The Salad Days, Meta Edition

Last week I got a call from the magazine I once wrote a column for – the column that became a book – wanting to write an update on how I was doing. The timing was strange: A few weeks before, while in Spain, Julio’s publicist recognized me from my column, something that still happens (but continues to surprise me). At the same time as the Spain trip – and after more than a year – my name finally came up on the NHS waiting list (“the envy of the world” – ha!) for treatment for binge eating.

I agreed to talk with the writer, though I warned her that I don’t weigh myself anymore, let alone publish the number. She’s new to the magazine, and it was obvious from the first couple of minutes I spoke with her that she had never read my column, not even as research for an interview. (I’ve never dared to interview someone without reading their book / listening to their album / watching their film, and I’ve always been shocked when my subject is shocked that I have taken the time.) It was more difficult to answer her questions than I would have expected, mostly because it all ended five years ago.

All I really can remember now is endless Boca burgers (which I told the writer I’d never eat again) and baby carrots and cottage cheese (I might eat them separately, but rarely, and definitely never together). The two years I wrote the column are in the cardboard box full of unsorted photos in my head marked “Salad Days” – not so much for the greenery I consumed (though I did make a giant salad every week and keep it in Tupperware) but for all the crazy, often-un-column-related things my friends and I did during those years. Just last week in Cornwall I was reminiscing about a beach trip – Summer of My Zebra Print Halter Top (ok, a little column related – I wouldn’t have been wearing something like that if I hadn’t lost weight) – where my best friend and I had so much fun that as we drove home, we speculated that we’d never be able to go to that beach again because it would never be as much fun. We haven’t been back.

The writer seemed surprised to hear that I only keep the book in my flat in a language I don’t speak (Dutch), so I quickly explained that I can’t bear to read anything I’ve written. When I have to choose clips to send to anyone, I find reading my own work like pulling off hundreds of Band Aids quickly while a packed stadium’s worth of people scratch their fingers across a blackboard. (Hyperbole? Me? Nah.)

She asked me why I’d written it, and I told her about the publicist in Spain, the one who’d said: “I was glad you wrote the book – I always wondered what happened to you. And I wondered after the book, too.”

* * *

When I got off the phone with the writer, I Googled myself – something I rarely do: I hate reading my own work, and I long ago stopped reading reviews and comments about the book. For every 10 emails or blogs or reviews that liked my book, there’d be one really cruel, cutting comment, and that would be the one that would play in my head in an endless loop. The comment itself never bothered me nearly as much the sense I often got that the person had misunderstood – or in some cases, had gotten the facts totally wrong. Not that I think nobody can criticize My Preshus Book – just that some of facts on which some people had built their incredibly vitriolic cases were just wrong. But you can’t go e-mailing everyone who writes something nasty or wrong trying to set them straight, can you?

Last week, I did. I read a blog with an entry titled “I Am [Beth],” where she talked about her inability to stop eating after doing long training runs for a marathon. “I Am [Beth],” she wrote at one point. “And that kinda sucks.” She talked about how I binged on doughnuts and then wondered why I wasn’t losing any weight. One of her commenters wrote that she used to see my column and think “Why doesn’t she just lose the weight, especially since she’s profiled in a big magazine.” (As I wrote at the close of the column, I so wished that losing weight in such a public way would have kept me on track – that’s why I did it in the first place – but it didn’t.) Neither the post nor the comment are the worst things I’ve ever read about myself, but something in me snapped. I have never binged on doughnuts, something I wrote in an anonymous comment, though it’s clear the commenter is me. (I would have e-mailed the blogger, but there was no link.) And I never once wondered when I was bingeing and running why I wasn’t losing weight – I don’t even think an ultramarathon could have kept me from gaining with some of my binges.

To my surprise (I’ll resist saying, “to her credit!”), she put up a post saying she was embarrassed she hadn’t double checked her facts, and that although the previous post tone was haughty, she’d been a big fan of the book. I’m trying to resist e-mailing the commenter…