How I bluffed my way through college

Years after graduating with an English degree, I have a shameful secret: I've never actually read the classics

By Kate Harding

Kate Harding

Topics:Mortifying Disclosures, College

Mr. White was that stern, older English teacher adored by the bookish nerds and despised by those students accustomed to getting by on entitlement and shouty parental phone calls. Naturally, I was crazy about him, and although I can’t say the feeling was entirely mutual, two lines from a college recommendation letter he wrote for me prove that he understood my fundamental nature better than most adults I knew, including my parents: “Kate will never be a cheerleader, but she has a genuine love of learning. She is never without a book; usually not the assigned text.”

I love that “assigned text” line all the more for its being sort of affectionately passive-aggressive. It’s true that in Mr. White’s A.P. Major British Writers, as in every English lit class I took between seventh grade and finishing my B.A., I only did about a third of the reading. Thanks to a finicky nature and what I now recognize as textbook ADHD, reading past Page 3 of a book that didn’t immediately hold my interest felt like going to the zoo and being forced to watch the naked mole rats for hours, never being permitted to look in on the giraffes.

I knew how thrilling books could be, and I was appalled by the notion that the most ostensibly worthwhile reading — i.e., the kind we were assigned — should feel like eating my literary vegetables. So I ignored my homework and let myself be effortlessly absorbed by, for example, Tom Robbins’ twisted sense of humor; Stephen King’s evocative descriptions and zippy, foul-mouthed dialogue; J.D. Salinger’s angsty, gifted teens.

I wasn’t anti-assignment when the books on the syllabus felt relevant and vital to me. “Lord of the Flies” was exactly my speed at 13, when adolescents’ capacity for cruelty was of particular interest. I read “Ordinary People” — about a depressed kid in a wealthy Chicago suburb who couldn’t connect with his appearance-conscious mother, ahem — for my sophomore English class and a dozen times after. I often skipped our annual Shakespeare requirement, but junior year I devoured “Hamlet” in spite of myself. (Basically, if there was at least one young, messed-up guy at the center of a story, I was interested.)

And so I squeaked by. As long as I read just enough to get through a couple of papers and a final exam, I could bluff my way through class discussions and easily pull at least a B+. Sure, I probably could have been a straight A English student if I’d consistently read even, say, 50 percent of the assigned books, but I had a system that worked for me.

Unfortunately, Mr. White was wrong about one thing that my parents got absolutely right: My genuine love of learning — without a corresponding work ethic and tolerance for boredom — wouldn’t do a damned thing for me in college.

——-

In the summer of 1996, when international cellphone calls were still a spy movie fantasy for most of us, I stepped into an iconic red British phone booth to call my mother in Illinois and tell her I was still alive.

“Guess where I’m calling from!” I greeted her.

“Your report card just came,” she greeted me. “You’re on academic probation again.”

I’m not sure what she really said next, but here’s a fairly close approximation of what I heard: What the hell is wrong with you? How can you be so lazy? Do you want to flunk out? Do you think the world is going to hand you a job, no matter how badly you’ve screwed up? Do you think you’re better than everyone else, and the rules don’t apply to you? You are a bad person, and I don’t love you.

OK, she definitely didn’t say that last part, but that was the message that thundered in my head every time we discussed my academic shortcomings. “I’ll work really hard this year,” I told her, now crying in a phone booth in a (not terribly, but still) strange land. “I promise I’ll graduate.”

And so I did. The following May, bursting not so much with pride as relief, I knelt onstage in the University of Toronto’s grand Convocation Hall and placed my hands between the chancellor’s while some other robed stranger dropped a faux-ermine hood around my neck. The hood represented no particular honor, mind you; everybody gets one as part of the school’s marvelously campy, theoretically Oxford-based pomp and circumstance. (Seriously, among other things, a puffy-hatted beadle leads a procession of VIPs into the auditorium, wielding the gilted U. of T. mace like a scholarly majorette. It is fantastic.) After five years of competition and self-recrimination, I was suddenly indistinguishable from the diligent geeks and charming ass-kissers who’d made their parents proud all along. That day, in our identical black robes and slightly dingy hoods, we all became graduates of one of the finest universities in the world — and already, nobody much cared how we got there.

