Giant burgers, dripping with cheese, grease running down my arm. Deep-fried fish and chips, soaked with malt vinegar, the ideal delivery mechanism for creamy tartar sauce. Pasta, authentic or otherwise, preferably coated in fat and garnished with pungent parmesan. Still-warm fresh bread glistening with butter and honey, sprinkled with flaky salt. Pizza, every kind: floppy New Yorks and Chicago casseroles and California thin crusts and midwestern squares with cured pork toppings and healthy mozzarella pulls.
If she wasn’t already dead, along with the rest of my family, I’d trade my grandma for any of the above.
It’s called food noise, this obsession, this yearning for my next meal even while still eating. Oprah says she has it too, but there’s a cure, a shot, a lifeline.
So, I get a grown-up job answering phones at construction company and I wait through my probationary period or my benefits to kick in.
The crew brings back confections, and I chew a whole pack of Trident Tropical Twist before I give up and slice myself half a cake donut.
I go back half an hour later to get the other half, feeling half-human, and shove it into my mouth in one bite. As I chew, my hand hovers over a thick cruller, yearning to take it too. I tell myself no, I tell myself don’t.
So, I don’t.
But then, steps from the break room’s doorway, I turn back and snatch up a slutty little Boston cream. I scurry back to my office, eyes averted, chocolate-adorned custard-filled shame tucked at my side and away from my coworker’s judgement.
At my desk, while I eat, I open Facebook in an incognito tab and search for a weight loss medication group to pre-plan for the day I can get my prescription. The mods accept me quickly and posts flood my timeline proclaiming incredible results. Interspersed, desperate-sounding questions about struggling with side effects: nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, fatigue. Some saying they want to quit because of them even though it works to make the pounds drop.
A dollop of cream drips from my pastry onto my keyboard.
Whiners.
I would give anything to be in their position. Anything.
Patience is not my strong suit, but somehow, I make it through eighty of my ninety days and receive the insurance paperwork, which I fill out same day. On my lunch break, which I planned to eat only carrots and lite ranch on, I make an appointment with my general practitioner, or at least the one I last saw, five years ago, when I was on my parent’s insurance. After, to reward myself for taking this step towards health, I run the car I inherited from my dad through the McDonald’s drive-thru, but I don’t get fries so it’s okay.
My appointment is on the same day my insurance starts. “So can I get Ozempic?” I ask my gatekeeper. “Mounjaro? Wegovy? Zepbound? Heck, I’ll even take Saxenda.”
“You’re not that overweight,” he tells me. “No diabetes, your blood pressure is still good, you’re young. I can refer you to a nutritionist? Would you like some Paxil?”
I tell him I’ve gained sixty pounds in the last year, since I lost my family, eyes misty.
“There is a shortage, so you may not be able to fill it, but I will send it over.” He relents, the gate swings open.
On the way to the pharmacy, I cry in my car, relief washing over me.
The pharmacy is swamped, and I have to wait in line so long I have time to post on the support group: “Waiting for my first box right now! Ahhh! Any tips for starting?”
When it’s my turn, I smile brightly at the pharmacist assistant, give her my name, and say, “My doctor sent over a prescription for me.”
The corner of her mouth twitches. “Sorry, ma’am, we haven’t been able to order that in weeks.”
“What? Well, can I get it at a different Rite Aid?”
“Sorry, ma’am, no Rite Aid will have it. I’d be surprised if CVS or Walgreens has it, but you can call them to ask.” With that, she shifts her focus to the person behind me, an implicit sign that our conversation is over.
“No, but…” I don’t even know how to end the sentence, so I leave.
Donuts are waiting for me at the office, and I eat two without pausing, chewing only as long as I need to not choke.
I call Rite Aid every day for a week, but they still tell me there’s no ETA, and the posts in the support group about how no one else can find it either have my hope at its lowest yet.
My stomach yearns to be stuffed with abandon. My favorite buffet in the area closed because of COVID, so that’s out, and it’s for the best, because there’s something inherently awkward about being seated alone at a buffet as a fat person. I also don’t feel up for looking a DoorDash driver in the eye, so I’m limited to what’s stuffed inside my parents’ cabinets and fridge.
And I inhale it all, as necessary as air. I pull it all into me until I feel like I’m going to burst at the seams and leak everywhere, Chunky soups and saltine crackers and a whole jar of peanut butter and some old mozzarella sticks white with freezer burn and four eggs and some slices of cheddar and olives stuffed with garlic and Pizza Rolls and Pop-Tarts and White Castle cheeseburger sliders and hash browns fried in butter and some turkey that smells like it’s gone bad but I don’t care anymore, I don’t care, I don’t care and I throw it all up all over myself, spew it all over the bathroom, until it’s all gone and only bitter yellow bile remains and I keep telling myself that I don’t care.
My phone buzzes with a message and I wipe the vomit off my screen to read it.
