diana cowgill

I’m naturally thin. But it’s not like I’m naturally thin and gorgeous. Or naturally thin and sexy. No, I’m naturally thin and weird looking. Like your average freshman flautist. Spindly. Rangy. Feeble looking. I think the main reason that I stay so skinny is that I am incapable of overeating. If I eat even a little bit too much, I feel so poorly that I want to die. Yes. I ate too much yesterday, and all I could do was hate myself and go to bed. I figured I’d write a blog about it.

I went to Santa Barbara to have lunch with a friend of mine. I haven’t been up to the Bizzle in almost a year, so I was very pleased at the idea of wiling away my Sunday there. The drive up was of course gorgeous, the weather was of course perfect, and my friend told me that my long hair made me look like a hippie. A capital start to the day.

We went to lunch at a cooler-than-thou little restaurant. I was starving, and I ordered the chicken and waffles. ***ASIDE*** In case you don’t know, chicken and waffles are a thing. There are some famous little joints in bad parts of LA that made chicken and waffles trendy, and now you see them around.**** After a great expanse of time I was handed a massive Belgian waffle, garnished with several chicken strips. It was so unhealthy, and it looked terrible. Perfect, I thought.

My lunch date is a staunch Republican, so he yammered on happily, barely stopping to breathe, and I was free to just nod, and pick at my lunch. The chicken was like the fingers children are given poolside at the Marriot, and the waffle was golden and bigger than my face. I bathed the operation in warm, thin maple syrup, ate my fill, and daintily wiped my lips.

And then. S**t started to expand. I don’t know if you eat pancakes and waffles all that often. Helpful hint- don’t. They sit in your stomach, and they transform. Like those grotesque grow your own mermaids, they soak up everything and just get bigger and bigger and bigger. They fill you with dense, sticky regret. They make you feel slow. Your mouth feels like you’ve just woken up after a night of scandalous behavior. You feel your pores. You are aware of sweat.

I sat there for quite a while in acute discomfort. I felt like a miserable pig, and all I wanted was to grimace, take my pants off, and sit in a fountain. My friend suggested that we go for a walk instead, and it was perhaps the superior option. Too much waffle thickens your blood, and the brisk walk reintroduced oxygen.

I felt okay on the ride home; I breathed in the sea air, I thought about a writing project I’ve just been given. I felt so good, in fact, that I made a very rash call to a very good friend. He was about to leave town, and I needed to see him*, so, I figured, why not? And I bribed him. “Want rolls?” I asked. “I’m buying a bunch. They’re giving me barbeque sauce. And I’ll buy you a Mexican Coke.”

He couldn’t say no to the offer, so I went and got the necessary supplies and we met up. I realized moments after it was too late that I shouldn’t have broken bread in the state that I was in. It had been maybe two hours since my bulging discomfort had plateaued, and my digestive peace was still tenuous. My gut was delicate; as feeble and wispy as I am.

But hindsight is 20/20, and the garlic rolls were irresistibly fragrant, and I literally COULD NOT HELP MYSELF. I inhaled two of them, and the effort stunned me. My stomach, gummed up and fuming, sat in the middle of my person as heavy and immobile as a corpse.

I knew instantly that I had eaten too much. My previous discomfort was a small leak, able to be patched by a piece of gum, a wedged in finger. This current discomfort was an Earth destroying flood. I turned to my friend and grunted. “Ugh. Too many carbs.” We sat down. Tried to have a conversation. Failed. I made him feel my stomach; the rumbles, the heat. My belly skin was pulled taut, and extended farther than my boobs.

“That’s nasty,” he said, and left. On my own now, I took off all my clothes, opened the window and climbed on top of my bed to sleep it off.

And that, friends, is why I try not to overeat.

**** I needed to see him so he could take all of the candy from my house. A few days before this incident, my brother shot me in the face with a Starburst. He got two massive rubberbands, which he used to launch the starburst directly into my glasses. He could have blinded me, or taken out a tooth. My eyes and smile are my best features, so, to protect them, the candy had to go.