Good thing, since after five years and three schools, my cumulative GPA was 1.56. You needed a 1.5 to graduate. I was now the proud recipient of an English degree — and I had never read the classics.

My spectacular underachieving was a head-scratcher for all involved. I was never a party girl or even that much of a rebel. I despised my body too much to pursue self-destructive sexual encounters, or any other kind. I liked drinking all right but couldn’t buy my own for a long time, and I never enjoyed smoking pot enough to want to buy my own. Beyond that, my history of drug use begins and ends with a single failed attempt at dropping acid — during which I sat quietly in a bathroom corner with a pacifier in my mouth, nodded at my friends and had zero revelations, except that I actually didn’t mind spending a whole party like that.

Still, my aversion to the stereotypical troubled teen indicators notwithstanding, I struggled. In addition to the undiagnosed ADHD, there was the untreated depression and anxiety, the acute body shame, the general self-loathing. During my first week in college, I was raped, and I spent the rest of that year sharing a tiny, everyone-knows-everyone campus with my assailant while working toward a school-based hearing that would be equally humiliating and fruitless. So that was awesome. After that I transferred schools, twice, and spent my final year living on fewer than 1,000 calories a day, because I threw myself into dieting as obsessively as I did into reading for pleasure and daydreaming about becoming a famous literary novelist (I know, I know) whom no one would ever suspect of not having read Dickens or Faulkner.

In other words, with the combined benefits of therapy and hindsight, I can see plenty of logical reasons for my academic failures. At the time, though, all I knew was that I was broken somehow — whether the diagnosis was pathological laziness or plain old stupidity — and was thus swiftly embarrassed in any discussion of literature that went beyond the bullet points.

Fortunately, few did. I knew the names — Nick Carraway and Daisy Buchanan, Heathcliff and Cathy, the Bennets and the Joads and Humbert Humbert. I knew when Bloomsday was celebrated, and why Cordelia lost the kingdom to her bitchy sisters, and who the madwoman in the attic was. And let’s be honest: In most situations, that is plenty to pass as a person well-versed in the classics. I could have gone most of my life as a small-time fraud.

Instead, at the beginning of 2011, I embarked on a year-long classics-reading project, partly to atone for my wasted education and partly because, at 36 years old, I finally think that sounds like fun. It’s been fascinating to watch people respond to the admission that it’s not a rereading project. Usually, they chuckle politely and cop to some mild slacking themselves until, inevitably, I come to the literary oversight they find unforgivable. (Most often it’s Gatsby.) You’ve never read that? And you have an English degree? What the hell is wrong with you?

That probably wouldn’t bother me much, except that my long-standing secret fantasy — apart from being a famous literary novelist who gets seven figures per book and wins all the prizes — is that I will someday go back to school and be the kind of student my teachers and parents (one now 75, the other dead) always wanted me to be. In 2005, I graduated from a non-traditional MFA program I actually thrived in, which you’d think would have been enough of a happy ending for me. Advanced degree! Unimpeachable transcript! Boo-yah! But I still have this utterly irrational, yet no less ferocious desire to be a bona fide scholar — a stuffy, tweedy stereotype who’s read everything. Part of me can’t stop wanting to try for a Ph.D. in English lit just so I could hang that degree on my office wall like the head of a bear I done wrassled and kilt with my own two hands. I won, you bastard. Not you.

You could say a Ph.D. in English literature is my white whale, even.

And no, of course I haven’t read “Moby-Dick.”

: Kate Harding is the co-author of "Lessons From the Fatosphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce With Your Body" and has been a regular contributor to Salon's Broadsheet. More Kate Harding

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The 38-year-old relationship virgin

For nearly four decades, I have missed out on one of the most essential parts of human nature: Romantic love

By Erin Auerbach

Topics:Mortifying Disclosures, Life stories, Coupling

A few years ago at my second cousin’s bat mitzvah, one of my aunt’s friends approached me. She dispatched with three sentences of small talk before she placed her hand on my shoulder and leaned forward. “So, have you met anyone? Do you have a boyfriend?” she asked. Then she lowered her voice. “Or even a girlfriend?”

