Skinny Minnie. As stupid as that name was, I felt delighted that someone would attach it to me. She handed me sweaters rather than jackets because, as she explained, the jackets she pulled for me would all be too big. To my amazement and delight, everything was too big. We set a time for another fitting the following day.
She shook her head again. “I wish I had a tenth of your discipline.”
“Well, I had help. I have a great nutritionist.” I looked at Vera’s body. She was chubby. I’d never noticed before. “You don’t need to lose weight. You look great.”
Conversations about weight are practically scripted. There are only a couple of things to say in response to a woman complaining about her weight, and the response I just gave Vera was probably the most popular.
“I need to lose twenty pounds—at least! Seriously, will you tell me how you did it? Like, what do you eat? What’s, like, your average day?”
She admired me. She really looked as though she was a little in awe. She thought I could teach her how to be disciplined, which was ridiculous. You can’t teach someone self-control any more than you can teach them common sense.
“I’d love to, but it’s really tailor-made to what my body responds best to. I really don’t think it would work for you.”
I wouldn’t have ever told her my secrets. This was mine. I was successful at the one thing almost everyone wants to be good at, dieting. Besides, I couldn’t tell anyone what I ate. I could just imagine her face when I told her that if she wanted to achieve this level of success then she’d have to eat two-thirds of an oatmeal sachet for breakfast, tuna with butter spray for lunch, a spoonful of ground turkey with butter spray for dinner, and for a treat, Jell-O mixed with butter spray.
“Okay then, Skinny Minnie. Fine. You’re done losing weight now though, right? ’Cause you look perfect—but any more and you’ll be too thin.”
“Yep. Hard part’s over. It’s all about maintaining it now.”
I wasn’t done losing weight. Although I thought I looked good, I knew I could look even better. When I turned sideways to a mirror, I could see that the front of my thighs were shaped like a banana from my knee to my hips. At 105 pounds, my goal weight, they would look straight. I still had six more pounds to go.
“Gotta go to work. They need me on set. See you tomorrow.” I left the wardrobe rooms feeling elated. I didn’t even need to smoke a cigarette. As I walked to the set, I felt calm and in control.
“Morning, Portia.” Peter greeted me as I walked into the unisex bathroom set where my one half-page scene would take place. I didn’t have any dialogue. I seemed to be used less and less, which was annoying because I’d never looked more camera-ready. I’d never looked more like an actress should look.
“Hi. Good morning. How’s it going here?”
“You know. Same old stuff. I’m in court again this episode.” He rolled his eyes. He was always in court.
“Better you than me.” I said it, but I didn’t mean it. I was extremely jealous that David Kelley gave Peter his clever cross-examinations, his brilliant closing arguments. I thought that I had proven my chops as an attorney the previous season, and yet I was relegated to the odd scene in the background of the law office. I had even lost my status as the sexy, untouchable love interest that had me revealing myself in my underwear. It seemed ironic that since I had spent hours a day sculpting my body, preparing myself for scenes that I used to be unprepared for, I no longer had the scenes.
Although I was acting in the scene with him, it felt like I was watching Peter perform, just as the crew was watching him perform. He walked into the unisex bathroom, saw me in the character of Nelle, yelped, and walked back out. In every take he was hilarious. I did nothing. I just had to stand still and in a very specific spot so the mirrors in the unisex set didn’t reflect my face into the lens. I was told that if the camera saw me, I would ruin the joke.
After I finished my one scene that morning, I met my brother for lunch at Koo Koo Roo. I usually ate lunch alone, preferring to eat my canned tuna and butter spray in the privacy of my dressing room. I had made a makeshift kitchen in the shower of my bathroom where I stocked spices and bottles of Bragg Liquid Aminos, canned tuna, and Jell-O. I also kept all the tools I needed—a can opener, chopsticks, and bowls. One bowl, however, I had to take back and forth with me because I used it to help me measure portions. It was a cheap Chinese-looking footed bowl with fake pottery wheel rings on the inside, and the first ring served as a marker to show me how much tuna I should eat. If for some reason, when I was mixing my portion of tuna with the seasoning and butter spray it went over the first ring, I tended to throw it away and start over. Usually, if it went over the first ring when I was mixing it meant I was too anxious to eat and I was hurrying out of sheer greed. As I ate approximately a third of a can of tuna per meal, there were three chances to get it right.
I didn’t like to eat out or with other people, but I hadn’t seen my brother in a while and so I made an exception. He had been asking me to celebrate with him for some time as he had quit working for the biomedical product company and started his own helicopter company, Los Angeles Helicopters. I chose the venue. Koo Koo Roo was the only restaurant I would go to, as they seemed to use very little oil or fat. When I walked in, my brother was already sitting down, a plate full of food in front of him.
“Sorry, Sissy.” He gestured to his food. “I have a meeting at two o’clock.” He reached into my bag where he knew he’d find a silky white head to pet. “Hi, Beany.” He whispered his hello to my dog who illegally went everywhere with me in that bag.
“Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “Clearly Mr. Bigshot Pilot is too important to wait for his sister.”
My brother is a pilot and I am an actress, I thought. Two kids from Australia and here we are in LA, both living our dreams.
“I’ll go order.”
I was secretly very relieved that he had gotten his lunch before me. Ordering the four-ounce turkey dinner at Koo Koo Roo in Manhattan Beach could be tricky. Only the one in Hancock Park near my old apartment weighed my turkey under the four-ounce portion because they knew I liked it that way. At other locations, like this one, the people behind the counters argued that I would have to pay the same price for the full four ounces so I might as well have the full four ounces. It was a tiring argument for me and a confusing one for them as they thought I was presenting them with some kind of riddle. I liked the restaurant chain, but because the one closest to my home was difficult for me to frequent, I tended to eat there less. I couldn’t go to the Koo Koo Roo on Santa Monica near my home because it was in the middle of boys’ town, the gay part of town, and I was terrified that if I were seen there, people would know I was gay. Although sometimes I thought that was ridiculous, mostly I thought staying away was the right thing to do. After all, everyone in there was gay, so why wouldn’t I also be gay? Would I be the only heterosexual in the whole place looking for turkey? Would the customers look at me with surprise and concern, having had a rare sighting of a heterosexual who has clearly lost her way, and offer to give me directions to get back to the straight side of town? Or would they quietly snigger and congratulate themselves for having a finely tuned gaydar, for knowing that I was gay all along, as they stood in line to place their orders?
I sat down with my plate of turkey—all four ounces of it despite asking for three—and immediately began feeding Bean from the plate. She loved turkey and she helped keep my portions down. She loved Koo Koo Roo as much as I did. I was so busy feeding Bean, it wasn’t until my brother spoke that I realized that he had been watching me in silence for quite some time.