Obesity and love part 2
My lover´s belly was distended; her thighs were thick. Around her face, she had a double, perhaps a triple, chin. In the past, I´d had lovers who, like most people, disliked their bodies. It had been one of my talents as a lover to change those feelings. I´d praised their bodies, loving them with words as well as touch. Now I wanted to do the same thing for my fat lover. Yet I could not tell her she was beautiful. "I love your body," I told her instead as I kissed her, licking and stroking her flesh. "I love your body," I repeated like a mantra, to ward away the persistent, ugly remnants of my disgust. Later, as she gained more weight, my lover began to worry that there was a limit to how much fat I could love, or perhaps how much fat I could overlook. "It´s your essence I´m attracted to," I assured her. "No amount of weight you could gain or lose would change my feelings for you." And somewhere along the way, the judging portion of my brain grew thinner and thinner until, like a fingernail sliver of the moon, it almost disappeared. "You´re beautiful," I told my lover then, because it was true. Later, as my lover´s kidneys failed, I came to love her body in still other ways. Now that it had become a battleground, a locus of pain and discomfort rather than pleasure, I loved it in defiance, as if my passion could banish its ills. I loved it perhaps in the same way that some women love "unavailable" men, because I could not reach it, even as I lay naked beside it. After the kidney transplant that saved her life, my lover gained another 50 pounds. She´d gone months with no appetite, weeks with nausea that forced her to live on just bread and applesauce, so it was a joy when food tasted good to her again. Besides, she was now taking prednisone, a steroid drug that made her constantly hungry and changed the way her body metabolized food. It is also true that my lover is, in her own words, "addicted to food." She sometimes eats when she is not hungry. She has ignored her hunger so often - because she wad dieting, or eating to fill other needs - she no longer knows what it is to feel full. These things are true of many thin women as well. From time to time, my lover declares she wants to lose weight. I want to help her, I tell myself, so I start making her salads for lunch and cooking fat-free vegetable soups. And I catch myself beginning to watch what she eats. I feel the judgment growing in me again. So I pay heed when my lover tells me that I am the first person who has ever loved her at her weight, not in spite of it. She tells me this over the breakfast I´ve made: a crustless quiche with potatoes, apples, red onion, and smoked mozzarella. cooking has always been a way I nurture myself and the people I love. I remember watching my sister refuse to eat. I think of the months when my brave and beautiful lover´s kidneys made eating impossible. So tonight, I think, I´ll cook us a meal to celebrate our appetites at their most joyous and untamable: maybe a garlicky Puerto Rican ´asopao´, fresh baked corn muffins, and a salad of greens, pecans, feta cheese, and pears. >From The Sun (Nov. 1997)