Fat Chance
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At least, to their credit, Barbie’s manufacturers were now giving the dolls wider waists, smaller busts and closed mouths, a far cry from “Lilli,” the prototype for Barbie—dating back forty years—who was a German doll based on a lusty actress who was in between gigs.
This poupée smiles widely in every shot. No wonder. Mike Taylor’s arm was hooked around her waist.
I open up interview after interview with Taylor. Thank God for the Internet. Actually, his life was an open magazine—just this past month the six-page cover story in Architectural Digest with the headline: “Perfection in Pacific Palisades.” It began with a double-page spread showing the cobalt blue of the Pacific as a backdrop to the bright Southern California sun glinting off the polished steel of the Nautilus machines in his sprawling home gym. Fifteen behemoths in all, each with a precise function, either to tone and strengthen a specific muscle group, or offer an aerobic challenge. A trainer visited as often as the postman, the story said, to take him through the routine.
Sotto voce, Taylor admitted that he loathed exercise, but his romantic roles made it mandatory that he stay in shape. Legions of fans just waited for the moment when they would glimpse his contoured physique as he pulled off a snug T-shirt and fell into an embrace with a lush-lipped nymphet.
“Part of the job,” he said.
According to the cover story, Taylor had been in Los Angeles for twelve years, but had quickly gained fame and fortune after a TV pilot based on the lives of a group of elite NASA astronauts was picked up for a regular series on CBS.
In The High Life, he played womanizing Scott Bronson, a rocket scientist who joined the space program and rose to become one of its top advisors, a job which had come to define who he was. His exalted standing didn’t hurt his appeal to the nubile NASA recruits—whom he had a reputation for quickly bedding—or the thirty-million fans who watched—captivated by Mike’s work—his long-term relationship with a curvaceous fellow astronaut, his secretive one-night stands, and all the bizarre twists and turns that his life took on this earth and beyond. In addition to the show, he told the writer that he spent weekends and vacations making films.
“Exhausting? Sure, but my career’s on a roll, and that’s not something you take lightly in Hollywood. I started out doing some awful TV work, and now, finally, at age thirty-eight, I feel that I’ve hit my stride.”
“Where would you like to see yourself in the next five years?”
He shrugged. “No clue, man. I just take it from day to day, and I’ve no idea where this frantic roller-coaster ride is headed. All I know is that I’m holding on tight, and enjoying the ride.”
His day started at sunrise, and his bedroom, the story showed, was a marvel of simplicity—a gray granite floor and a king-size bed covered in gray linens. He worked out in the gym, showered in a glass-walled bathroom with a panoramic ocean vista and had coffee in a cavernous granite, concrete and stainless-steel kitchen. The story followed him through the gardens outside the house, where he chatted with the writer about his future projects. One of them, he said, was a movie called Dangerous Lies.
My stomach is growling. It’s almost one o’clock. I bookmark the site.
“How about some lunch?” I call out to Tamara.
“What’s your pleasure?”
“Greens,” I whisper pathetically.
“Can’t hear ya.”
Would she hear beef goulash? Fettucini Alfredo? It reminds me of the painful day that I went to buy my first bra. The hearing-impaired saleswoman walked to the back of the store toward the stockroom and yelled out for every New Yorker to hear, “What size bra did you want again, honey?”
And my pained whisper. The trainer, 34 triple A. Was that how it felt for a guy who bought his first box of condoms?
“Hey, big guy, you want the ribbed for extra stimulation? And what size? Small, medium? Behemoth?”
I get up and go over to Tamara’s desk.
“A double order of gale-force greens,” I mouth, “with balsamic vinegar and a large mineral water.” Then I can’t stop myself and shout, “Ahh, screw it, put an order of potato salad on top.”
Wilhelm’s sandwich shop. I adore it. Never a wait. Never a tie-up. It’s run with military precision by a highly trained staff of beefy Bavarians who stand elbow-to-elbow behind a thick wooden cutting board where they prepare football-size sandwiches. German heroes, as it were. Despite the long line snaking around the glass-covered counter, there’s never more than just a moment’s wait, the piercing cry, “WHO’S NEXT?” serving as a cracking bullwhip that keeps patrons rhythmically goose-stepping up to the counter.