I guess I should have expected my extended family to publicly speculate about my sexual orientation. My aunt’s children all attained marital status in their 20s. Believe me, they had no choice: In that circle, you’re nobody until somebody has compromised your surname.

But I’m not just single. At 38 years old, I have never been in a serious relationship. You read that right. That wouldn’t be so embarrassing if I were 20. Or even 27. But after nearly four decades on earth, I have managed to miss out on one of the most essential components of human nature: romantic love.

Don’t get me wrong — I’ve had boyfriends, bed buddies and dates. I’m not quite America’s answer to Susan Boyle. But I have managed to reach this age without a relationship that lasted more than six months. My teenage cousins have had more enduring romances. I’ve never experienced the agony of wondering if a marriage proposal was around the bend. I’ve never signed cards from the both of us. I’ve never even been able to bring a plus-one to formal events. If I were born a few generations earlier, I would have been relegated to house mother, schoolmarm or reclusive poet by now. Instead, I live in an age when female liberation allows me to recklessly dive in to any relationship I want.

Unfortunately, I don’t know what that might be.

Solitude set in early. I didn’t date in high school. Nothing quashes a teenage boy’s libido like a fat, near-sighted choir nerd. But that’s no excuse. Bad skin, weight problems and an unapologetic affection for show tunes didn’t stop my fellow dweebs from finding love once they left the harrowing halls of secondary education.

If I’m honest, I spent the better part of my life sabotaging myself. In college I wrote papers and poetry that decried the trappings of marriage and children. During my 20s, I hung out with men I knew didn’t have any long-term potential as spouses or baby daddies. In my young mind, dating the server with a great sense of humor and an intermittent cocaine problem was a good idea. I naively thought my affection could heal him, make him quit drugs forever and commit to me. Instead he got fired from the restaurant where we both worked and dumped me after a month.

From 19 to 26, I had several short-term boyfriends — a waiter here, an artsy-fartsy type there. During my undergraduate days in Arizona, a fellow theater major took interest in me. A few weeks after we began dating, he invited me over to play Trivial Pursuit with him and his friends, every man for himself. I was a single slice away from winning when I touched his arm and teased, “See, we should have teamed up. Now I’m going to have to beat you.”

He picked up my pie and hurled it across his dingy apartment, causing the plastic parts to scatter. I should have known we were doomed then. Instead, I figured it out when he brought a date to one of my performances.

“Relationships are supposed to feel good,” my mother said as I boo-hooed into the phone, stage makeup sliding down my face. “You’ve been miserable since you starting seeing him. That just isn’t right.”

It would be easy to blame her for my table-for-one status. My mom did everything to keep our home intact. She cooked, set mousetraps, drove my brothers and me to school and supported our activities while working full-time and caring for my ailing father. I had a very stable childhood, but I watched my mother work 10 times harder than the rest of us to ensure it stayed that way. To my over-analytical (if somewhat misguided) way of thinking, I associated romantic attachment with servitude. I vowed to not have to endure such a seemingly thankless effort.

Women in my generation just think differently about settling down. If you asked my mom, aunt or just about any woman of their era, they would tell you that loneliness is a choice. Of course, they were subject to repressive social mores that thrust them into the arms of someone by their early 20s. It led to a 50 percent divorce rate. (Though I should clarify that my parents were together until my father’s death and my aunt and uncle have been married nearly 50 years.) But that importance placed on marriage back then also prevented the existence of women like me — looking for the perfect piece of the puzzle that never quite arrives, supporting myself, but longing for a companion.

At times I think the sexual revolution really screwed me. My mom, who came of age at the dawn of the movement, taught me that I didn’t need a man to validate my existence. But she also raised me with retro convictions and the idea that sex should be reserved for marriage. I knew I wasn’t going to marry young like her, yet I struggled to embrace the power of my vagina. Many of my friends racked up multiple sex partners and didn’t think twice about one-night-stands. But the few times I engaged in such debauchery, I wound up with a personal infection that I interpreted as punishment for my transgressions. It’s not like I was raised in a home of hellfire and damnation, but I was terrified of disappointing my parents. I felt like an after-school special: The good girl drinks too much and does the dirty. In the next scene, she sits remorsefully in the gynecologist’s office, her heels digging into the stirrups of shame.

