Part Three: Validation Bouquet/Temptation Thorns

Then there was Friday.

On Friday, life tried to go out of its way to make things easier for me, which was a pleasant change of pace.

I woke up having terrible body image. (What else is new?) Honestly, on plenty of days the distortion is so bad that I genuinely do not want to leave my apartment. If you could hear what the hell goes on inside my head... what people must be thinking... but today I got a brief reminder that it was all bullshit as I was walking to class and two sorority girls passed me. Through the veil of my sunglasses, I watched one of them -- pretty, thin, and well-dressed -- eye me up and down as we approached each other. She turned to her friend quickly, and as soon as I was presumably out of earshot, I heard her murmur: "she has the skinniest legs."

I actually froze for a full two seconds, then whipped my head around and stared at these two perfect sorority girls, the distance between the two of us ever increasing, in shock. It might not have been meant as a compliment; the girl's tone had made that inconclusive. But I took it as the most beautiful validation I had gotten in weeks. Because you need to understand -- in no way, shape, or form do I consider my legs skinny. They're one of my hugest (pun intended) problem areas, and even at my sickest I've thought they were too big for the rest of me. So to hear this girl say something like that out of the blue, to have compelled her to mention the size of a total stranger's legs to her friend, was incredible. It was all I could do not to call back out to her, "REALLY?!"

And that high lasted for about half an hour.

*

Later that night I forced myself to go out. There was a huge party, with a bunch of my acting friends, and I had told myself in advance, I don't care how fat I am; I will attend this party and I will enjoy myself. So I tried on about seven or eight different outfits, called myself about seven or eight hundred different synonyms for "fat" and "disgusting," had about seven or eight thousand mini-breakdowns, and got a text from one of the sophomores asking if I wanted to pre-game with him and another classmate at his apartment.

The honest answer was "no." That was also the ill-reasoned answer, because extended it read, "no, because you're a sophomore." I kicked myself, texted back a cheerful "sounds great," and left my Cave o' Reclusive Rumination.

It was fun. I had fun. Once we got to the party, a bunch of my junior friends greeted me with bear hugs and cheek-kisses and "yes! I'm so glad you're here!"s and "We miss you sooooo much"es. "How are you doing?" was a very common question. I suppose they all fancied it was such a novel thing to ask, looking me dead in the eye and pulling me aside like they must be the first people all night to really try to get to the bottom of my baggage, prodding until I finally stopped grinning and began to graze the surface of the truth. You see, there are different levels of honesty with which we as humans generally respond to the "how are you doing?" question, and we gauge the necessary level based on a number of factors and external cues. Tonight, my Candidometer Levels read something like this:

"HOW ARE YOU DOING?"

LEVEL 1: "I miss you guys... but I'm good!"

LEVEL 2: "I'm okay."

LEVEL 3: "Well, you know, it's a bit of an adjustment."

LEVEL 4: "The kids are great, it's nothing to do with them, but it's been hard."

LEVEL 5: "Eh... things are rough."

LEVEL 6: *Nonverbal shrug accompanied by telling facial expression*

LEVEL 7: "Fuck this shit."

I never got to "fuck this shit." For the most part, I didn't go much deeper than level 3. Once or twice I got to level 4. But my friends understood that "well, you know" and "the kids are great" were cleverly shrouded grunts of "fuck this shit," and they gazed at me knowingly and sympathized with their eyes and understood when I kept pressing the conversation topic back to "how are YOU doing? What are YOUR assignments? How's YOUR new professor? How's YOUR show going? What have YOU been working on? How do YOU like YOUR agent?" And so on.

My friends are great. I've never truly realised this before. They're so incredibly... genuine. And compassionate. It was like they were throwing palm fronds of validation at my fucking feet. "[Insert names of two sophomores here] were over," said one of the juniors, "and I was like, 'guys, AJ's the fucking best. You really have to understand that.' I told them you were this amazing opera singer and pianist and you're this incredible actress..."

"They really do understand what you're going through," another junior nodded to me. "Like, they get this isn't easy. I was talking to a few of them and they were all like, 'yeah, we really, really like having AJ around and we know this is hard for her but we just hope she's able to come out of her shell more.'" I felt like an egomaniac just listening to people gush about how they gushed about me, how others gushed about me, ad nauseam. Not that I didn't love every second of it.

Finally, I was able to sit down with Scott. He put his arm around me and stroked my shoulder and leg and asked me how was I doing, really, and please not to give him any of that bullshit about being okay because that might work for everyone else but I should know better than to try that with him. I got between Candidometer Levels 5 and 6. We were having a real conversation. Then a sophomore approached. Harry. We'll name him Harry. (P.S., don't try to find any significance in any of these pseudonyms unless I expressly allude to any, a la "Edward Norton clone.") I like Harry more than I like many of the sophomores. There's something very real about him, and he has a definite intelligence of character. I'm also more afraid of him. I can see him see me.