Wilhelm’s has become an institution in the East 40s, and I am one of their cherished patrons. Who else but yours truly is intimately familiar with every one of their thirty-three sandwiches? Who else calls on them to cater parties? An autographed picture of me with my chunky arm around owner and sandwich meister Wilhelm Obermayer is mounted on the wall as if I’m a visiting dignitary. It says, “To Wilhelm, my hero.”
There is a reason for my devotion. A sandwich from Wilhelm’s isn’t a sandwich, it’s an indulgence. Who doesn’t wake up at night hankering for the smoked chicken salad, a marriage of white chicken, chunks of tangy blue-veined Stilton, ruffles of bacon and slivered red pepper, all lovingly dressed with a dollop of mayonnaise mustard sauce?
Or the Zeitgeist tuna salad blending white tuna with sun-dried tomatoes, mayo, fragrant dill and bits of sautéed Vidalia onions. Some prefer the Mediterranean version with chopped calamata olives, pimentos and anchovies.
In the mood for egg? Maybe the egg salad with caviar? The curried egg salad cradled in arugula and packed into a crusty French roll? Or the jalapeño egg salad?
For beef lovers there’s a hero, combining thin slices of rare roast beef, red onion rings and watercress, dripping with honey mustard and enjoyed with a side order of Wilhelm’s coleslaw made with thickly sliced green cabbage, chunks of carrots and a thick coating of mayonnaise.
Tamara’s face is familiar to the staff at Wilhelm’s, but when she orders the triple-size greens topped with potato salad, order turned to chaos. I double over, laughing in pain as she describes it.
“VAT?” Chief sandwich-maker Brunhilde Braun shakes her head in denial. “Nein, nein. Das is nicht for Maggie. Corned beef, eh? Das is guuuut.”
“You know you’re right. I got mixed up,” I told her.
Brunhilde shoots me a wide gold-toothed “I told you so” smirk, and I say, “It’s actually TWO orders of triple greens.”
According to Tamara, she was the only one smiling as Brunhilde attacked the luncheon board, lifting a lump of greens and looking at them disparagingly while shaking her head. Tamara stares at Brunhilde as she leaves. One sour kraut. It wouldn’t surprise me if she tries to right things by sending me a quart of fat-glutted chicken soup with a note, “Get Well Soon.”
So there we are, sitting on opposite sides of the desk, working our way to the bottom of the mountains of greenery.
“Damn this chomping. We sound like machetes cutting through jungle grass,” Tamara says.
“At least it’s high fiber. High-fiber foods are supposed to have high satiety value.”
Tamara gives me a blank look. “Like the movie, High Society?”
“They fill you up, keep you satisfied.”
She grimaces then smiles conspiratorially. “I have a bag of Doritos in my drawer. Want some?”
“Desperately, so would you please throw them out immediately.” Suddenly, I have this wellspring of self-control. But how long can it last?
“An unopened bag of Doritos, are you nuts?”
“Closet eating is not part of the plan.” Right.
“And what about this great potato salad?” Tamara asks.
From the corner of my eye I see the Gestapo. Justine, dressed head to toe in a bias-cut Donna Karan dress in navy blue velvet. Now I’m glad I ordered it. For camouflage.
“Cover the greens with it, quick.”
“Not MORE German potato salad. GIRLS, I swear you’re going to develop waistlines like the Hindenberg,” Justine says in her high-pitched, painful whine. She shakes her Frederic Fekkai–coiffed head. “Well, since no one’s going out, I guess I’ll head over to the park for a power walk. See y’all later.”
“Y’all? God, I hate her,” Tamara says. “I’d like to put fat pellets in her food.”
“She’s insufferable thin, can you imagine her fat?”
“What’s a power walk, anyway?” Tamara says.
“Something masochists do. Not bad enough they go on marathon walks, they shlep weights.” I consider stealing the running shoes she hides in her closet, so she’ll have to walk in stilettos, but decide against it.
“Never mind her, let’s dump this potato salad. It’s time to do the video.”
“Video?”
“Lose It with Lisa. For forty-five minutes, we’re going to work out in here.”
“Ugh, I’m getting indigestion already. We’re working out here?”
“Should I put on a thong leotard and breeze on over to New York Sports?”
“Maggie, how are you going to hide this whole thing anyway? It’s bound to come out.”
“I’ll cook up something. As you know by now, I’m a whiz at putting my spin on reality.”
She closes the door, and we turn on the video. The face that greets us looks like Britney Spears—three decades down the road. What should I expect when I pick up a fitness tape from the giveaway table at the used bookstore? I’m surprised I don’t have to crank up an RCA Victrola to hear it.