I can’t fault my folks for the kinds of guys I found attractive when I was young. Back then, I wanted the creative types who had potential to do great things but never actually did them. I met one such obnoxious but alluring dude during my Vegas years while waiting in line at the Einstein Bros. Bagels across from UNLV. He had blue eyes, just the right amount of stubble and wore aftershave that made him smell like a masculine ocean breeze.

Dates with the Bagel Boy consisted of anything we could do for less than $5. We listened to bad karaoke while feasting on a $2 French toast breakfast at Ellis Island Casino and Brewery. During $3 Bingo at Sam’s Town he enjoyed secretly exposing himself to me under the mess hall-style table. He was proud of his genitals and really enjoyed shocking me. Despite his crude behavior, I continued to see him because I found him irresistible. Our most shameful cheap date came at the expense of a local Outback restaurant where he pretended that we had purchased a takeout meal but were denied our obligatory bread basket, so they gave us four loaves of fresh, free carbs. I hated the taste of deceit.

Bagel Boy occasionally threw gifts on my balcony: James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time” and Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road.” But expanding my literary palate was by far the most satisfying thing about that relationship. He only wanted me on his severely limited terms and didn’t exactly believe in fidelity. My brother Harris still loves to say that things went sour with the Bagel Boy because he dipped his bialy into someone else’s cream cheese.

For the next few years, I tried meeting men on AOL, eHarmony, JDate, Hurry Date and at various religious and secular speed-dating events. But it was useless. I didn’t know what the hell I wanted and was afraid of picking the wrong man. My travel agent once said that when you go to a smorgasbord, you leave hungry. What good is having unlimited options if you’re too scared to choose?

The truth is, I’m ambivalent. On one hand, I want a husband and a child and all the milestones that seem to come so easily to most people I know. But I’ve become accustomed to the freedom of living alone. It requires little compromise and sacrifice. I love my (fairly) open schedule and the fact that I am only beholden to my pets. I never have to worry that a man will leave me if I don’t have one. I’m much more interested in emulating the woman my mother is now that her children are grown and my father is deceased: She is independent, successful and free.

Then again, I wonder about a life without children. My mother is my role model, but she also has a family of her own. That’s why I started to see a therapist, to work through all the conflict and fear and overthinking that keep me from getting out of my own way. Over time, I came to understand that it wasn’t necessarily my failure to find men, but that the ways I reached out might not be suited to me. Speed dating isn’t really the perfect fit for a timid woman who feels very far away from her own sex appeal, and who might always feel that way. And by the way, a lack of sex appeal might not even be a failure on my part; it might just be who I am. Although my hairstylist did suggest that I smile more. That sort of helps.

Two years ago a man I knew from one of my local hangouts sent me a friend request on Facebook. Within moments of accepting, he started to instant message me and make his prurient intentions clear. I told him that I wanted a relationship that would lead to marriage and children. He said he wanted those things, too, just not with me. I found his brutal honesty refreshing. No tension-filled dates, no discussing fake future plans, just a straightforward pursuit of pleasure. Since I’m not the kind of woman who exudes that come-and-get-it vibe, it was nice to be desired. I was lonely and aroused enough to take him up on his offer to meet.

But it wasn’t enough. I stopped getting together with him, and now he claims that he’s open to the possibility of us becoming more than hookup buddies. This always happens. The less interested I become in a man, the more he seems to want me. Weren’t these childish games supposed to end at some point? I know he’s just spewing the platitudes he thinks I want to hear. I know that if I were firmly committed to getting what I want, I would excise him completely from my life. But I just can’t. I know what I should do, and yet I don’t do it. And maybe that explains more about why I’m still without a relationship at 38 than anything I can tell you.

