Tom McAllister
My mom would eventually tell me about sitting outside the bathroom door listening for the sound of vomiting. I lost fifty pounds during sophomore year and she was convinced I was bulimic. This was the first time in my life that I had exercised seriously. I had been cut from the JV soccer team, but the coach asked me to stay on as the manager, which meant I got to do all the running and practicing without actually getting to play in the games. I had never liked my body before, and I have rarely liked it since, but suddenly it could do things I never thought possible. I was in better shape than everyone on the team. I once ran two miles in 10:20, and that was after a two-hour practice. Even still, there was no thing that filled me with more dread than running, and for years the smell of freshly cut grass would make me vaguely nauseous. I was having no fun playing soccer, but I got to throw out my size-40 pants. I got to take my shirt off on the beach. I got to see myself in the mirror and think: Someone could like this. This could be okay.
Every day I logged on to AOL and typed Keyword: Acne, hoping for a new magic solution. I had already tried seventeen treatments, a mix of prescription antibiotics, over-the-counter stuff, and home remedies. One face wash was so harsh that over time most of my shirts would be pocked with bleach spots around the collars. The dermatologist wanted to prescribe Accutane, a miracle drug that was accompanied by a vast list of severe side effects, including suicidal depression. I told the doctor I was afraid of what I would do to myself. I was sad then and sometimes thought it would be glamorous to be sadder than I was. I had recently told my school counselor I’d experienced suicidal thoughts, but that wasn’t true; I’d just considered the possibility of having suicidal thoughts. Faced with the potential of chemically hurling myself into the abyss, I stepped back. I didn’t want to risk my life over vanity, I said. My mom said I’d made a mature choice, but most days I regretted it, and kept doing the math, trying to calculate precisely how depressed I was willing to feel in exchange for a normal face.
I flew to Atlanta with my parents for a family wedding. I wasn’t invited but they didn’t want to leave me home alone. We went to the Coca-Cola factory and the zoo and the Underground and I don’t remember what else. The night of the wedding, I sat in the hotel room by myself watching Good Will Hunting on pay-per-view. I ordered a large Domino’s pizza and bought a six-pack of Yoo-Hoo bottles and consumed all of it, thinking: This is what it means to be an adult. Nobody can stop you. In the future you can go wherever you want and if you want pizza then you just get pizza. I still get excited to check in to a hotel room, some lingering memory of this night when I felt oddly free. At that age, with vague aspirations of one day being a writer, the movie itself struck me as important. The story of two pals from Boston writing a movie together launched me into daydreams of doing the same with my friends. A lot of things suddenly seemed possible that did not seem possible before.
Driving courses at AAA required thirty classroom hours, during which we spent a quarter of our time watching videos about how dangerous trucks are, including a rap video about the importance of avoiding the “no zones;” during which I sat next to a guy with a developmental disability, who was mocked relentlessly by two guys I was sure were the cool kids from their high school; during which I noticed the cool guys had begun sitting on either side of me so they could copy my answers on the tests, and I started intentionally writing wrong answers so they would get poor grades, my own sad vigilante justice; during which I met Diane, who would one day take me to her senior prom, and who would eventually become one of the very few people from this time in my life I still consider a friend; during which we milled around outside on our lunch break and saw a desperate man sprint past us and disappear into the thin line of trees at the edge of the parking lot, followed seconds later by three police officers shouting at us to get back inside, an incident that was never explained; during which, forced to take my ten hours of on-road instruction, I drove fifteen miles per hour along the shoulder of Germantown Pike until the instructor took over for me; during which I had to admit to my dad that I was sure I would die the first time I drove alone, and, instead of being disappointed in me, he told me it’s okay to be afraid but we can’t let fear dictate all of our choices; during which all I could see were worst-case scenarios no matter what else was happening, visions of trucks decapitating me or overturning and crushing me or even exploding while I tried to pass, in a rush to get to nowhere specific.
I was standing outside with Joe, a neighbor a year younger than me, who had grown up in the kind of home where they have to open the windows periodically to let all the screams out. I was on scholarship at a suburban prep school and he was failing out of the school up the road that was then on Philly’s list of “chronically dangerous” high schools. His future was bad and mine was not, and our future selves stood there between us, hating each other. Maybe that’s why, as I strolled a few feet away from him, he picked up a palm-sized rock and threw it directly at the side of my head. After it hit me, I charged and punched him twice, before an adult leaned out a window to yell at us. I walked back toward my house and he followed, taunting me. “Look at this bitch,” he said. “Gets mad when you throw rocks at him. Like a bitch.” Who wouldn’t get mad about someone throwing rocks at them? How was that even an insult?
On Christmas Eve, I was in my Aunt Judy’s kitchen waving a towel to waft smoke out the window as they fried up another batch of pierogis (the smoke is normal, the sizzling of several pounds of butter is normal). The door opened and my Aunt Diane and her husband Lance entered, followed by their son, Lance. Young Lance was in his mid-twenties and weighed over 500 pounds. He tripped through the doorway and fell into the room. The impact of a man his size rattled the dishes on the table. He was helpless and embarrassed; my brother and dad rushed to help him up. Witnessing one of the worst moments of Lance’s life, I was too afraid to join them, and wished I could disappear. He was a jovial and gregarious guy, and when they got him to his feet, he made a joke and people started talking again, but I never forgot the image of him, half inside and half out, his shirt having ridden up, his body so large and so damaged. He would be dead within a year. That night, I ate and I ate and I ate. I made sure my mouth was always full, focused exclusively on chewing, swallowing, digesting.
One of the few rituals we maintain in our family is the Polish tradition of the oplatek—just before Christmas Eve dinner, my mom distributes graham cracker-sized wafers embossed with Christian imagery, flavorless and a little stale. Everyone gets their own and has to work the room snapping a piece off of the others’ oplatek, and wishing them health, wealth, and happiness. By the end, you have eaten chunks of everyone else’s wafers and have given away all of yours, sharing a moment of communal goodwill before the main course. When I was sixteen, I misunderstood the purpose of the ritual, and I thought these three resources—health, wealth, happiness—were finite, so that if I had all three, then Lance could have none, and if I wished them too sincerely for someone else, I would lose them all. None of it is permanent, and the whole point is that you should do whatever you can to share it with others. When you’re young you want wealth and when you’re old you want health and in the middle you convince yourself that what you deserve is happiness, even if it’s not what you have. You just have to figure out how to make it all work in the meantime.