“Hi, I’m Lisa and I feel sooo good about exercising, sooo good about mySELF. That’s why I made this video. I used to be forty pounds heavier, imagine? I ate everything in sight. UGH! I felt down, depressed, all I wanted to do was sleep. Then someone told me about a system of doing aerobics with light weights. I tried it, adapted it to my own special needs and, girls, it forever changed my LIFE. I’m a CONVERT. Now I’m going to share my success with you, because YOU deserve it. Are you ready to work with me? Ready to develop the beautiful body that beautiful you deserve? You can do it, you know. All you have to do is stay with me. Give me a little itty bitty bit of time each day. Just forty-five minutes. Okay? LET’S EXERCISE!” The sound of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” pulsates throughout the room.
“I do not like her,” Tamara says, shuddering. “Something about her hits me wrong. Bitch,” she mouths at the TV screen.
“She’s thin, she did it,” I say, suddenly jumping to the defense of this baby-boomer Barbie. “That’s what’s so obnoxious. We have to show some tolerance, Tamara. We can’t victimize thin women. In their own way, they suffer as much as we do, maybe more. At least I hope so.”
“Right on,” Tamara says. “We’ll be PC. Equal opportunity haters.”
“Amen.” I wrap a pair of weighted cuffs around my ankles and wrists, then toss some to Tamara. We both start moving to the beat, ignoring the fact that outside the office door, someone is calling my name. There’s a lock on the door but I, of course, didn’t take the time to turn the brass knob, and already I’m regretting my carelessness.
five
I had this horrible nightmare last night. All about Jolie Bonjour. She was lying on a coffin-shaped tanning bed, her body slick with Chanel bronzing oil.
“Seulement cinq minutes,” she was mumbling. “Le tanning bed” wasn’t a good idea, “mais non,” she was telling Mike Taylor over and over, but she couldn’t resist “un peu” so that her skin looked, not bronze, mais non, but just “ze beige” to set off her white teeth, golden hair and sparkling blue eyes. She was the type, of course, that didn’t get freckles or mottling. She got tan. Just tan. A moment later, she jumped out of the tanning bed and headed for a quick swim, her leopard-patterned beach towel knotted smartly, sarong-style, around her hips.
There was Mike stretched out in the sun alongside his Olympic-size pool, scripts everywhere. He was contemplating a lead role as a marine biologist working out of a laboratory in Bora Bora. The biologist finds the embryo of a unique sea monster that has a mutant strain of DNA, giving it the potential to grow larger than any marine creature that had ever lived. The dilemma: Destroy it and safeguard the world, or keep the fascinating specimen in the lab, running the risk that if it escaped it could wreak world destruction.
His concentration was broken by the sight of Jolie strolling out of the house. She untied the sarong to reveal a scarlet thong bikini and red patent-leather high-heeled mules. She stopped behind Mike’s chair and draped her arms around his neck, her nipples tickling his back, her perfume pricking his senses.
“Swim avec moi,” she whispered, caressing his ear.
He told her to wait, he had to read more scripts. Moments later, he was on the phone with his shrink, confessing, “She says she loves me…I told her I love her. She’s good in bed, we’re compatible…”
“But?”
“…something’s missing.”
Then I walked in, my head on her body, wearing the same bikini. He was mesmerized…. Okay, so I’ll never look like Jolie, but after two weeks, I’ve already lost ten pounds.
But then I wake up in a sweat, sheets tangled around me. I am sick. So sick. Along with the weight, I’m losing my grounding.
If it isn’t bad enough that I’m involved in an underground makeover, the phone rings and it’s a call from a local gourmet store that asked me many months ago if I would help them taste-test a new line of pasta sauces from a famed Italian importer. Who was I to say no, especially since the free-lance change would help pay for the maintenance surcharge that my East-side co-op had just tacked on to cover waterproofing the aging bricks.
But now, who needs this? As if it weren’t hard enough to resist temptation, I now have to deal with a team of white-clad Italian chefs who walk in promptly at eleven o’clock on the dot, bearing steaming pans of penne, rigatoni, linguini and farfalle, each covered with a mound of rich sauce. Instantly, the air is perfumed with the scents of garlic, onion, sun-dried tomatoes and olives, and my “friends” from the news department, who have noses as keen as bomb-sniffing dogs, come flocking to my door, ready to pounce.