: Erin Auerbach is a writer, former features reporter and a past recipient of the Art Buchwald Award for Humorous Writing. She can't tell you your future, but you can email her at erinauerbach805@gmail.com. More Erin Auerbach

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I’m a sex writer with a secret shame — hoarding

I'm open about my fetishes and fantasies. But there's one thing about my life that pains me to admit

By Rachel Kramer Bussel

I'm a sex writer with a secret shame -- hoarding

Topics:Mortifying Disclosures, Hoarding, Life stories

Over the past decade as a writer specializing in sex, I’ve dished about my erotic escapades, from threesomes to kinky parties to a date gone wrong with a Top Chef. I’ve posed with a freshly spanked bottom for a sex blogger calendar, masturbated on HBO’s “Real Sex” and edited books like “Best Bondage Erotica 2011.” Writing about my intimate life has never felt awkward. I didn’t grow up with shame around sex and didn’t carry any of it into adulthood. Divulging those stories, as well as fictionalizing fantasies about bukkake or webcam exhibitionism, has been a way to understand and come to terms with my desires. Because I’ve been so open, though, some people think I have no skeletons in my closet. And I do — or rather, I would if the two-bedroom Brooklyn, N.Y., apartment I’ve lived in for over 11 years had any closets.

Instead of closets, though, I have stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. I have mountains of clothes, from Yumi Kim silk dresses to winter coats to dozens of pairs of fishnets, which live anywhere they can find a home: over doors, chairs and my couch, strewn across the floor, or crammed haphazardly into a dresser drawer. Don’t get me started on the towering stacks of books that periodically fall over onto me, or the years’ worth of magazine subscriptions, scrap paper, contracts and outdated VHS cassettes.

I’ve never seen the show “Hoarders,” but I always comforted myself with the notion that I wasn’t as bad as the people featured on it. I don’t have dead animals or hundreds of cans of tomato sauce I bought on sale. But while I can easily make that distinction, most anyone who walked into my apartment would be horrified, and rightly so. For a long time, I thought I was just “messy.” Then my mess evolved from something contained to my bedroom to a monster occupying every corner of my home. Food that should be discarded winds up in the freezer, beloved jewelry gets stepped on and broken, and I trip over my 25-pound Kettle Bell more often than I use it to work out. Like a high-functioning alcoholic, I have reached a point where I can no longer live in the hazy glow of denial. When I found that mice had eaten through not just my clothing, but also my cash (apparently they’ll eat anything) I realized I had a problem — a big one. I am a hoarder.

Five years ago, when my last roommate moved out, I let my hoarding freak flag fly … everywhere. Why not share the wealth? There was no one else to see it — I made sure of that. Whereas I used to bring home people I was dating, I’ve only had two guests in the last three years, one a date and one an interviewer, who only saw the neatest of the rooms and even then had to wait for me to tuck aside a pile of clothes so that she could fit herself into a chair. I had a long-distance relationship with a guy in San Francisco, and when he visited New York, I paid for a hotel room rather than let him get a hint of how I live.

Last year, I finally decided to hire a personal organizer. It was a big step, mentally and financially; for $5,000, she and her assistants spent a week sorting, tossing and clearing things out. When I returned home, after crashing elsewhere, there were 15 bags of garbage, not counting the magazines and newspapers for recycling. For the first time in years, I could see the floor.

I was thrilled, but also a little overwhelmed. Everything seemed to have its place, but where was mine? I didn’t know. The wide expanse of floor space, the smooth desk, seemed foreign, reminding me of the apartment’s emptiness when I first moved in. Gradually, so gradually that I barely noticed, my stuff started creeping back where it didn’t belong, until it again reached an unmanageable level.

I’d tried to hire an organizer a few years before, which was a giant failure. I was nervous but ready to make a dent in my disarray. I was quickly disabused of the notion that she could help me; she only dealt with mild clutter, and my mess was too much for her. I cried when she left, utterly ashamed that I was beyond the pale for someone who did this for a living.

Several friends have eagerly offered to help, their eyes lighting up when I describe my plight. They are the anti-me, people for whom the process of sorting and cataloging and discarding belongings makes them come alive, yet I couldn’t bear to have even those closest to me see the nitty-gritty daily reality of the extent of my problem. I was sure our friendships would be forever tainted.

