Meat

My touch o’ the shine warns me what he’s about to do about two seconds before he does it.

We’re locked together tightly in a hello kiss that turned serious, and when we come up for air after a few minutes, he exclaims, “God, it’s so good to see you!” He locks his arms around me in a solid squeeze, giving that little growl all guys seem to do when they squeeze you hard, and then my touch o’ the shine just says:  “Oh, shit…get ready!”, and I know exactly what he’s going to do. I have just enough time to draw the deepest breath possible to let out an extended squeal of “Nooooooo!” as he transforms his bear hug into an attempt to lift me up.

I don’t quite get this, but it happens all the time. Dudes, whether you’re making out with them or not, get excited to see you, give you the big hug, growl a little while doing it, and then try to lift you up. I don’t know where this comes from, but I see it happen to girls all the time. And then guys try to do the same to me….

I do not like this because it always turns awkward. With the kind of performance I do, I know about lifts and leverage and weight, and I know when a guy cannot lift me up. I know if his arms aren’t low enough around my body; I know if his legs aren’t engaged enough and he’s expecting to just use his back. I know if he’s just not strong enough—and hey, I’m not messing around when I say I’m a great big girl, so most guys can’t lift me, and there’s absolutely no shame in that—and I can tell all of this in half a second. So I’ll shriek and squirm and otherwise try to sabotage the lift to avoid the awkwardness of letting the guy attempt and fail. It’s just better for everyone that way.

But this time, I realize what he’s about to do, and I squeal my “no” and push away from him and try to slip out of his arms. But he keeps hold of me and asks, “Why won’t you let me lift you? I can do it. I can lift you up.” And my stomach drops a little as I realize that this is about to become A Thing. I say no; I say I don’t like it; I say I have a fear of falling. And he still tries to coax me into it, and I see that I have become some kind of physical challenge, that he wants to prove that he can do it, and I start to feel like I’m a prop in an Olde Tyme World’s Strongest Man competition, with a bunch of kilted Scotsmen proving their superior strength by seeing who can haul the most sheep across the field. It makes me a little uncomfortable.

To be honest, I don’t know all that much about him. I know he’s older than me, and that he’s kind and respectful and gentle, and that he loves his family and that he’s good to his mother. I know that he’s a stone carver in a factory, and that his body has taken on the qualities of the material he works with. Tall and broad and a former bodybuilder, every inch of his body is hard, which is so alien to me that it makes me think he must be a Titan or something, rather than a human, like he must be Atlas, doomed to support the weight of the heavens on his shoulders. I know he has bagpipes that he doesn’t know how to play. I know we have absolutely nothing in common.

And I know we will never fall in love.

But he’s sweet and he’s thoughtful and he has strong hands, so when he asks to see me again I say yes because he’s a good kisser and he takes his time and because it’s cute that he tries to pretend to be put out when I climb into his lap to distract him from watching TV. And sometimes that’s enough. And besides, Shiawassee says this is Exactly What I Need Right Now.

But me, I’m not so sure. There are things that don’t quite sit right with me. They’re small things, but they have a cumulative effect that leave me feeling, I don’t know, like the juiciest steak selected for the Fourth of July barbecue, you know? Like a fatted calf that’s looked at as the veal it will become.

Now, I’ve said it before: I don’t object to being objectified. In the right context, a little objectification is perfect. So if I’m out with a guy and I catch him looking at my ass or peeking down my shirt, I’m not going to pretend to be offended because that’s all part of it, right? I’m not going to assume that a guy wants to get me into bed exclusively because I’m strange and hilarious and I talk too fast and can calculate percentages in my head. I mean, that would be ridiculous. So a little objectification is hot. But this…this is something different.