DRUG NOT COVERED Rite Aid: Your Rx beginning with OZ is not covered by insurance. Please call (503) 555-2312 with new insurance info. Txt STOP to stop.
I tap on the phone number to call it and suffer through their endless greeting, and I press the appropriate menu option, and it rings, and it rings, and it comes on and tells me I can get a flu shot and then it rings some more.
Finally, I’m greeted, “Rite Aid Pharmacy.”
“Hi?” I croak, throat burning. “I just got a message saying my prescription isn’t covered, can you check and make sure that’s true?”
But, of course, it is. She tells me about calling my insurance, she tells me about prior authorization requests, and she is very kind, but I barely hear her. What it sounds like to me is, “You’re fucked.”
I’m not sure if I say anything before I end the call and slump against the shower, deflated.
I didn’t ask to pay for it out of pocket, because everyone knows what this shit costs and I don’t have that kind of money. The construction company pays me barely above poverty. If I didn’t have my parents’ house to live in, I’d be homeless. Oprah doesn’t need to worry about that.
On the support group, I post. I tell them I’ve reached rock bottom. I tell them goodbye. There’s no point in continuing. I’m done.
I get a reply, almost immediately. “Don’t give up, message me.”
Because I’m not stupid, I do a little investigation first. The person who posted, supposedly with the name Willow Wizard but no photo, has made similar comments to other users who have been desperate, and those people seem to have good results. They don’t specify in their posts, but if you read between the lines: they got a comment from the Wizard then a week later were back on track and asking for meal ideas for when they just can’t be bothered to eat at all.
Hope blooms in my chest.
I send them a message just saying, “Hi!” and watch it turn to “read” seconds later.
Then, obviously a copy/paste, they send back:
I’ve got SHOTS 4 CHEAP real not sodium peptides, 100% PURE semiglutide. Going FAST only $200 per box.
I’m pretty sure it’s semaglutide but if I correct them there’s a risk that I’ll piss them off and they won’t give it to me. So, I reply, “Four shots per box right? Do you take PayPal?”
**
The box arrives a few days later with a little ice pack and instructions inside. The shots themselves are different than what I’ve seen online. Eli Lilly’s offerings, Mounjaro and Zepbound, come in separate doses in disposable pens, and Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy come in a combo pen with all the doses in one. The compounds usually come in medicine vials that need to be syringed out, so that was what I was expecting.
What I have before me are four individual pens labeled “Superpowered Semiglutide 1mg WOW.” Instead of mostly white or powder blue, they are metallic purple with a holographic shimmer on the words. They look more official than the compound vials I see online, with their locking mechanism like on the Lilly pens, if only everything were spelled right.
Fuck it, what do I have to lose? Except all my fat, of course.
I uncap one of the pens right then and rest the needle end against my stomach where I have the most excess fat, right below my belly button. A deep breath and I press the injector button, but it doesn’t go and I realize I’d forgotten to unlock it. Finally, after twisting the lock, the button goes. It doesn’t hurt, but the medicine slides under my skin like ice water. I’ve learned from others’ mistakes online, and I don’t pull it away just because I feel it. I hold it down and I count to ten and I listen for the second click.
It never comes. Finally, after counting to twenty, then thirty, I let go and pull it away. A dot of blood mixed with clear liquid beads up at the injection site, so I wipe it up and bring it to my tongue. It tastes like blood, yes, but also like cotton candy but I find, miraculously, it doesn’t make me want cotton candy. In fact, my stomach clenches up at the very thought of sugar. Is it really this simple?
The rest of my evening I spend roaming the halls of my parent’s house, not eating. Not eating as an event, not eating as a prayer.
When I reach my parents’ room I tell them, “I’m going to be so much better now.”
They don’t respond.
The sensation of coldness slowly spreads out through my body from the puncture, until it reaches the crown of my head and the tip of my toes. In the living room, I stretch out on the couch and I stare at the ceiling and imagine myself small, smaller, smallest.
At some point, I fall asleep because in the night, I wake with shivers wracking my body, pinned to the furniture. I grab my phone to access the group but my fingers tremble too much to successfully satisfy the request for passcode.
iPhone Unavailable, try again in 1 minute.
I wonder if it’s psychosomatic, my body manifesting implanted fears for funsies, but I can’t think it away: my teeth chatter, my legs are useless jelly. Nothing stops the shaking until I shove my hand in my mouth. Maybe it’s the pain, I don’t know, but everything stills as I sink my teeth into the salty skin on my palm and calm settles over me. Finally, somehow, I sleep again.
When I next open my eyes, I’m not moving, but the world seems like it is. Nausea prickles at me and makes my mouth salivate. The spit enables me to dislodge my hand.
Or what is left of it.
It looks like hamburger now, but not charbroiled, not dripping with grease, raw and ground up and rotting, already.
