Too-precious Ruby? You betcha.

I hate Ruby, and I haven’t even met her. As I write this, Ruby Gettinger’s eponymous weight loss reality series has yet to debut on cable’s Style Network. I have yet to watch as the 480-pound star dwindles down to 380 pounds through hard work alone. I haven’t seen the show, but I’ve read the soft-focus human interest stories.

One story pats Gettinger on the head for eschewing gastric bypass. Surgery wouldn’t teach her any cute life lessons, or help her have a special touchy-feely journey of inspiration. Gettinger also told the LA Times that she’d choose to be fat.

“I always say I'd rather be big. Because I feel like I'm a better person because of it because I don't judge people. And I'm not mean. I like the person I am. That may sound ironic to somebody, but if you were able to sit on the side and see how mean people can be, you'd understand why I never want to be those kind of people,” Gettinger said to the Times.

If I had to choose, I’d rather not be big. If choosing had anything to do with it, and existed as something other than a beautiful fantasy, I’d choose a thin childhood full of slumber parties and requited schoolyard crushes. I’d choose high school dates and a strapless prom dress, size 6. I’d choose all the stupid, fumbling sexual experiences that mark normal college life, a career in my twenties, a husband, a couple of kids and sad resignation to the inevitable size 10 mom jeans.

Like Gettinger, I once weighed 480 pounds. I weighed far more than that, actually. When I chose gastric bypass surgery three years ago, depriving myself of all sorts of adorable lessons and the early death I would’ve faced had my only weight loss tools been diet and exercise, I weighed 571 pounds. Sadly, this failed to beatify me. I make catty remarks. I dislike a lot of people. I am not, nor have I ever been, jolly.

Television rarely depicts people like me. Sure, you see the pathetic residents of obesity warehousing facilities hamming it up on the Discovery Channel. The Learning Channel gives us 800-pound people at their lurid best, lying on gurneys, weeping as they ride to the hospital in the backs of cargo vans. We see the bloated, tear-stained faces. Sometimes, we see redemption in the form of huge weight loss, achieved via surgery or starvation. We never see the fat person as a real person. Certainly not as a self-aware smart person.

I hate Ruby because the show may convince other super morbidly obese people that surgery is somehow cheating. Weight loss surgery certainly isn’t the best solution for every fat person, but it can and has saved lives, including my own. I worry that people will use the show to bully loved ones out of surgery, or as a proof that people with hundreds of pounds to lose just need some celery sticks and a walk around the block to regain their health.

Gettlinger had a team of doctors, trainers, nutritionists and other professionals to personally tend her. Her situation has little to do with the reality many super morbidly obese people face. Ineligible for insurance, unemployable, immobile and often depressed, they don’t have the resources Ruby Gettinger enjoys, simply because she allowed a camera crew to follow her on the magic journey.

Unlike Ruby, I’m mean and petty. I know that when I see the show, I’ll probably make unkind comments about the star, her wardrobe choices, and the many offences she commits against the English language (a Savannah paper quotes her as using “humidified” as a word in place of “humiliated”, e.g.). But I like myself just fine.

When I weighed nearly 600 pounds, friends actually encouraged me to contact cable TV producers. They reasoned that I might get surgery out of it, or, at very least, a little cash. I decided that I liked having dignity better, mainly because having it at my size was a constant, harrowing struggle. I decided that I wanted to write my own story – literally and figuratively – not have it constructed by reality television producers eager to package me into some dumb, weepy, salable thing.

I hate Ruby. The show, not the woman. Given her circumstances, I can’t help but empathize with her. When I weighed 500 pounds, I felt pain nearly every waking moment. My joints and back ached constantly, and the ugly comments, rude laughter and even the innocent questions of small children broke my heart nearly every day of my life. I wouldn’t wish that existence on anyone, and if Ruby Gettinger needed to sign up for reality TV exploitation to free herself from the weight, I have to respect that choice. I only hope her new fans will extend people like me, those who opted for surgery, those who aren’t cuddly or folksy or poignantly sad, the same courtesy.

Pawning Obama

I walked two miles to see Barrack Obama speak. I stood in line with hundreds of other Toledoans, all of us trying to chug our bottled water or turn on cell phones (so they wouldn’t seem like weapons) or remove metal items from our pockets. I saw a thin man with grey hair holding a sign about not voting for baby killing Muslims. I gave him the finger for a solid two minutes before making my way to the metal detectors.



The Seagate Center held two thousand of us, all hopeful, or at least intrigued by the idea of Change we can Believe In. Ohio politicians took the stage, one after another, to tell us about clean coal, solar panels (locally made!) and the black hole of evil that is the George W. Bush administration. The crowd booed and cheered in all the right places.



A tall, thin man, resplendent in a three-piece suit, made his way to the podium. Because he was black, the audience stood and cheered before realizing the man was not, in fact, Obama, but a campaign staffer intent on adjusting the podium mike. The nervous laughter of a thousand suburban white people filled the cavernous hall, a space not unlike a high school gym, before a local auto worker took the stage to perform the final introduction.



“I’ve been laid off fourteen weeks so far this year,” he told us. “I just want my four children to have coats this winter.” He made some less depressing, more crowd pleasing exhortations, and we all leapt to our feet to chant “O-Bam-Ah, O-Bam-Ah” as the candidate finally made his way across the stage, smiling broadly and waving.



Barrack Obama expressed concern about the state of the economy (“in the crapper,” my mother, the amateur economist, had put it just hours before).



“Your 401-K might be a 101-K,” the great man quipped. “The question isn’t ‘Are you better off than you were four years ago’, but ‘Are you better off than you were four weeks ago’,” he solemnly intoned, shaking his head presidentially.