It started the first time we officially went out (and we’ve only been out a few times): he asked me “What kind of body type do you typically like in a guy?” Now, that’s an odd question on a first real date for a number of reasons, but first and foremost I found it odd because he didn’t ask “What kind of guy do you typically like?” but “What kind of body type do you like?” Now socially, I knew what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to describe his body type exactly. I was supposed to say something like, “I like a man who is like an elemental force—a man who looks like a cross between Poseidon and Mount Olympus itself—and if he’s graying just around the temples, even better.” But I can’t do that. Because I’m really uncomfortable at the assumption that what first draws me to a man is his body, or that I’m so limited in my palate that I would stick to only one type. I thought about it for a minute, and I realized that when I notice a guy, I listen to his voice first. That’s a man’s most attractive quality. Then of course, I listen to what he’s saying, which makes or breaks any potential attraction. Then I look at him smile and see if it’s real or it’s fake or what and see if it reaches up to his eyes. Because we all know to run away from a man whose smile doesn’t reach his eyes, don’t we?

And the guy’s body just kind of ends up becoming part of the package that is him. When I think about guys I’ve dated or crushed out on or whatever, there isn’t just one type. They’re not even in the same ballpark. Taller than me, shorter than me, epic as a Roman gladiator or lean as a whip, I think about the guys I’ve desired and realized that their bodies were sexy because they were uniquely theirs, not because of any pre-established beauty standard. In fact, I realized that the times that took me the longest to develop physical attraction to a new beau was when they had the bodies that fit a very traditional, mediatized, masculine ideal. The first time Mr. Fox got naked for me, for example—when he brought me back to his room after the pub one night, and I sat down to read NME, and I looked up and he was standing there, completely buck-ass naked—I remember looking at him and thinking that he couldn’t be a human being because he looked like a classical Greek statue. It took me a while to recognize him as having a body that I could understand, since he looked like a concept of masculinity rather than an actual man. But once I started to feel for him, I started to understand his body. The body is sexy because the man himself is sexy. Or because all bodies are sexy.

I know this may be an unusual stance, but I think it’s an important thing, so I try to explain it to Atlas. Either he doesn’t quite get it or he thinks I’m avoiding the question, so he starts talking about not his “type”, or the “type of women he usually likes”, but “the body type he usually likes”. Now you’d think this would be an unusual subject to bring up when you’ve just gotten a living, breathing woman back to your place and you haven’t even kissed her yet, but he insisted on telling me—in a nice, respectful, and genuine way—that he likes “a big girl”. But that’s it. Just “a big girl”. Not a big, badass, Amazonian wrestler-type. (Which isn’t me.) Or a big, nurturing, Earth mother-type who could feed the world with the copious milk from her monumental breasts. (Also not me.) Or, you know, a big, sassy, blonde girl who laughs too loudly and falls down a lot. (That's me, although I don’t know if that’s actually a type.) But no—just “a big girl”.

And he meant well, and it was supposed to be complimentary, you know, what with me being a big girl, but there was something weird about it. Because dude, if you bring me back to your house, I already know you’re attracted to me, so you don’t really need to reassure me that “Hey, I like the fat girls.” I mean, think if instead of “big”, he had said another simple, physical descriptor: I like a tall girl. I like a young girl. I like a disabled girl. I like an Asian girl. Then it sounds like he’s ordering up porn more than talking about his “type”. So it feels a little weird to me for a second, like I’m not actually the whole package that is me, or even just the combination of legs and ass and breasts and mouth, but like I’m just the size; I’m just the fat of me. But he’s sweet and respectful and he's cute in that mythological deity kind of way, and it has been too long since I’ve kissed a guy, so goddamn it I am totally going to make out with him before I go home.

During the eight hours of Far More Than Making Out that follows, he wants to talk about my body. A lot. The same again during the next intentionally-sleepless night I spend at his house. And of course, when you’re having sex with someone, you’re going to talk about their body, but with the exception of a couple of comments about my hair, everything he wanted to say about me had to do with my size. He talked a lot about my “curves”, which we all know is a euphemism for fat coined by women’s fashion magazines over the last few years so that they could claim to be inclusive of all body sizes without having to outright say that fat women can be beautiful. And sure, I’m fine with talk of “curves”. But he would repeatedly tell me “You’ve got a good shape on you” and how he likes a big ass on a woman and “I like a woman with meat on her”. And he wanted to talk about these photos I take of myself as pinup girls and how great my legs look in them because they’re “shapely”—i.e., big and “curvy”. But instead of this talk making me feel hotter than I normally do when I’m in bed with someone, it starts to make me feel kind of weird.