So Harry came up, and basically chased Scott off. Had any other sophomore done this, I would have been irate, but this was Harry, and Harry really intrigues me. So I let him try to investigate me. He did well.

"I just wanted to say," he began, "that I really, really like you and I know you're -- can I sit here? -- I know it must be really difficult having to hear the same stuff that you heard last year, and I'm sure it's really boring. But I also think you're really cool and you have... you have so much to offer."

"Thanks," I said with a smile.

"But you hide behind this -- " he lightly stroked the fringe of bangs that I always make sure are perfectly groomed to fall across the right side of my face, "-- and this," he crossed his arms and legs and hunched over sullenly. I laughed. "And I see that."

"I know," I confessed. "I can tell you see me. It's unnerving. But I do want you to know that I really dig you, too. In fact, I'm a fan of most of the people in your class. You're all really great, and you in particular, I like." Harry smiled. "So it's nothing to do with any of you. I'm just..." I searched for a sufficient word. "I can be... prickly."

"Oh, I know! I saw that the first time I met you."

"When was that?"

"Last year. Early last year at a party. Beginning of my freshman year."

Early last year. His freshman year. Beginning of my (real) sophomore year. That would have made me pretty shitty into my eating disorder, perhaps slightly better off than I am now. I cocked my head. "I'm usually better at parties," I said.

"I definitely felt the prickles," Harry told me.

"What did I do?"

"Nothing. It was just you. You looked right at me and I was like, oh my God, she breaks hearts with those eyes."

I had no memory of such an incident, but I didn't tell Harry so. It is like me to play with eye contact. I laughed. "I'm sorry," I said. "Listen, I think it's important that you and everyone else in the sophomore class know... I love you guys. I hate where I am. But you, you all are really great." Harry was nodding. He proceeded to tell me about how much he, too, loved his class because he's estranged from his biological parents and baggage baggage baggage and this is where the reciprocity comes in, and I loved hearing about it. I loved the back-and-forth, the mutual exchange. He was doing very well. He was engaging me. We were laughing, shooting the shit, making friends. I was making a friend. Oh God.

Then another student casually approached Harry and tapped his shoulder.

"Yeah," Harry said.

"Did you bring anything?"

"You guys have weed."

"I don't want weed; I want blow."

"Fuck; I don't sell blow at parties. That shit's in my room. I've only got about two and a half grams now."

"Shit," the student walked away.

"You sell coke?" I asked.

"The best you'll ever find. Guaranteed."

The words came out of my mouth before I could think about their implication. So did the smile that spread across my lips, and the way I leaned in closer and touched his knee. "We'll have to talk, then."

And the universe had just flung the gate wide open for a year of snowblind madness. Easy access. Easier than freshman year when I did coke with Scott, because Scott was only a recreational user and had to jump through all kinds of hoops to score a gram for us to share. Here was Harry, though, and Harry was a dealer. The kid I like most in the sophomore acting class is a drug dealer. Part of me hears a celestial choir singing heaven's praises. "You've just won a year's worth of SoCal snow! Your favourite diet pill and study aid, the best you'll ever find." Another part of me hears sirens and pounding heartbeats and the hyperactive, laboured breaths that come with tweaking out.

Midnight coke binges. Days of complete abstinence from food without even realizing it. Rocks. Lines. Student IDs. Altoid cases. A leathery one rolled too many times, cracks in its creases. That caustic, burning, chemical dump scent. Tingling. Molecules of rebellion tickling my gums and nostrils. And... numbness.

Only the good in life. Life, squared.

I mean, there has to be a reason this happened. There has to be a reason I was drawn to Harry, a reason Harry was drawn to me -- and I don't mean any of this in a romantic way, mind you -- and a reason I stumbled across the fact that he dealt. There's no way God can trust me enough to just throw this kind of shit into my lap, with everything else I have going on, and expect me to ignore it, or deal with it constructively.

Like, really.

But what do I know? Coke could be a lesser of two evils. Back in the day, I forced myself to eat *almost* normally on days when I wasn't using. I knew what I was doing to my heart; I knew it couldn't be good. I sweated so much, my metabolism went so fast, I was going to lose weight either way. It could be by not doing coke and restricting, or doing coke and restricting less when my body remembered to be hungry.

I should probably tell somebody about this. I should probably call B. The ball's been in my court for days and I have done jack shit with it because *insert lyrics to Simon and Garfunkel's "I Am A Rock" here*. He probably thinks I don't care to spend time with him. The reality is, I care far too much.

I'll keep you posted on this... whatever this shit is. But veritably it is shit, and as such, fuck it.