It was an excrutiating session. Just prayers and speaking in tongues and everyone laying hands on me. My stomach growled. No one remarked.

Afterwards, we all took out Pastor Glenn for pizza.It was surreal. Having talked about my weight and then gorging on pizza. I guess this was part of the treatment.

I realized a couple of things during this:

1. Don’t fight your family on this. You are turning 18 next year and leaving home, hopefully for college. Just wait it out.
2. I’m not skinny. I’m just not as fat as I used to be. Am I anorexic? Or just a big fat worry to my mother and sister?

There was no such thing as anorexic rehab back in my day, in my home town. Thank God.

So when my mother became concerned,  downright enraged at my weight, she had to take matters in her own hand. With my older sister’s help, I was hitched to her little orange Chevette and  driven to a Pentacostal church a few miles outside of town. Pastor Glenn was good at these sorts of things.  Eating disorders, boys who could not stop masturbating, homosexuals; noncompliant teenagers. I happened to be all those things.

I had a crush on him. Who wouldn’t? He was tall white, with a reddish-blond beared and he’d gone to college. I knew I’d be humiliated seeing him, with all these problems–even though my mother would only tell I had the one.

His answer of course, was the one he’d given her so many times. “He needs to spend time with members of the opposite sex.” Which of course, being a Hispanic mother with great fluency in the English language, but lacking its subtleties said “But he is with those members. Me and his sister.”

“He means I need to go out on a date,” I told her. We were all sitting in a pew. Lined up, like specimens. I was trying not to be a specimen. That actually is the most humiliating part about this intervention: trying to be something your not. Perpetrating, it used to call it, at least by some rap songs of the time.

“But he’s lost so much weight,” my mother intoned behind a new ball of tissues, blowign her nose. This made me look away and roll my eyes.

“He looks fine to me,” Pastor Glenn said.

My eyes rolled back, to him, to his small smile.

Heart poundingly good hugs abound. Has it been awhile since a strong man has hugged you? Inhale and think of all the times you’ve wanted affection. when you finally get your arms around them, you aren’t exactly looking at them, are you? You are over their shoulder or in their shoulder. Air or skin or clothing.

Your jaw tickles, you want to sneeze, but you don’t because underneath that is all the heart really wants. Touch. Amen, you, touch. God bless flesh and bone.

Jouncing along afterwards, you enter the grocery store and think of all the questions you are going to ask your husband, to cover up the fact that you hugged another man.

But the best way to end the guilt is just to hug your husband. For longer than a few seconds. And just things happen from there.

Tickling sensation. It wakes me, draws me up and out of bed. My bedroom window is open. Cool air spills in like heavy syrup. It is fall. ‘Bout time baby, I say to myself as wobbled in my morningness, toward the kitchen for coffee.

The coffee cannot compete with air. I shove in gulps of autumn air, make imaginary plans, plans to reconnect with old boyfriends, one by one and revisit those first fluttery moments of hardnosed, deep, muscular, sweat sex.

And so the softness of waking is now replaced by coffee breath and horniness.

My perfect autumn awaits.

Scenic breath-taking garbage. Bits and bobs swirl before me as I decide to answer my boss’s perennial morning question: How are  you doing?

There’s a flutter in my stomach. I’m about to  jump  out somewhere, from the trash of niceties and into something unknown. If I can just wait long enough, look down long enough, I’d maybe be presented with the slightest slice of solidity to hop on. But hope can be a whoopee cushion, a humiliating noise that comes from your own mouth–a chuckle, as I answer my boss’s most innocuous daily salutation.

My answer to her question: I am wanting so much.

I get a laugh. Yeah, she says, chuckling. Me too.

She has no idea for me or I for her, for those responses. We are, for the moment, I feel, equals.

You can no longer tell if your thinking your own thoughts or everyone else’s. Anything original feels like bread without butter.

The most saucy thing you think of are insults: And mild ones at that. Wonder Bread, McDonald’s, Doritoes. And these are said to the people in the book club who refuse to roundrobin.

And you’re the only one who is reprimanded for: bringing brownies that end up getting smeared on the nice hardwood floors and for being Doritoes.  But most importantly for not taking your shoes off as you entered.

But the worst is you didn’t put your can of Cocal Cola on a coastah. Everyone else is drinking Chardonnay.

And don’t forget you were the one who suggested the book.

The book is called “I Don’t Give a Rat’s Ass.” Which oddly enough about a rat’s ass who someone actually cares about. You make stupid remarks. You like the prose until someone said the prose was purple. You yell back: Your nose is red!

You are banned from the book club. But not banned from books. There is a difference; at least last time you checked.

The woman who works at Starbucks says “Hello, my love,” to all her customers. I thought it was just me. This particular morning I am wanting everyone, including her.

1. The business man with the bulbous butt who is holding onto the same train rail as me.
2. The construction worker who keep shifting his Husky toolbag from one hand to another. Only after tailing him (he’s walking in the same direction as I am, to work) do I notice he’s wearing a wedding ring. Why does it never occur to me to check  before going through all that fantasizing.
3. I want to shake things up. But there are so many things that do not need to be shaken, just yet: my job, my spouse, my path to work. So what can I shake up?
4. What could I really and truly shake up?

Binda, I went to Beacon!

Remember Beacon, our first hike in New York? I hadn’t expected it to wear me out but it did. My calves are still sore. And I still find myself annoyed by certain things:

1. Point out that there are no trail blazes with that look on their face that says “I did everything I could to find it and I’m my word is bond.” All of this coming from a 20 year old who wears shorts and knows it All.
2. People carrying those large sticks. I understand their importance. But still.
3. Getting to the fire tower only to find the visibibility is zero given the fog up at the top. But this part I actually like. It felt like I was in a cloud. Heaven.
4. You weren’t there. I climbed with my spounse. But I wish you’d been there.

You run into a woman who you think lives at this store. She’s always going through things and seems to be having a good time doing it.  She hums. She’s pudgy.  You like her a lot.

You both end up in petfood aisle. She has a cat. So do you. You talk about how picky eaters your cats are. There’s not stopping them, you both agree, and laugh.

You want to get to know her more. She mentions a daughter named Kaley. She has a real life, this happy woman.

You don’t want to ruin it by entering it. I do that sometimes. I come in and mess things up. Not on purpose. But sometimes.

I did just now, at Birch cafe. I said my name was Chad when the baristat asked. This time he gave me a double take. I’ll admit: I don’t look like a Chad.

But I sure did feel like one, when he called me that. Twice.