And it took me a bit to figure out why, because I don’t object to talking about my body or my size at all. If a guy I’m with wants to say that he thinks my big ass is sexy, then hey, that guy is awesome and I’m sure I’ll be even more inspired for him in bed that night. But this isn’t the same. Because with Atlas’ language, it’s not about my ass, but rather, some theoretical ass out there. It doesn’t seem to matter if I am specifically attached it or not. As long as it’s big.

So shortly after the Lifting Thing, he takes me out to eat, and I get him to talk about his extended family, and as he’s telling me some stories, I think that okay, this is nice, this is fine. We can be lovers for a while if we can have nice little conversations like this. But then the food comes out, and suddenly the conversations shifts back to…wait for it…”big girls”. And he says, “I like big women because, you know, they’re relaxed and not afraid to eat. Skinny girls are so uptight about food it’s no fun to go out with them.”

I smile to myself, thinking of how weight has been slowly slipping off me the last four months, due to my difficulty eating. I think of how I’m now at the point where it’s no problem if I’m relaxed and comfortable and around friends, but how when I’m alone I have to check the clock to make sure I’m eating regularly and how I have to actively make myself eat, since I still don’t have a real desire for food and since it mainly tastes like ashes in my mouth. And how if I’m really upset, I physically can’t swallow. I think of how a just few days ago, I looked at the clock and realized that I hadn’t eaten in 30 hours and still didn’t want to. I can’t tell him any of this.

So I say, “Well, there is an amazing amount of social pressure governing women’s body size,” trying to stick up for the skinny girls. Because hey, I sympathize with the skinny girls, you know, because fat or thin, all the ladies are getting bombarded with the same messages. We’re all under the same gun. And for a second, I think it’s kind of sweet that Atlas assumes that fat girls are just free, that somehow we’ve all used our own badassery to liberate ourselves from oppression.

But then he says, “Well, sure, I’d like to lose some weight just like everyone else…” But, dude, I didn’t say that. That’s not what I said. And I know this is a very important thing to clear up right away, because if dude is looking for someone to share in body hatred, he needs to know that this girl ain’t the one.

So I look him in the eye and say, “I don’t want to lose weight.”

And it’s not knee-jerk or defensive or anything; it’s just important and true. He needs to know this.

So I say again, matter-of-factly, “I don’t want to lose weight.”

And he looks at me and says, “Of course not—you got a good shape on you. You look great.”

I can tell this is going to be a problem.

Back at his house afterwards, we’re messing around pretty intensely, and he pulls me on top of him. I support my weight with my hands and my thighs—not because I’m self-conscious or anything, but because it’s just good manners, you know? It’s a cardinal rule in the sexual equivalent of Emily Post’s Etiquette. But he says, “You don’t have to do that. Put your weight on me. Give me your weight.”

And I know that I would love this if it were metaphoric—if he were indicating to me somehow that it’s okay for me to just let go, that sometimes it’s okay to let a lover be the strong one. But he is being literal; he wants to feel all my weight on top of him, which is not only impractical for any kind of messing around, but the idea also makes me feel not like an object, but like dead weight, like a carcass. Stick an apple in my mouth and I’m the star of the backyard pig roast.

And I don’t like it. And he’s nice, yes, and comfortable with sex and attentive and adventurous in bed and delighted to stay awake and active for hours and hours and hours on end, but is it really me, my body specifically that he is excited about? Or is it just my mass? The shape I form? The abstract set of curves I have that could be occupied by me…or by a side of beef, or a collection of pork shoulders, or an artfully-arranged selection of buffalo steaks?

Because when you’re a plaything or an object, hey, you’re a critical part of the game. There ain’t no game without you, and I’m down with that.

But when you’re a hunk of meat, you’re just…food.