I don’t consider myself materialistic; it’s not that I go on random shopping sprees so much as I have a very low threshold for what I “must” have. If I hear about a book I want to read, I’ll usually order it online rather than put in a library request. Yet once I get whatever item I’m hankering for, I don’t always put it to use (cut to the SodaStream I got as a birthday present last year, or the stereo I won in a contest, both sitting unused in my kitchen). The acquisition, whether it’s free or purchased, is what gives me a rush, not the use of said object.

My hoarding is also a portable activity; on any given day, you can find me carrying two giant tote bags, in addition to my laptop and an oversize purse. New acquaintances almost always comment on my bags, and people have recognized me when I’m out and about because of them. Carrying one bag feels almost dangerous. “Do you need everything in there?” someone will invariably ask, missing the point entirely. It’s not that I need every single item, but their existence, and my knowledge of exactly where they are located, soothes me. It means I am prepared, even if it’ll take me 10 minutes to find my inhaler or tweezers or Us Weekly.

I admit most of my things I don’t actually need, in the strictest sense of the word, but if you were to hold each up in front of me — as my organizer, who I am still working with, sometimes does — I’ll tell you I want to keep whatever it is. Give me the choice, and I’ll choose what feels familiar. As lonely as I may sometimes get, I have these objects to prop me up — sometimes literally. You never know what you might need … and that goes for the weekly Wall Street Journal crossword puzzles I keep in the hopes of someday getting to them.

Ever since I quit my six-liter-a-day Diet Coke habit, I’ve been convinced that we only make major life changes when we want to, not when other people want us to. The toughest part of this situation is acknowledging that, on some level, I enjoy clutter. My dream home isn’t some spartan utopia but one filled with items, treasures, keepsakes, with a place for everything (though not necessarily everything in its place).

There is something about belongings that I value highly, and it has nothing to do with their net worth. The Coco de Mer teacup with “Pussy Lover” in italics I treasure just as much as the giant Hello Kitty pillow I sleep with. The most expensive item in my house is a MacBook Pro. What I’m hoarding most of all are the memories intertwined with each item. The turquoise dress with the zipper I wore for an important first date? The K Records Lois 7-inch? It would feel like a crime to get rid of them. By getting rid of my stuff, I fear I’m getting rid of some essential part of what makes me me.

The rational part of me know that’s ridiculous. I was given a powerful reminder that you can’t take it with you when I attended my friend’s wake recently. We leave behind the legacy of our actions, our feelings, our words and perhaps our spirit, but our belongings are essentially worthless. I don’t want my stuff to be what people remember about me, something my loved ones have to sort through after I’m not here. For that matter, I don’t want it to be something that prevents me from living now — from having friends or lovers over, from having kids because I’m afraid they’d injure themselves amid my mess.

But I find it painful to reckon with this part of myself. I have no problem revealing that I’m into rape fantasies, but admitting that when I enter my apartment, bugs scurry away from me — that is much harder to own up to. At least once a month, I vow to devote myself to cleaning, to purging, to letting go, but it’s amazingly easy for other “urgent” projects to take priority. I want to change. I will change. For now, my home is my dirty, cluttered sanctuary. And I’m sorry, but you’re not invited.

: Rachel Kramer Bussel is the editor of 39 anthologies, most recently "Obsessed: Erotic Romance for Women" and "Gotta Have It: 69 Stories of Sudden Sex," as well as the "Best Sex Writing" series. She is Senior Editor at Penthouse Variations, a columnist for SexIs Magazine, and a blogger at Lusty Lady and Cupcakes Take the Cake. More Rachel Kramer Bussel

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This is why I’m fat

After untagging yet another horrifying Facebook photo, I had to admit the truth about myself

By Leslie Nipkow

Topics:Body Wars, Life stories, Mortifying Disclosures, Obesity

Our laundry bag’s seams are busting open, stitches visibly straining. My husband, Jeff, staggers as he heaves the immense load onto his shoulder. We walk together to the laundromat, where Jeff releases the bag onto the scale with a resounding thud. The needle rockets to 55 pounds. While my skinny husband, panting with exertion, waits for the receipt, I try not to pass out.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, concerned by my ashen expression.

