Part 6 (1/2)

While she and I were ”together” I'd thought of myself like an astronaut going on one of those s.p.a.cewalks outside the s.p.a.ce shuttle. Below me I could see Earth, the glorious terrain. The place where true couples dwelled. And while I wasn't there, I could still view it. I knew what it looked like. And in time I'd make my way back into the shuttle; I'd hit the thrusters on my s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p and return to that good soil.

But when Margie and I stopped talking it was as if the craft had blown to bits. I had plenty of oxygen in my suit, but I was no longer tethered to anything.

And the shock waves of the blast didn't send me hurtling down to Earth.

Instead, they blew me backward.

Deeper into s.p.a.ce.

It's funny to have to relate all this first. Because I really want to tell you about my life after I lost weight. What s.e.x was like once I'd exercised and dieted myself down to 195 pounds. That's from the lifetime high of somewhere just north of 350. How did I manage the miracle? I bought a refurbished StairMaster and used it four days a week. And I joined Jenny Craig, the weight-loss system that used out-of-work celebrities in their ads. Ridiculous as it sounds, it worked.

To belabor the astronaut metaphor just a minute longer: I'd found my way back to Earth after having drifted through the lifeless void for two years. Victory parades were thrown in my honor. The president offered me heartfelt congratulations. (By which I mean my mother was incredibly proud of my change.) Here's our man, finally height and weight proportionate! Once again a member of the human race.

But in the time I'd been away-when I'd been inhuman, I guess-I'd journeyed well past phone s.e.x of any kind. Leapfrogged over message boards and heated Internet exchanges. I'd found another phone line where each side really did want to meet and make things happen.

I had s.e.x-lots of it-with women who were, essentially, just like me. By which I mean more than 350 pounds and crippled by self-loathing. We made our introductions on the phone line, essentially negotiating the details of our affections in advance. I want this and you want that; I won't do any of those things, but I will try these. As a result I'd show up at some woman's apartment for the first time and we'd be naked in about ten minutes. Engaging in the kind of s.e.xual fantasies that usually require six months of dating before anyone will even broach the subject. And then they probably still wait another six months before they trust each other enough actually to try it. We covered all that ground in a single night.

And I'll tell you what I learned during those two years: fat people are perverts.

By which I mean to say, loneliness perverts you.

I'm not talking about the s.e.x. Or not exclusively, anyway. My first date as a trimmer man scared me more than my very first fistfight. Part of the reason was that I didn't even realize we were on a date.

We met each other at a party in a bar. We shook hands and exchanged a few words and then mingled among other friends. Once or twice we sat in the same frame for some of those group photos people take as a party wears on. When she sat next to me at a table and smiled before I'd said anything, I had the notion that she might be flirting with me, but the phenomenon had been so rare these last few years that I didn't trust my lying eyes. I figured my intuition had probably shriveled up and died long ago. She wasn't flirting, she was just being friendly.

But then, a few hours into the party, she came up and asked if I liked her blouse. Her friend stood nearby, at the bar, a gla.s.s of beer in front of her mouth to try and hide the way she giggled at her friend's boldness. I was seated and she stood over me. She asked again if I liked her blouse, and this time she flipped the bottom of it up and showed me her stomach.

Now that was flirting. Impossible to ignore. Plus, I didn't want to ignore it. This woman was beautiful by any measure. When she flipped her s.h.i.+rt up I saw her skin and I realized how long it had been since I'd seen a belly without stretch marks. Five years? Ten? I'm including my own in that count.

Before I left I asked if she'd go to dinner with me, and when she said yes she actually went up on her tiptoes, like a kid.

I took her to a sus.h.i.+ restaurant and sat across from her, but after a few minutes it was clear her face showed none of the same enthusiasm as at the bar. I asked her questions about her job as a magazine editor, but she hardly answered in full sentences. I made jokes, each one worse than the last. Maybe it was just that she'd been drunk at the party. I couldn't think of an explanation for why she was acting so d.a.m.n uninterested now.

Then, during another moment of silence, I looked away from her and out of the window. There were no couples between us and the store's large front windows. I saw her reflection. She was as lovely as the other night, maybe more so. She wore a sheer sweater and a skirt that flattered her long legs.

And me?

I was still wearing my coat.

Not a jacket. My winter coat. We'd been inside for half an hour and I hadn't taken it off. No wonder she seemed distant, even dismayed; it looked like I couldn't wait to get away.

And it wasn't just the coat. I had so many layers on. A sweater and a b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rt. And a T-s.h.i.+rt under them. It wouldn't have surprised me if I had thermal underwear layered down there as well. In other words, I was dressed like a fat person. We make the mistake of thinking those layers of clothing are serving to hide us.

A kind of protection. Instead they only serve to make us look even bigger. Or, in this case, to make me seem like an a.s.shole.

I wanted to explain everything to her. I'm going through a big transition. But I couldn't bring myself to tell her. No matter how I phrased it in my head, it always sounded like a bad pun, a sad joke. Finally, I slid my coat off, but the gesture must've seemed like pity. I popped mine off and she pulled on hers. We ate the rest of our meal quickly. I took her home on the F train, but when we reached her station she said I didn't have to walk her home.

