Scott C. Holstad has authored 75+ books & appeared in 800+ magazines. He’s been published in the Minnesota Review, Exquisite Corpse, Wisconsin Review, Pacific Review, Santa Clara Review, Palo Alto Review, Chiron Review, Irish University Review, Southern Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Comstock Review, Big Windows Review, Libre, Ink Sweat & Tears, Synchronized Chaos, The Argyle, miniMAG, Bristol Noir, Blood+Honey & The Galway Review. He holds degrees from the University of Tennessee, California State University Long Beach, UCLA, Queens University of Charlotte & the University of Michigan. He’s moved 40+ times & lives in Pennsylvania, USA.

@tangledscott

Anorexia

By Scott C. Holstad

She was six feet tall and 114 pounds when we met. A former Dallas model, she’d followed a man – a European tennis star – here only to have him break up with her. Brown bobbed hair haloed her head; Kim liked to dance by herself, mostly to the Talking Heads.

She didn’t want us to live together but she stayed at my apartment a lot. Kind of a kinky girl. When she didn’t stay at my place, the next morning I’d get in my car to drive down to the Fort Sanders slum, stopping to pick up my pal Angie on the way. Angie was terrified of Kim, who seemed intimidating to many. Maybe a combo of height and her punk attitude.

That first time I picked her up I threw my keys to Angie telling her to drive – though she’d only just learned how – and I climbed into the back seat to try to sleep off my hangover. I had her stop by Kim’s place but before Angie could get out of the car, I’d exited the back, telling her “Keep the car and the keys. I’ll catch up with you later.” She looked horrified.

Kim hadn’t given me a key to her place yet, though I was always welcome. When she wasn’t there, I simply broke into her apartment, crawled onto the sofa and fell asleep while waiting for her to come home. She was fine with that cause she told me her German Shepard would kill me if I was an unwelcome intruder and I believed her. Fortunately, that dog and I got along just fine. I never checked to see if she’d be fine with my breaking into every apartment in that old rundown Victorian building but I only did that once, just for kicks. I enjoyed challenges but otherwise wasn’t a criminal, never even entered any of the apartments, let alone did anything. I just liked to see if I could do it and I was damn good it turned out.

Kim ate a baked potato on Tuesdays and a garden salad on Fridays. When she stood naked in front of her floor length mirror, she’d sigh, I’m so fat. Look at my thighs. She had thighs many women would practically kill for.

It didn’t take long to understand why she was messed up. I mean, how can you be that beautiful, the envy of the fashion shoot or the occasional runway, and castigate yourself with bodily self-hatred? I found out and she only mentioned this twice the entire time we were together. She had a twin sister and for reasons I never really understood, her mother favored her sister and bizarrely spent Kim’s adolescence criticizing her, constantly telling her she was fat and ugly. This, even after a contract with the Ford agency! I asked her why and she never replied. I spent months wanting to cuss out that woman for doing that to her child. But when she was criticizing her thighs at six feet, 110 pounds for being fat, I tried to tell her that everyone had a bit of skin and meat on their thighs below their groin, that it wasn’t fat, it was human. Beautiful.

Once she actually replied honestly. “Oh, I know compared to most other women, I’m looked at as skinny, but every time I look in that mirror I just see Jabba the Hutt.”

She had it rough. Her slumlord was an asshole and she cried all the way to the shelter when he evicted her dog. She was always getting sick, had no strength, nothing to ward off even the most basic cold. And she wouldn’t take any money to go to a doctor. A pride issue.

Kim waited tables at a restaurant on Cumberland Avenue, one I’d gone to for years even before we met. She always insisted on working, even when she was barely able to drag herself across the room. She lied to her manager about her condition. Blamed it on the weather.

In July she seemed to be getting especially bad but she wouldn’t take any damn money to see a doctor or let me drive her to the hospital. I called a doctor and asked what a quick checkup would cost and was told $175. Determined to save her from herself – at least this time – I went to the restaurant and insisted on being seated in her section. She expressed surprise at seeing me there because when I went there to wait for her to get off work, I stayed in the bar and talked with Jayme, one of the bartenders and Kim’s best friend. This time, though, I took my time eating a good meal, asked for the check and after Kim brought it and I told her I’d see her later, I gave her a tip for $200 and wrote “doctor” on the slip before beating it out the door. I knew she’d be ticked off, but I also hoped she’d finally go to the doctor. Both of which came true.

Months later she surprised me when she told me she wanted to go back to the tennis star. They HAD been together for two years, but apart for one now. Me? I did nothing; it was her choice.

She was 103 pounds when she ended it; I don’t know how much she weighed when Jayme told me she’d died.