I can’t tell him that the unwieldy, overstuffed laundry bag is a visual representation of my failure. I am 55 pounds overweight. Having recently hit 221.2 on the scale, I’m no longer forgivably chubby or husky, zaftig or big-boned. I’m not even fat. I’ve crossed the border into obese, and that is too much for me to bear.

I’ve been in denial about the number. I argue that, inside, I’m the same person I’ve always been. But the reality is that I can no longer easily do the things I love. The old, adventurous, unstoppable me decided to run the New York City marathon after one disciplined year of training — and finished in under five hours. When I met Jeff, I was a fit size 12, going daily to power yoga class. Lately, though, I’m always the biggest person in the studio. Where I used to stand proud and tall at the front, I now hug the wall or lurk behind a pole, hoping to escape notice. It requires courage to take my place in a room packed with bendy bodies in booty shorts; many days, I’m just not brave enough.

It’s tough to be a bad-ass girl in a dainty world. In a pole dancing class, I tried to conquer my fear of a tricky move called “the snake,” which involves flinging feet over head, gripping the pole between your thighs, dropping your hands and slithering into a coil of turgid sexpot on the floor. But when it came my turn, the teacher — a vegan ballerina — blurted, “I can’t lift you. I’ll break my back,” then walked away. In true fat girl form, I bit back my tears and gave up the pole for good.

It hasn’t always been this way. I was a fat kid until the eighth grade, when I went on a diet to get the part of Liesl in a local production of “The Sound of Music.” I lost the weight, got the part and more or less kept my figure in check for two decades. I never stopped looking at myself through fat eyes, though. Eventually, the weight started to creep up on me. I went from a plush hourglass to a brick doorstop. My thighs began to rub together. I began to sweat more. I noticed fat rolls. Actual fat rolls.

I ignored them, and hoped other people would, too. Bad plan. Not long ago, I stopped by my favorite downtown boutique, where the designer, a curvy blond goddess, tie-dyes vintage lingerie, transforming it into one-of-a-kind cocktail attire. It had been a while, and when I walked in, she met me with an ebullient, “Oh my God, when are you due?”

My heart dropped. I didn’t want to embarrass her. So I lied.

“Uh, you know … in the fall,” I stuttered.

She looked at me funny. When I grabbed an irresistible sky blue top, she winked at me.

“That won’t fit you much longer,” she said.

“That’s OK. It’s for after the — you know, for inspiration.” I managed a fake, shame-tinged glow as I left, knowing it was the last time. How can I go back without a baby?

Being fat colors every moment of my existence — even sleep because, according to Jeff, I snore like a jet engine. Unable to handle the racket, he built himself a bed in another room. When we make love, I undress as fast as I can. If he touches my stomach, I flinch. I worry that his eyes are closed so he won’t see me. After all, I don’t look at myself if I don’t have to.

 There is no excuse for how I got like this. I don’t have a thyroid condition. It’s not raining Goobers in New York City. Every ounce of padding came in through my mouth, via my hand. Nobody did this to me. I did it to myself — one bad decision at a time. So how did it happen?

In 1999, I briefly played Erica Kane’s prison guard on the soap opera, “All My Children” and wrote a one-woman show, “Guarding Erica,” about my experience. Writing and performing my own work was the most challenging and fulfilling thing I’ve ever done. As a result, I was offered a job writing for soaps. I wasn’t crazy about the genre, but I needed the money (substantial), not to mention the health insurance (excellent), so I signed on, promising myself to work on my own writing between soap scripts. But there was little time and less creative energy left after turning in my hundred- (or 200-) page assignment each week. I spent most of my time sitting at my desk in pajamas, or watching TV (“research”), drained and depressed. I was making a six-figure salary. Shouldn’t I be happy, I wondered? Instead, I felt stalled, stuck, guilty and fuzzy-headed. In order to muster the energy and mental clarity to work, I used food, jacking myself up on coffee rich with whole milk, sucking down chocolate “energy bars” and Gatorade when I felt overwhelmed — which was most of the time. My doctor prescribed antidepressants, which made me hungrier, then fatter, thus more depressed, so she upped my dosage, which made me hungrier, fatter and bluer, still.

