Since I had only been a “normal” weight for about twenty minutes in 1977, I decided to try Overeaters Anonymous.  I always had trouble with their name because there is nothing “Anonymous” about rolls of cellulite and four chins—no secrets there, folks.

    You name a diet, and I have starved on it. I did them all. I even went to a hypnotist with the hope that he could crawl into my brain and attack the portion of the medulla that craves Godiva truffles. That was a bomb. His clothes smelled like a litterbox and his teeth needed a good sandblasting. Between the two, it was certainly enough to throw my concentration. I realized I wasn’t hypnotized when he kept saying the word “proteins” over and over—pronouncing it “pro-tee-ins”—and I was giggling when I should have been REMing. He threw up his hands in frustration, but not before he grabbed my two hundred dollars.

  So when I walked into Overeaters Anonymous (the secret fat folk themselves called it “OA”), I was pretty disgusted and willing to try anything.
   The first thing I noticed was that they drank coffee like fiends (non-fat milk, of course) and chainsmoked. A group of OAers were milling about outside before the meeting began, and they greeted me a bit too warmly for my taste.
   “Oh, you’re new?” one of them said, lighting my cigarette from one of the thirty lit ones she had tucked into various body orifices. She grasped my hand and squeezed it, gazing into my eyes a little bit too intensely for someone I was certain had no urge to take me to bed.  “You are going to be so glad you came to these rooms.”
   I peered inside the Knights of Columbus doorway, and saw only one big, dingy room. “Rooms?” I asked her.
   “Just an expression. This is the last stop on the line,” she assured me solemnly. “There is no place else to go. This is it.”
   “How uplifting,” I said.
  “Well, I don’t mean to bring you down or anything. But we have found that if we live our lives One Day At A Time, we can turn it over and find some serenity.”
  “Turn what over?”
  “Our power. Our will. Turn our will over to God.”
  “I want to lose weight,” I told her. “I don’t know how much interest God has in that.”
She brightened. “Oh, but He does! Once you turn your will over to Him, he will help you.”
I thought about that. “He will make me crave celery?”
   A hint of a frown passed over her face, but was quickly gone. The beatific smile reappeared. “No, but when you Turn Over to Him, he will give you the strength you already discovered you don’t have yourself. You can’t do this alone. We are out of control. Our behavior is insane. Your Higher Power has to take over now. You have to Let Go and Let God.”
   “I see,” I said, but I didn’t. I wondered where the concepts of God and salad merged, but I didn’t have time to wonder too long. She grasped my hand again, and I resisted the urge to pull it away. “It’s starting,” she said. I obediently let her pull me inside. Thirty cigarettes were tossed onto the pavement before they got crushed beneath our fat feet.