Tex, who is usually glued to the computer screen, leads the parade, working hard to pretend that he’s surprised to find food.
“Hey, what’s this?” he says, acting like it’s the first time he’s come upon Italian food.
“Pasta,” I answer dryly. “You know the starchy stuff they serve in Italian restaurants?”
“You wouldn’t happen to have an extra bowl for a man who’s had nothing the entire day except bacon and eggs for breakfast and a meager muffin and coffee, over an hour ago, would you?” he says, ignoring my sarcasm, and trying to get on my good side by coming up behind me and massaging my shoulders. I’m tempted to close my eyes and promise him anything if he continues since it’s been so long since I had a pair of hands working on me, but I snap to.
“It’s barely eleven-thirty, Tex.”
“Exactly my point,” he says, sliding the bowl out of my hand. “My blood-sugar level’s starting to go south.” He lifts a giant forkful to his mouth and tastes.
“Definitely respectable, if you don’t count the fact that it really needs a little more garlic and maybe some dill,” he says, continuing to eat.
“But that’s not stopping you.”
He shakes his head and continues. “Not terrible. About equal to Ragu. Not close to Rao’s.”
How would I know? I haven’t had a forkful yet. “If you’re going to eat my portion, you might as well fill out the questionnaire,” I say.
“I’d love to, sugar, but I’ve got a mountain of work waiting for me,” he says. “I just came by looking for a stapler.” He waves a piece of paper in the air as if that explains it. Tex starts to leave and then comes back and hands me the bowl. He pivots only to face a stack of garlic bread. In a nanosecond, his hand clamps down over a piece.
Tamara stares at him, saying nothing.
“Now this is good,” Tex says, reaching for a second. As he turns, Larry makes his entrance and they nearly collide.
“I knew I wasn’t crazy. I knew that I smelled garlic.” He laughs hysterically. “How ’bout sharing the wealth?”
Tamara looks at me and shakes her head. “Are we running a soup kitchen here?”
“What?” Larry says, holding his hands out helplessly. “We’re helping Maggie.”
“Do you think you could find room in your heart to leave just a little behind so that I can get just a forkful and fill out the survey that they’re paying me thousands of dollars to complete?” I ask.
“Nobody can judge food after just one tasting,” Tex says. “Tell them to bring a new round of plates over the course of the next few days,” he says, trying to wipe a red spaghetti stain from the front of his shirt that resembles blood oozing from a chest wound.
“I think you’d better get back to Metro,” I say softly. “I just heard that the stock market took a nosedive and the Dow slid to a record-low level.”
Tex and Larry look at each other, drop their plates and go running out of my office.
“Is that true?” Tamara says after they’re gone.
“So, I heard wrong,” I say, helping myself to just a strand of spaghetti with each of the different sauces.
I fill out the survey, and then, don’t ask me how, put the leftovers out into the newsroom, then write my column as the sharks attack.
Diet Foods: High in Calories, Low in Taste
America’s obsession with losing weight is to blame for the food industry’s outpouring of “low-fat” and “no-fat” versions of virtually all the foods we love: low and no-fat ice cream, yogurt, cookies, pudding, whipped cream, mayo, cream cheese, cottage cheese, milk, cake, chips, and my—ugh—favorite, fat-free salad dressings that are gluey-tasting syrups made up basically of sugar.
The truth is: Not only doesn’t the low-fat stuff taste good, it’s finally being unmasked for the fraud that it is. The idea behind low-fat foods is that they’re supposed to save you fat and calories, make you healthier and help you lose weight.
The truth is: America is getting fatter because of low-fat products. Guilt-free goodies, people think, give them license to eat more, and eat with impunity.
The truth is: Not only don’t low-fat and no-fat NOT mean low in calories, these poor imitations are often HIGHER in calories than the original, because they have added amounts of sugar in an attempt to mask flavor that is lost when fat is reduced.
When I go to the grocery story, I look for food-food. What does that mean? The real McCoy. Plain butter. Not air pumped. Plain milk. Not the kind where the fat is removed. Nothing added. Nothing taken away. Nothing genetically engineered. Do I have to buy a farm? Raise my own animals? Grow my own crops? It may come to that. Stay tuned.