All this changed after I dated the woman with the violent boyfriend. We became friends first. We worked in the same s.p.a.ce and at lunchtime we sometimes ate together and talked. We were attracted to each other, but did nothing about it for months. She continued to date the aforementioned bruiser and I was busy trying to live like a normal-sized man, meaning I stayed off the phone lines, I ate sensible meals, I exercised regularly, and I told no one that I'd ever been fat. The last seemed particularly important. If enough other people believed it, I hoped that I'd come to believe it too. If they treated me like a guy who'd never knocked out a dozen Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnuts in one sitting, then I'd forget I ever had. I needed the outside world to convince me because I still couldn't quite believe the transformation had been real.

So all of the fall of 1998, I'm flirting with this woman but keeping a respectful distance. Getting closer and then pulling away. And she was doing the same. This slow build felt exciting and frustrating. But each time I saw her again my feelings seemed even stronger. And that was a shock too. Feelings. Not to be too self-pitying (or self-aggrandizing), but I hadn't really cared about a woman outside my family since Margie and I hung up our phones in 1995.

Christmas 1998. A little bit of partying. A lot of alcohol. I remember the first time she put her arms around me, outside a bar. I held my breath as she clasped her hands around my waist; then she rested her head against my chest.

And finally the two of us are stumbling back to her building. We climb the stairs to her apartment. Open the front door, listen for her roommate, and when it seems we're alone we fall across her living room couch. I'm on my back and she's on top of me. She undoes my jeans and slides them down and lifts her skirt. She climbs back on top of me.

And as much as I'm enjoying myself, as I antic.i.p.ate the next step with three years' worth of pent-up glee, I'm also not really there. As soon as my pants slide down to my knees and my s.h.i.+rt rides up above my belly I feel myself wince, as if preparing for an explosion. And I realize I've been thinking of my clothes as if they were the casing around a live bomb.

Have you ever had out-of-body s.e.x? It's not the same as that tantric business. As soon as my skin touched open air my mind drifted away. I watched myself and this woman having some wonderfully energetic s.e.x. I even felt proud of the guy down there because he seemed so free. He was laughing and gripping her hips, but I was floating up by the ceiling. That body and the person inside it weren't connected to each other. While the body worked up a sweat, I remained cool on the outside, keeping watch; I felt sure that if this woman saw me at the wrong angle, or in the wrong light, her l.u.s.t would suddenly fold up and be packed away.

Then she reached down and touched my stomach; I'd lost a lot of weight but the skin there was a little loose, and there were faint stretch marks along the bottom that looked like dried-out riverbeds. She put her hand on my stomach and I sucked my belly in. Understand, I didn't even have that belly anymore, but that didn't make the belly any less real to me.

Her hand stayed there on my stomach and I waited to hear her say, ”Stop.” Or, ”Get off me.” Or a groan of disgust.

But instead she did the most perfect thing. For which I remain grateful.

She lifted her hand and then brought it back down hard. She smacked me.

But not out of revulsion; not to punish me.

She looked down at me and gritted her teeth.

”Harder.” is the only thing she said.

Later that night the violent boyfriend showed up. We were in her bedroom by now, zonked out from s.e.x and bourbon, when the sound of the building's buzzer woke us up. In my tired mind it was the sound of a wasp, a swarm of wasps, and I woke up swatting at the air. Finally I realized someone was downstairs, in the lobby, trying to get in.

”It's him,” she said quietly.

”How do you know it's not your roommate?”

”My roommate doesn't ring the bell. My roommate has the keys.”

Now we both sat up and listened as the buzzing continued. I'd met the boyfriend before, when he'd visited her at work. Not intimidating. The guy reminded me of Jean-Paul Sartre, actually, owlish like that. After he'd left she'd told me about how violent he could get and I thought she was making a confession about her own abuse. But it wasn't like that. He'd never swung on her. Or even used a cross word. But she swore she'd watched him chop down guys the size of redwood trees. You can't always guess that kind of thing, just from looking.

I slid out of bed and said, ”I'll go talk to him.”

But she frowned. ”You really don't want to do that.”

I thought of her stories about him. I was much smaller than a redwood now.

I slid back next to her and we lay there as he continued zapping the buzzer. We wondered if her roommate would show up and let him in. Caught sleeping in bed with another man's woman: that's a sure-fire way to get your a.s.s snuffed. She fell asleep long before I did. I spent hours lying there, alert.

By dawn I still hadn't gone to sleep, but I had stopped worrying over the violent boyfriend long ago. I lifted my hand until it was bathed in the morning light coming through the thin curtains. I still couldn't believe what I saw. My new hand, slim enough to show the wrist bones; the knuckles no longer lost in flesh. But this hand hadn't replaced the old one; instead it was like this hand had grown around the fatter one somehow. Both were there, but only one could be seen.

What Killed Aiyana Stanley-Jones?.

Charlie LeDuff.