   We sat in a big circle, trying to get comfortable in metal folding chairs. I noticed that some people had cheek overhang when they sat, and it occurred to me that they hadn’t planned all that well for our comfort.
   A thin woman with baggy clothes stood in the middle of the circle, holding some notes. She cleared her throat. “My name is Jean,” she announced. “I am a compulsive overeater.” Everyone yelled, “WELCOME, JEAN!” with what I thought was a tad too much enthusiasm.
    Jean raised her arms at us, indicating we should rise. Some people had a problem with that, so it took a little longer than it should have. I wondered what was next: The Pledge of Allegiance? Suddenly I felt the people on either side of me grab my hand. The one on my left had a palm like an oil slick, and for the second time that evening I fought the urge to pull my hand away. What the hell was with all this hand grabbing? I gritted my teeth and recited the Serenity Prayer with everyone, once again marveling at how beautiful the words were. When we had finished, I gratefully took my hand back and wiped it surreptitiously on my skirt.
   Jean, clearly in charge, waved her arms at us to be seated. She sat down on a chair and looked around the room at us.
   “I,” she paused dramatically, “lost one hundred and fifty pounds.”
  Everybody cheered, hooted and applauded. Jean waved her hand. “I could not have done it alone. The Lord helped me every step of the way.” I looked at Jean closely, and decided it wouldn’t have been such a terrible thing if God had given her a new face along with her newly svelte body. Then I berated myself for having such unkind thoughts.
   Another woman had taken Jean’s place in the middle of the circle, and she was waiting for the room to get quiet. She was a pretty, well-dressed middle-aged woman.
   “My name is Ruth,” she said softly, “and I am a compulsive overeater.”
   “WELCOME, RUTH!”
  She smiled painfully. “I have been having a rough time for the past week. I am trying to turn it over, but I’m having trouble. Last night my husband and I went out to dinner and he ordered some carbos, you know, fried. I was really craving them and I had a few.  Well, actually, I had six. ” She paused, inhaled deeply, fighting tears. There were sympathetic murmurs from the group. “I hate myself, just hate myself. And then Bob ordered some simple sugars for dessert, and I had some of that, too.” She burst into tears. Jean went to her and patted her back soothingly. The woman next to me, Oil Slick, clucked with sympathy.
  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I raised my hand. Jean regarded me warily. “Ruth is still qualifying,” she said, “but I notice you are new. Yes?”
  “I am just wondering why she was referring to potatoes and ice cream that way.” Everyone gasped and I saw some angry stares. A few others shushed me, shaking their heads violently, mouthing the word “no.” I realized I had said something very, very wrong.
  “Your name is…?” Jean asked me with a tight smile.
  “Mindy.”
  “Well, Mindy, we don’t say those words here.”
  “Why not?”
  “Mindy, once you read the literature you will understand. We try to eliminate food fantasy, and hearing those words can be a catalyst to destructive behavior.”
  “Potatoes?” I said again, amazed, and started to giggle.
  Jean’s smile was now a memory. She looked at me like I was plankton. “Yes.”
    She turned away, dismissing me. A few people in the group started to snicker, too, but a warning glare from Jean silenced them. I put my hand over my mouth to muffle my laughter. I kept my head down for a while, staring at my feet until I felt I could control myself.
   Oil Slick nudged me. “I don’t understand it either. I once told them that my sister-in-law was eating Veal Parmesan in front of me and I thought they were gonna kick me out.”
  I snorted, waving my hand at her. I whispered, “please stop it, I have to calm down.”
 Oil Slick warmed to her audience. She whispered back, “Veal Parmesan! Veal Parmesan!”
   I started to giggle again and Jean shot both of us a dirty look. Her eyes widened at us as she gestured to a man who had just taken the floor, indicating we were being rude. He was a big blue collar guy in his thirties. I watched him rub his massive thighs nervously, while chewing the life out of a piece of gum. We all waited.
   “My name is Ray and I am a compulsive overeater.”
  “WELCOME, RAY!”
  “I was doin' well until last night. I was livin’ my life one day atta time, but last night I just lost it. The kids were hungry, you know. So I got in my truck to get some Kentucky Fried…..some proteins. “
  I felt myself starting to smile.
  “Well, I got the bag in the car. I took Smokey, my German Shepard with me for company. So I got this big bag of…proteins…and put it on the passenger seat. The smell was fillin’ up the car, and it was drivin’ me crazy. I was starvin’, you know? Well Smokey ripped open the bag and started eatin’. He knocked the bag over and all of it fell on the floor. Except for one piece. Well just before he was able to get it in his mouth I tried to grab it from him, ‘cause that piece was mine. So here I was, driving down the Van Wyck Expressway at eighty miles an hour, fighting my dog for a piece of chicken. Ooops…sorry. “
 I buried my face in my hands, muffled a snort.
 “I realized then that my life was out of control and I needed to come to these rooms and find God again.”
 He lost God on the Van Wyck, I thought, and pinched my thigh to keep from laughing. I surpressed the dizzying urge to raise my hand and ask Ray who won.

   The meeting ended with yet another joining of hands and a chant: “Keep Coming Back! It works if you work it so work it!”  Pure poetry.