I feel his pain, or, rather, the pain of other similar middle class people. My college friends have prospered, and they worry about investments. The last guy who dumped me (“I can’t do the boyfriend/girlfriend thing,” he told me as we snuggled together in bed) drove three hours to Columbus so he could rescue his money from Charles Schwab. I have no 401-K. I have no mortgage and am lucky to have rent money about half the time. As a self employed person who struggled with disability my entire adult life, I had -$200 in the bank as Barrack Obama stood before me, promising to help me send my (non-existent) children to college.



Walking home from the speech, I passed a pawn shop, doubled back, and sold the gold necklace I’d put on that morning on the off chance that I might appear in news photos or in television footage of the crowd. The pawnbroker counted a fifty and a hundred into my palm, and I deposited most of the money, bringing my total net worth up to an awe-inspiring -$87.



As I passed homeless shelters and free stores run by churches, I thought about the speech, the man, and the words he’d spoken. One thought had pierced the thick bubble of my self-pitying bemusement. Obama told us that we could aspire, as our grandparents had, as his grandparents had, to greater things. Just as the man denied his rights by a poll tax had dreamed of his son or grandson running for congress, for the senate, for the presidency itself.



Somehow, the hope a politician offered up seemed real to me, useful. My feet ached, and I touched my throat, surprised momentarily by the absence of the necklace. I shrugged, shook my head, and walked slowly toward home.

Tranny Hooker

I'll work for bottom surgery.

Halloween, Toledo, the drag bar.  I served a lovely roast chicken dinner for five.  We had homemade apple dumplings for dessert.  Then, drag bar.

I had planned on going as Tracy Turnblad from Hairspray.  Decided ratting my hair was too much work.  Opted for a red corset, garters and 5 o'clock shadow.  Lots of cleavage.  Lots of dancing.  Vodka.

Sadly, don't think I'll go back for a while.  The bar ignores Ohio's smoking ban, and my throat is killing me today.

Men

I never dated before the age of 35.  I used to weigh nearly 600 pounds and didn't want to sleep with creepy fetish dudes.  So.  I never dated in high school.  Nor in college.  I had my first date in December with a man who has nine toes, who lives with his mother and who brought with him a purse that he made himself.  Suffice it to say, he went back to his girlfriend and nothing came of it.

I've also dated a guy who swapped tags on items so he could trick Sears into giving him store credits, a homeless S&M dude who wore a truss to the movies, and at least one man I'm pretty sure is gay.  I negotiate dating poorly.  I'm pretty sure I'll die alone, surrounded be cats.  I know the cats will eat me.  I cut my finger a couple weeks ago and Spenser, my ancient, incontinent tabby, licked the blood off the floor.  I know cats like the taste of me.  And the man thing isn't working.

I wonder if it's easier for people who've done this since high school?  Of maybe it's even more brutal and depressing.  If I'd dated for twenty years and still didn't have a boyfriend, I'd probably feel pretty bad about that.  The guy I liked the most of all seems to have moved in with someone else.  He still wants to talk to me because I'm good entertainment.  So I'm learning that dating sucks and that a lot of men -- in my admittedly limited experience -- make terrible friends as well as terrible lovers.

Maybe I need to move?  Or maybe I just need more cats.

Sushi

I've never had sushi.  I'd never done a lot of things, till the surgery and the giant weight loss.  My male friend took me to a local sushi/Japanese food place.  I tried a bit of the raw stuff.  Not bad, but not great either.  Mainly kind of moist.  I liked the rolls.  Yum!  Also, the udon soup I had as a main was lovely -- lots of fresh veggies, delicious broth and chicken.  Plus noodles.  Not bad at all.

Of course, my friend's instruction with the fish ("Cram it in!") took a bit of the sparkle off the occasion.  But hey, it's only food, even if I did have to cross a bridge over a giant koi pond to obtain it.  And it's way, way better than tabby steak.

Cat Meat

I'm on the road with my friend Becca (yes, we've heard the Becca and ReBecca joke and it's always stupid).  We had dinner at this place called Jack's that I'm pretty sure serves cat meat.  Tabby steak is best served rare.  I want it meowing when it hits my plate, by gum.

We're in Athens where we saw Jonathan Richman.  Who decided to torture the audience by killing the AC.  300 people, 200 square feet, zero ventilation.  Death.  Then we had Mexican food at Casa Nuevo (awesome!).  I drank some local lemon ginger wine, was drunk for ten minutes, and flipped off a campaign poster of Sarah Palin while screaming "Suck it, Bitch!"

Red wine goes with tabby, right?

February 5, 2009!

Butterbabe comes out on February 5, 2009.  So far, the blessed event will occur solely in the UK.  I have hopes of a US sale.  Many excellent publishers are reading the book, so we'll see what happens.

If you're not familiar with my little tale of woe (and joy and childhood and a dogs uterus that one time) this should give you an idea of what you're in for in three short months: 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article609697.ece

I wish this looked more professional.  Sadly, I'm a writer, not an HTML person.  I know HTML is super easy and I'm sure I'll pick it up sooner or later, but it's neither sooner nor later so here we are.

The process of writing a book held surprises for me at virtually every turn.  Writing the first draft was surprisingly simple.  Revising the manuscript eight or nine times was not.  We've just finished the first UK proof.  While I think I'm finished reading the book, I probably am not.  I've read my own book a good eight times now.  I like it.  You will, too, I hope.  But you can just read it the once, and I think that'll make it a more enjoyable experience.

Welcome to my book blog.  If you have any writing or publishing questions, I'll try to answer them, time permitting.