The Fast Track to Obesity and Perdition

by Sara Blaisdell

Charlie walks in and waves his Radiation Triangle. I guess that means we’re going to watch a movie or go for a drive. All the EMF waves deplete his strength, and this silver boomerang is supposed deflect them.

“We’re getting the hell out of here,” he says. “I’ve got some organic apples and Symphony bars.” He wears an oversized Volcom hoodie to hide his fatless bones, which are already obvious in his hollow cheeks. Like me, he is torn between chocolate and wheat-grass shakes, neither of which seems to be improving our physical or mental health.

We drive off in the snow sludge, ending up at the old folks’ home where Juanita awaits. I worked in her garden a few years ago, before she fell and gave up her house. She’s not as splotched and purplish as most of the residents. She likes neon-orange floral-print dresses and pink stockings around her swollen calves. I pick up a picture from the tray stacked with used Kleenex and Metamucil.

“I don’t want to look,” Juanita says, and really, when I think about it, neither do I, although I’m not certain she even meant the picture. It’s of her daughter, the one she demands things from when delirious. She’ll ask for a ride home, a glass of TANG, a slathering of BENGAY. The attendants answer to the name Wiona when necessary—I do, and so does Charlie. They paint her nails and curl her few wisps of frizz.

Sometimes Juanita will say in passing, “I would like to die,” and Charlie will answer, “Well, at least you’ve got your looks.” I sit there silently and notice the food she turns down. Charlie is just as sickly skinny, and has wild ideas of remedy. He’s really into seeing homeopathic doctors, having his colon vacuumed, and blaming the world’s problems on white flour until somebody shuts him up.


When we get back to my apartment, Kristy has to move the coffee table out of the way to let us in. She’s setting up a one-man tent on the carpet, “practicing for the camping trip.” She does it all: woodturning, welding, tobogganing at her parents’ cabin in Montana. It fills Charlie with rage the way she fries potatoes and welcomes each new day. As we come in, he is out of breath because the radiation has penetrated his shield. He wants water, expensive water. I hand him a Wal-Mart bottled, the best we’ve got.

We turn off the lights and open the windows to produce a nature feel. The tent fits all five of us if you stack, and Charlie enjoys being surrounded by as many women as possible. He would never try anything, though. Maybe he doesn’t have the energy. Maybe it’s just the unsatisfactory selection. Regardless, he likes to have women around, preferably next to him and scantily clad.

There is something like a DVD case boring into my spine every time someone coughs or twitches. Extra Symphony bar rectangles are distributed, and the epic statements begin. They always have a similar ring.

“Life is a race against suicide,” says Charlie.

“Yeah,” Laura says. “I have four classes of papers to grade this week.” She’s a teaching assistant for undergraduate philosophy ethics and values, both of which her students appear already to have figured out. We live in Utah, a place where what’s best for everyone has been agreed upon by majority vote.

Holly’s grievance for the night is similar to mine, but less true. She says her stomach bulges, especially when she’s sitting down. She’s getting married soon and knows Jeff will be disgusted when he sees her naked. She’s a Mormon and they haven’t had official sex yet.

“I know he’ll regret marrying me,” she says. She is five foot two, and the whole of her probably weighs about as much as my left leg. Plus, she’s beautiful. Only foolish men would think twice before selling their souls and most of their favorite video games to sleep with her.

“What about you?” Kristy asks. “You’re quiet.”

“Yeah, let’s get some input from the mute in the corner,” Charlie says, kicking me. He keeps his foot on my leg.

“Get your foot off my leg, please,” is what I say, and everyone says, “Good plan,” like I’ve really hit on something.

When everyone in the tent’s falling asleep, I step over the bodies to my room. Maybe tonight it is on account of my bad haircut, a love issue, or an unnamed religious conspiracy. Jealousy because Juanita is dying and I’m not. In practical terms, it all circles back to the haircut. I regret this haircut more than most of my sins.

Charlie comes in, towers over me like a father whose kid’s playing sick. “Let’s pull it together here. You’re a pretty girl.”

“You know you don’t have to say that.”

“You know I wouldn’t hang out with you otherwise.” He sits at the edge of the bed, psychoanalyst or mother pose. He always faces people head-on, because he thinks his profile is hideous and doesn’t like them looking at him from the side.

“Juanita called last night because she thought she was going to die,” I say. “She was all excited about it.”

“That woman is never going to die.” He says this like it’s the saddest thing in the world.

“She’s jinxing herself for wanting it so much. She’ll live to a hundred.”

She can’t get death off her mind. She says things like, “Let’s go, Dr. God, close the deal.”

Even on her bad days, she knows what’s going on. She tells Charlie his radiation triangle is B.S., and tells me cutting my hair was a lousy move. She knows her daughter is busy and not coming.

“And what about our little pity-group?” I ask. “Are we going to make it?” I won’t tell him I think a lot about striking off on a ship, out of this town where everyone has the answers, out of this little life. But what are the odds of arriving safely in heaven, considering God’s moods?

“I’ve thought about it,” he says. “Laura and Holly are going to make it in this life, but only short-term. You’re not going to make it short-term, but long-term you’ll pull through. As for Kristy and Mark, I’m still debating whether they stand a chance, period.”

“Why am I going to make it long-term, but they’re not?”

“Mark’s not going to make it,” Charlie says. “He’s on the edge of something. I’ve read his diary.”

“And Kristy?”

“Have you seen the way she eats? Kraft dinners and ketchup chips.”

She’s from Canada. “You’re not giving her enough credit.”

“You’ll see. Give it some time.”

He gets up and I walk him to the door. “How can you even joke about it?” I ask. “With a haircut like this, there is no way I’m making it in this life.”

“It’ll grow,” he says, because he can’t lie. He doesn’t have it in him to say he loves my haircut, or that he’s sure I’ll make it in this life, because most of the time I know he doesn’t think I will. To prove it, I’m almost asleep a while later when he calls; he calls to borrow tinfoil and adds, “Don’t kill yourself.”

“Why would I?”

“Well, I’m just saying it would only make things worse for everybody. It’s useless to resist, or to commit suicide.” He’s quoting his favorite poem by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, referencing it like the Lord’s Prayer. He’s got a copy pinned up in his bathroom. We’ve both got it pretty well memorized.

“I won’t kill myself. Don’t kill yourself, either.”

“That’d be a sin.”

Sara Blaisdell has just returned home to Hillsboro, OR, after a stint as an undergraduate at Brigham Young University in Provo, UT. This is her first memoir in print. E-mail: sblaisdell@admissionstatements.com