The floral sofa has deep red splotches covering the older brown splotches, and I add more as my stomach turns inside out and blood and stomach acid splatters all over the upholstery. My digestive system continues its spasms and the world spins on. When I’m finally empty-empty, I stumble to the kitchen because I need water, I need fluids. If you don’t get enough water with this stuff, your kidneys shut down and I just started, I can’t risk having to quit already.
I hold my mouth under the spigot and gulp over and over and over until the bitter-metallic flavor fades. I wrap my hand with paper towels while not looking at it, because I can’t, I just can’t, my brain bounces off it if I try. Then I get ready for work. Nothing that requires manipulating buttons of course, nothing with a zipper. Maybe I’m imagining it, but the stretchy waistband of my skirt feels much larger than it used to.
Could it already be working?
The drive to the office is awkward with my injured hand, but I make it. The break room with the doughnuts does not tempt me. In fact, I am disgusted by my coworkers milling around them like animals at the feeding trough. As I rush past, I keep my hand tucked at my side, away from my coworker’s judgement.
I don’t eat lunch.
I don’t eat for three days.
The void inside of me gradually fills in with apathy and I lose the ability to want. My injured hand makes most activities, including eating, difficult, so it’s fortuitous that I simply don’t need to. Instead of meals, I fill my days with work and imagined conversations with my family and television.
Michelle learns to tie her shoes on Full House, and a sheet of ice melts over me, then another drips down my spine. My core feels frozen, yet parts of me burn. My intact hand bounces against my blazing cheek, the muscles revolting. My whole body trembles. My heart races. Panic. Death.
Mommy, I’m sorry.
No.
I can’t die yet.
The house blurs around me as I lurch through the rooms, up the stairs.
Because, see, there’s no food left.
And I need sugar.
Every molecule of my body screams in emergency.
I just need to find some candy.
Through the hallway, third door on the right, my grandmother’s room, grandma still tucked in bed, peaceful once, but now crawling with flies.
Grammy, I’m sorry.
Flashes in my head of the alarm going off as I walked into the house, back from another trip to the store, this time for ice cream I didn’t need, never needed. I found the source, the stove had been bumped and the gasses had built up, and, holding my breath, I turned it off. I ran through the house opening all the windows, running from room to room. But no open windows could save them by then.
On Grammy’s bedside table, the same crystal candy dish every senior owns, filled with Werther’s Originals hard candies. With jerky movements and one hand, I fumble with the wrappers but manage to shove three into my mouth. I flip them around with my tongue and they clink against my teeth. Dissolve faster, enter my bloodstream, I beg of them.
They oblige. Life seeps back into me and my body stills.
I close my eyes, wishing for relief, but the sounds of my grandmother’s ecosystem needle at my shoulders, anxiety replacing low sugar.
I grab a handful of confections just in case on my way out of the room.
The candy’s familiar creamy taste coats my tongue, the same as always, but the charm is depleted.
Inside the upstairs bathroom, desperately needing good news, I step on the scale to see if I’m imagining my progress. The 0.0 blinks a few times as it registers me step on, but then it settles at 0.0. So I step off, then back on, and again, it flashes 0.0 before sticking to it. Stupid thing must be broken.
At the office in the morning, the automatic door does not slide open when I stand in front of it. It’s not until a coworker comes behind me that I can enter the building. “Thanks, I don’t know what’s wrong with it,” I say, but he doesn’t acknowledge me at all.
Then, when I place my fingerprint on the reader to open my computer, nothing happens, and I have to type in my full password to get in, but it doesn’t accept that either.
My heart rattles in my chest, my cheeks burn, but the persistent chill still hangs over me.
By the time the police come, I’m in full-on panic. I run my hands through my hair, along the strands, an old soothing habit, but clumps come away, chunks of hair, bits of scalp still attached. I scream, but no one hears me.
My boss and a female officer, skinny—she doesn’t have to worry about any of this, the cunt—stand in the doorway to my office.
“Her entire family?” my boss asks, his caterpillar eyebrows reaching for his receding hairline.
The skinny cop nods, a deep frown on her face like she doesn’t even know she’s thin. “Not a peep. And you say she hasn’t been in either?”
“Not for a few days. You know, I usually only saw her in the break room, I don’t micromanage,” says my boss.
“I’ve been here!” My hair falls around me like Christmas tinsel, blood drips warm and thick down my forehead.
Does the cop know she could be a supermodel? Does she know it doesn’t matter that her face is unpleasant, as long as she has that body? She has to know.
She mutters that she’ll have to get a warrant for the house, before they both depart, leaving me in my office, there but not, a monster whose only saving grace is that she can no longer be perceived. Maybe I should go get a doughnut, because it doesn’t matter now, does it? But it no longer holds its allure, so I sit at my desk, I close my eyes, and I do the only thing I can now: I cease to exist.