   As I was putting on my coat, Jean and another woman approached me. I stood back so neither of them could have a clear shot at my hand. “This is Sharon,” Jean said, nodding at the smiling woman next to her. Sharon was about six feet tall, and had an uncanny resemblance to every movie female prison guard I’d ever seen. I wouldn’t want to cross this woman. “Hey,” Sharon said.
  “Hey,” I said back.
   “Sharon is going to be your Sponsor. A Sponsor becomes your closest friend. You must talk to her every day, and discuss all your problems with food with her. She is only there to help you. Some of us even report to our Sponsors what we have eaten. It helps knowing that what you eat will be Turned Over. If you guys have a problem working together, please let me know and I will make a change. You have to feel comfortable with your Sponsor, as he or she will become a very important person in your life. Is this alright with you?”
  I looked at Sharon again. “Sure,” I said. Sharon grinned at me.
  “Sharon has been in OA for sixteen years,” Jean said proudly.
  "Wow," I said, thinking that Sharon could lose eighty pounds and still be pretty scary.
  “I go up and down,” Sharon said to me, reading my mind. “We seek Progress, Not Perfection.”
   “You guys have an annoying little saying for everything, don’t you?” I asked. Sharon laughed. Jean didn’t.
  “Another thing you need to learn about is ‘Service’. Service means lending a hand whenever you can. It is one of the tenets of OA,” Jean said, ignoring my last remark. “There are usually people here who need a ride home. You drove here, didn’t you?”

   You ever try to fit six fat people in an Oldsmobile Firenza? Try it sometime. Trust me, it’s an experience you won’t forget. Four women and one man needed a ride, including my new friend Sharon, who ended up jamming herself between Oil Slick and me in the front seat. Oil Slick insisted on shaking everyone’s hand before we smashed ourselves inside my little car, and I was grateful that I didn’t have to go through that unappetizing little ritual again. I watched with amusement as four people wiped their hands on their pants with varying degrees of slyness.
   After a lot of grunts, groans, adjustments, “oomph’s!” and “excuse me’s”, we were all ready to go without one inch to spare in any direction. Due to Sharon’s huge left breast smashing against my arm, I was forced to drive with my left hand. I had this vision of opening the door and all of us spilling out to the ground, expanding like six loaves of yeasty bread dough.
   Six cigarettes lit up simultaneously; six pieces of gum were torn into and chewed with deadly seriousness. I realized I was so hungry that I was dizzy. “Anybody want to join me for protein on a bun with a side of carbos?”
  Sharon looked at me sternly. “Oh I see you are going to need to attend a lot of meetings,” she said, handing me another piece of gum.

   I was just about to dive into a platter of fried chicken when somebody started ringing a bell in my ear.
   I opened my eyes, sort of, and looked at the clock. It was four in the morning and the phone was ringing.
  It was Sharon. Oh Jesus. I was already sorry I had started this whole OA thing.
  “Did I wake you?” she asked.
  “Oh no,” I said. “I was just painting the ceiling.”
  “Oh good,” she said, relieved, and I rolled my eyes. “Why are you calling, Sharon?”
   She burst into tears. I softened immediately, and made soothing noises.
  When she could finally talk, it came out that she had ploughed through a half gallon of Rocky Road ice cream, taking no prisoners. For one short moment, I envied her.
 “I hate myself!” she moaned. “I am disgusting! I just can’t seem to Turn It Over.”
 “Oh, you Turned It Over, alright,” I said, thinking of that ice cream. “Listen Sharon, it’s not the end of the world. You were starving. You felt deprived. What you did is very natural. Stop hating yourself.”
  “I am not in touch with my Higher Power. I was exerting My Will.”
  “Oh, that’s a bunch of happy horseshit,” I told her. “You had some ice cream. Big deal. If God, or your Higher Power wants anything, it’s for you to love yourself no matter what you did, and no matter what you look like, no matter how much you weigh.  That's what a real Higher Power is, Sharon. Nothing less than that. I think maybe I figured that out for myself tonight."

   When I finally got off the phone, the sun was coming up. I made myself some liquid caffeine, and fried up two cholesterols instead of my usual three. Progress, Not Perfection. Yeah, that sounded pretty good to me.