It’s almost become a routine now. Every month or so, Bill Wharton takes me to lunch. Very simply, I’m his cash cow, and his goal in life is to keep the paper a success, something he’s done for over twenty years by vigilantly watching the bottom line. The Daily Record is having a banner fourth quarter, and Bill is particularly proud of “Fat Chance.” But also, he likes me. Somewhere in that enlarged, underexercised heart of his, he has a soft spot for my loud mouth and pleasing plumpness, I think, not to mention my irreverent wit and occasionally off-color jokes. He’s got five boys, and, well, you get the picture.
Of course, not all of Wharton’s innovations at the paper are as successful as the column. The style section’s recent cover stories make him wonder if he’s getting too old for all this stuff.
“Cross-dressing birthday parties; Upper East Siders who color-scheme their homes to coordinate with their dog’s fur; and hair stylists who are buzz-cutting customers’ astrological signs onto the backs of their heads. The editor is a moron,” he hisses. “But I’ll keep mum and give her more rope to hang herself before I pounce and obliterate her authority.” He gulps down some Maalox and scratches his head.
“I used to have a handle on the news, a gut feeling about what was fresh,” he said, one day over an osso bucco lunch at Carmine’s. “Now that part of the job is in the hands of a bunch of kids who think that Charlotte Russe was a star of film noir.”
So why, on this day, a full week after he called me, did I still not return his phone call?
“The fourth-quarter numbers look great,” his message said. “Your column continues to be a smash, why don’t we break out some champagne over lunch, restaurant of your choice.”
In hindsight, I now realize what a mistake it was to ignore him. Just as Tamara and I were—for the tenth time—cranking up the volume of our nauseating fitness tape, we saw the door of my office open and who should stand before us, a horrified look on his face, but old Wharton. Shit. Double shit. And what did I do? Wave. He closed the door as quietly as he opened it.
Next thing I know, a messenger is delivering a Bailey’s Irish cream cheesecake, to me, from, guess who? That was followed by a voice-mail message—“When your dancing fever subsides, call your publisher about lunch.”
“Tex might be on to you,” Tamara tells me after lunch one day.
This is not a particularly welcome development. “What did he say?”
I get the whole conversation verbatim.
“Something’s up with Maggie,” Tamara says he told her one day while she was sitting with him and Larry. “But I don’t know what.”
“I looked at him straight-faced,” Tamara says. “I asked him what he meant.”
“She hasn’t been herself lately.”
“Probably something you said.”
“Can’t think of anything,” Tex says, “but yeah, it doesn’t take a lot to get women pissed. Once at a party, I got a drink for myself, but forgot to get my date one.” He nods his head, as if remembering. “I walk back to her and she says, ‘Didn’t it ever occur to you that I might want something to drink?’ I said, ‘I didn’t think you wanted one,’ then she pushes right past me and says, ‘Right, you didn’t think.’”
Then Larry chimes in. “Great material, we should write a screenplay. Once, I bought a gift for a woman. This black lace nightgown, great, sexy, I couldn’t wait to see her in it.” He shakes his head. “How was I supposed to know she wasn’t an extralarge?”
“Observant, aren’t you, Larry?” I say. Tex laughs.
“So she takes it back for a small and finds out that it was the last one and came off the clearance rack.” Larry looks down at his drink and mixes it with his finger and then licks his finger. “So she says, ‘The one thing I hate is men who are cheap and stupid!’ So I said, ‘That’s two things.’”
Tex nods his head. “Yeah, the old one-two punch.” His voice trails off. “I think there’s some basic resentment of the opposite sex. It bobs along the surface until one day, propelled by some deep seismic forces, it explodes in your face.”
“PMS,” Larry says.
“No, that’s not it with Maggie. She’s just distant…less eager to eat out. She’s even starting to look different.”
“Different?” I say. “What do you mean by different?”
“I’m enjoying baiting him, Maggie. He is so unbelievably dense sometimes.”
“I’m not sure,” Tex says, as though he’s afraid to divulge what he’s thinking.
So Larry pipes up.
“Better,” he said. “Maybe she’s on a diet.”
“Nah, impossible,” Tex says. “Not old trencher woman Maggie. She never diets or takes off for spas like some of the women I know.” He shakes his head. “She doesn’t think about things like that. That’s the great thing about her.”
“Absolutely right,” I say. “You guys read her stuff. Maggie doesn’t diet.”
“Take her out for ribs,” Larry says. “See what’s up.”
“I looked at them both, trying hard to keep from laughing,” Tamara says. “If these two geniuses were directing the investigative reporting at the paper, then the Times, the Daily News and the Post could rest assured that they had nothing to fear.”