I stopped at 7-Eleven on the way home for food. I barely felt any anxiety as I pulled into the parking lot because I think I’d subconsciously planned this stop from my first bite of nachos. As I’d already blown the diet, I figured I might as well keep going—I might as well eat all the things I’d denied myself for the last few weeks. And I had to get it all done in one sitting because if I allowed myself to do this again—to eat all this food—I’d get fat. If this reckless eating continued into the following day, I’d get fat and I’d end up in TV purgatory, kept on the show due to an unbreakable contract, yet disappearing, making only the occasional background cross as my character’s life with all the promise of great story lines faded into the blank page from whence it came. Of course, I’d have to throw up after, but that was okay. I would’ve had to throw up anyway just from the Mexican food. I didn’t have work for the next two days so I had time to get rid of the dots above my eyes that were caused by my blood vessels bursting from all the pressure and strain of purging. With that much pressure, something had to burst.
I could either force myself to throw up the food or gain weight from it. Of the two options, I figured that it was better concealing a few red dots on my eyelids than showing up to my second day of work two pounds heavier with my skirt stretching across my thighs. And if I had to throw up anyway, I might as well eat all I could. I might as well eat everything.
Throwing up was something I had taught myself as a child. I learned from the more experienced models I worked with that it was something you could do if you had to eat in front of people, including the clients that book you. Apparently, it was more desirable to look as though your body was naturally stick thin than trying hard to get it that way, so models ate pizza before a fashion show, then threw it up quietly before showtime. That would take a lot of practice, since you’d have to be neat and clean about it. No matter how much I practiced, I was never good at it. Apart from the red dots above my eyes, my eyes and nose watered badly from the heaving efforts. Plus I was so loud. The gagging sounded like really loud coughing and would serve as an alarm to let everyone in the public restroom know what I was doing.
Unlike the other girls, I didn’t throw up because I had to eat to impress the client but because I wanted to eat. Nothing was better after a modeling job than food. It was the only thing that took all the bad feelings away. Like an eraser, it allowed me start over, to forget the feelings of insecurity and awkwardness I’d experienced that day. But the comforting ritual of rewarding myself with food started to backfire as the jobs started being booked back to back. Instead of having a week of starving to counteract the weight gained from eating fries, ice cream, and candy, I was given a day or two to get back on track, to be the 34–24–35 model that they’d booked off my card. The client was expecting an image of me that wasn’t who I really was. They wanted a self-confident young woman who was naturally thin, beautiful, comfortable in her skin. Who I really was, was an average-looking child staving off puberty with its acne and weight gain just waiting to expose me for the phony I was. So I’d throw up.
After my first day of Ally, I needed to start over. I needed to forget the insecurity and awkwardness I felt standing on that staircase, pretending to be the fabulous Nelle Porter. Just hearing the words “outstanding addition” gave me a hole in my stomach that no amount of food seemed to fill.
Go on, eat it, you fat piece of shit. You’re pathetic. You can’t even handle one day of work without bingeing. You have no self-control. You don’t deserve this job.
Driving home from 7-Eleven with a bag full of food, I hated that my brother lived with me. Now I had to eat in the car a block from my house and throw up in the street so he wouldn’t know what I was doing. And I had to do it fast because he’d wonder where I was. I started by eating a large bag of Cheetos. The bright orange color would serve as a marker during the purge. It would be a map, almost, telling me how far I’d come and how much further I needed to go. When I saw orange vomit cascading from my mouth and flowing in chunks between the two rigid fingers jammed against my gag reflex, I’d know I’d passed 7-Eleven and then I’d make my way back to the restaurant and back through each course beginning with the corn chips, the enchiladas, and ending with the nachos. As I shoved the jelly doughnut into my mouth, I came up with my lie. Mom called and my cell service was beginning to drop out so I had to pull over to complete the call. That would do. I barely swallowed my last item, the Snickers bar, before I began regurgitating it. I shoved my fingers down my throat and threw up in the plastic bag five times before I was satisfied that I’d gotten most of the food out. I took off my T-shirt from underneath my sweater and wiped my face and hands on it. I found a trash can. I drove home.
As I walked in the front door, I saw my brother on the couch with the phone to his ear.
“Where the hell have you been? Mom’s on the phone.”
He handed the phone to me.
“Hi, darl! How did it go?” My mother was more excited than I’d ever heard her. I knew that she’d been thinking about me the whole day, just waiting to hear news of the cast, the set, and my new life as a star of a hit TV show.
I took a deep breath. I mentally selected the appropriate pitch to my voice.
“It was really great, Ma. I had the greatest day.”
It was a lie, but it should’ve been the truth. It would’ve been the truth if not for my debilitating insecurity, and I was certain that insecurity would fade with time once I had proven to myself that I deserved the job. In time, I was sure that I would be happy. After all, anyone else would’ve been. Most people would kill to have the opportunity that was given to me. How could I possibly complain to anyone that I didn’t like it, that loads of money and fame, the most desired things in society, made me feel uncomfortable? While I waited for my genuine enjoyment of it to set in, I would simply lie about how much fun I was having. Complaining to my mom would have just been immature and embarrassing. In fact, anything short of perpetual joy seemed pathetic.
I’d pretended to enjoy modeling also, so I’d had practice in pretending. It was my goal to be known as a model because I wanted to be the envy of my seventh-grade peers and be thought of as beautiful and worldly. But being called a model and actually having to model were two different things entirely and caused me to experience very different feelings. At the very beginning of my modeling career, I needed test shots by a well-known photographer whom my new agents had chosen for me, and filling a modeling portfolio cost money that we didn’t really have. I was told that I was lucky that I had caught the photographer’s eye and should jump at the chance to have my pictures taken by him. His fee was a whopping $1,400 for three different looks. Prints would cost extra. So I struck a deal with my mother. If she bankrolled my test shots and drove me to Melbourne, I’d pay her back all the start-up money with my earnings from my first few jobs. She agreed, and my modeling career began.