Shaun looked at me with both disgust and apprehension.
“Just wash the chicken and cut it up.”
I knew we were to the point of asking real questions. I wanted to avoid this part at all costs. In the past, when I had answered these questions, the answers always ended up being the reason for my relationships to end. I figured if I just made a delicious, authentic dish any conversation would be forgotten.
“So… do you believe in God?”
I should have made a plan B.
“That’s kind of a hard question to answer.” My eyes remained on peeling the eggplant.
“No it’s not. You either believe in God or you don’t.”
“Do you believe in God?”
Shaun pointed to the Buddha tattoo on his arm insinuating where his beliefs lay.
“Having a belief in something is not that black and white. I mean what are you even asking me? Do I believe in an omni, omni, omni god? Do I believe in divinity? DO I believe that there’s a supreme being that undoubtedly exists and I am well aware of the nature of that being?”
Shaun turned from the sink. “What the fuck are you talking about; I’m just asking if you believe in God.”
“Well with what I study it’s really hard to answer that. Every single day I examine arguments for and against the existence of God. To tell you the truth, whether pro or con, all the arguments are sound and valid.”
“Jesus. If you had to answer, in the simplest way possible, what would you say?”
As if speaking to the eggplant I replied, “I’d say I’m a philosopher and that I don’t know.”
“So you’re an atheist.”
“No. I mean that I don’t know. I don’t know if there is a God and because of that I don’t think I should claim myself as something either way. Beliefs are too personally important and when it comes to God I have no clue.”
Shaun moved me away from the drawer to pull out the cutting board. I gave him a quick smirk, looking behind him to make it seem as though I was looking at him.
“So, with what you study…does that mean you don’t have an opinion about anything?”
“No. There’s tons of crap I have an opinion about. I suppose the God topic is just too far removed for me.”
Shaun points to the cut up chicken. “What do I do with this?”
“Put it in the sauce pan.”
“So give me an example of something you do have an opinion on.”
“I can’t.”
“No opinions?”
“No, I mean if I tell you an example, you’re not going to like it. This is boring for most people.”
Shaun sits on the counter next to me, while I finished mixing the rest of the eggplant and saffron.
“Come on. It’s not like whatever you say is going to make us or break us. Queue sera sera.”
I throw the eggplant into the pot. “Don’t be so sure.”
“Shut up. Tell me.”
For the first time I looked at him.
“I don’t believe in free will.”
“What? How can you, of all people, say that?”
“Because there is more evidence on the side that we don’t.”
“You used to be homeless and now you’re in college. You didn’t choose that? No credit for your hard work?”
“I’m not going to believe in something just because it benefits my ego.” I returned to the sauce pan.
“So you don’t know if you believe in God but you do believe in fate?”
“I don’t believe in fate either. I believe in determinism. That’s totally different.”
“The Fucks that?”
“Okay, so look. When we push a ball the reaction happens because of certain physical laws. We don’t float into outer space because of certain physical laws. Shit physical laws, especially cause and effect, govern everything down to the neurons in our brain. So tell me why is there this thing called the will, that no one can say what it is or where its located, but it is the only exception to physical law.”
I exhausted my breath, took a sip of wine and kept stirring the saucepan.
“So you and me. We’re not together because of fate. I totally agree. But we’re not together by choice either?”
The sauce pan was about to boil over.
“Help me flip this onto the other dish.”
Shaun grabbed his lobster oven mitts making them walk across the counter to the sauce pan. He helped me flip the pan on the glass dish and together we put the dish in the oven. Shaun took the oven mitts off and looked to his feet. Suddenly but very gently, he grabbed the back of my neck and pulled me close to him. He bent his neck down and pressed his lips firmly against mine. The kiss was not vulgar but lasting.
“I didn’t just choose to kiss you?”
“Would you have kissed me just then if we weren’t talking about free will?”

My First Communion

They were on a mission. The only questions were why they wanted me and what was their plan. I was in some sort of training it seemed. An afternoon boot camp where my grandmother was some sort of general and Roger was a high commander. He made me call him father. They made a bunch of us kids gather at this old building with stone statues. They taught us of their leader; the one with all the power in the universe and whose son brought miracles to earth. Something was amiss. Aliens? Sorcerers? The Irish Mafia? Who knew? But they wanted me to be a part of it.

There was two more steps. Something called a "confession" and a ceremony. They said if I did it I would live forever with that almighty guy. Ha! Bribery. What my grandmother and Father Roger did not know was that my dad was a punk rocker. He taught me to fear bribery and stick it to the man. Anarchy was in my genes and thus, I needed to fight!

Father Roger brought me to his room. Well, well father. Here we are, left to our own devices. "Michelle, tell me of your sins." Oh no! He's on to me! Keep it cool. "No sins, Father." "You haven't been mean to your brother?" His powers are greater than I thought. He can read minds. "Well, I punched my brother and then cried and told my mom he hit me so he would get in trouble." Nice Diversion. "That should only require one hail Mary." Mary, they've taken down Mary. My Mom knocked on the door. "I'm here to pick her up." I'm saved from your treachery father! "I'll bring here to the church at six." Traitor!

Apparently my mom was in on it. She dressed me in an itchy, white dress and even a veil. I did not realize their plan was so low. They were going to marry me off into a cult at the age of seven. I could no longer trust anyone.

They dragged me to the creepy building of statues and forced me down the isle. They made me stand in front of Father Roger and all these wrinkly people. Father Roger started speaking in another language which confirmed my cult suspicions. Before I knew it he had forced something into my mouth. "The body of Christ." What?! Cannibals! I spit out the body showing my tongue to everyone. That's right! I rudely disapprove. But it was not over. Father Roger proceeded to hand me one of two goblets. This one smelt of grape juice. Poison. You'd have to do better than that Father. I know the other glass has something better in it because you wont give it to me. I grabbed the other goblet and drank every last drop. and...no wait...not feeling well....little woozy. They tricked me. This was the glass with the poison. All of the sudden my guts came out of my mouth. Touche Father, Touche!