Born Round: A Story of Family, Food and a Ferocious Appetite by Frank Bruni Page B

food line? And the way the chicken seemed to have a palpable crispness? And yet . . . and yet . . . the breading didn’t look all that thick. Could one piece, a breast, hurt so much? Hadn’t Mom always said that white meat was less caloric than dark?
    I’d go back to the food line. I’d get a fried chicken breast. I’d eat it, and then I’d worry—no, I’d conclude—that I’d miscalculated. That I’d eaten too much, and would have to get rid of some of what I’d eaten. This decision made, I’d get an ice cream sandwich. And a cookie. Two cookies, actually. If I was going to empty my stomach—if I was going to go through all of that messy, beet-faced trouble—I might as well make the most of the buildup, might as well acknowledge and address all my cravings and satisfy them. That way, I’d be less tempted the next day. I’d be less likely to need to throw up.
    Off to the second-floor bathroom in the back corner of the student union I’d go. I’d walk in, listen for the sounds of anyone else, bend down and glance under the stalls to check for feet, making sure the coast was clear. I’d stop briefly at the sink, turn on the water and moisten the index and middle fingers on my right hand, so that they’d slide more easily down my throat. Two fingers were better than one. They brought the gagging on faster.
    I’d enter one of the stalls and kneel down. I knew just how far down my throat to push the two fingers, just where and how long to tickle it. Once the food started coming up, I could pretty much will my throat to stay open and the food not to stop. Heaves built on themselves, one setting off another.
    Sometimes I’d have to probe and tickle my throat a second time, sometimes not. I could tell when I’d purged enough, because I could taste the flavors of what I’d eaten in reverse. I could gauge whether anything was still left in my stomach.
    Although I never persuaded myself that what I was doing was normal or meaningless, I was consoled by the fact that I seldom did it more than once every other day, and never twice on the same day. In a strange way I was consoled as well by my speed and efficiency when I did do it, by how undisruptive it was. It was a like a special talent, a nifty trick. I wondered: What other tricks might I try?
    I’d read that bulimics sometimes took laxatives as well, and from those stories I’d wrung another unintended moral: managed correctly, this practice, too, could be useful. It could be smart—if deployed only in special circumstances, in emergencies.
    An emergency came along. A big party was three days away, and the diet I’d vowed to start four days earlier hadn’t quite come together. So I bought bars of chocolate-flavored Ex-Lax and took twice the recommended dosage. I knew that it would eliminate only waste—food already digested—but that meant there’d be less mass in my body. Wouldn’t that make me look thinner? Or at least feel thinner?
    It did, so I kept the Ex-Lax around for the next emergency, and then bought some more Ex-Lax for the emergency after that.
    For this reason, too, it paid to know where the good bathrooms on campus were.
    Before I’d arrived at Carolina, I’d vowed to stop doing one thing and start doing another. These twinned resolutions had a shared effect. My worry about my weight actually intensified.
    What I was stopping was swimming. I just couldn’t stare anymore through foggy goggles at that thick black line on the bottom of the pool. And while I promised myself that I’d find some replacement exercise, I wasn’t sure what it would be, or how devoted to it I’d become. It certainly wouldn’t absorb as many hours a week—and burn as many calories a week—as swimming had, so I’d have to eat much less.
    Especially because of what I was determined to start: dating. In prep school I’d told myself that once I got to college, I’d be candid about what I felt—about who I was— and keep an eye out for other young gay men. I