Then “As the World Turns,” the last show I wrote for, was abruptly canceled. There were goodbye parties … with plenty of photographs. When I saw myself plastered all over Facebook, I was shocked at how puffy, frumpy and uncomfortable I looked. As I untagged myself in picture after picture, I wept with embarrassment for the artificially jolly, fat, middle-aged schlub I’d become. It was a life or death moment. Either I had to stop the shame spiral, or permanently lose my way — and possibly my life.   That’s when I said, “Hell no.” I want more time with my husband, my nieces. And there are stories I need to tell. So I made a choice, walked away from soaps and got to work on own writing. No more excuses. Now, it’s time to take off the force field of fat I created for protection, so the world can see me, and I can fall back in love with myself.

Alone at my desk, paging through fitness and fashion magazines, it seems an impossible distance from here to there. But I’ve been at my goal weight before. That trip began with one choice. Then another. And one more after that. No bacon. One extra push-up. Walk instead of ride. Love myself, if only for a minute. Tomorrow, maybe two. In my mind, I know I am more than the number on the scale. More than a bag of dirty laundry. Now, I just have to believe it.

On the day I ran the New York City marathon, the sun was so bright, the sky so azure that it gave a Technicolor feel to Central Park. I rounded the bottom west corner of Park Drive and saw the finish line up ahead. Because of my steady training, I still had gas in the tank, and I wanted to leave it all out there on the asphalt. With 26 miles behind me, I started to sprint. I passed dozens of runners, and as I did, I felt my smile open up, unbidden. Strangers on the sidelines began to shout my name (which I had written proudly on my shirt for exactly that purpose). I soared across the finish line, arms raised in victory. I had run 26.2 miles alongside 25,000 other dreamers, powered only by my heart, my will, and my determination not to quit. When it got tough, I told myself to run to the next landmark, the next mile marker, the next corner.

I try to imagine the romance of waking up every morning on equal terms with the world. My heart lifts at the thought. A smile slides across my face. No more fat girl. One landmark at a time.

: Leslie Nipkow has been published in O Magazine, the New York Times City section, poemmemoirstory, the New York Post, Written By and FreshYarn.com, among others. Her one-woman show, "Guarding Erica," is anthologized in Vintage Books' "Talk to Me: Monologue Plays." She is now working on a memoir-in-essays titled "How to Kiss Like a Movie Star." More Leslie Nipkow

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The lies I told as a psychic

I thought it would be an easy part-time gig. But faking out strangers was much trickier than I ever predicted

By Erin Auerbach

Topics:Mortifying Disclosures, Life stories

It was 2 a.m., and by the time I got off the phone with Judy, I knew all about her dead husband, ungrateful children and the grandkids she didn’t get to see enough. I predicted that she would travel and meet a new soul mate. Judy laughed a lot, cried a little and paid $300 for the privilege of speaking to me.

Too bad I wasn’t a real psychic.

Actually, I was a failed actor. Long before “Glee” made choir dorks seem cool (or at least profitable), I sang show tunes and mugged my way through high school in unflattering dresses and character shoes. In college, I was cut from my musical theater program, and though I graduated with a bachelor of fine arts, I couldn’t be satisfied without a theater degree. My ego needed it.

I also feared that a real job with a desk, entry-level salary and 401(k) would become my permanent station in life — as if working at an insurance company or bank right out of college would handcuff me to that industry for the next 50 years. So I moved to Las Vegas, which seemed like the perfect place to hide from the grown-up world. Knowing my parents would only support such nonsense if I stayed in school, I enrolled at UNLV — also known locally as the University of Never Leaving Vegas — to pursue a master’s degree in theater.

Lacking the abs of steel required to pull off the tight, shiny getups of the Vegas showgirl, I took a variety of odd part-time jobs. I made $6 per hour job coercing vacationers to sit in an auditorium, watch screenings of crappy sitcoms and fill out opinion surveys. Then I played the role of a soda jerk at the World of Coca-Cola museum, where angry tourists heckled me once they learned that I wasn’t actually allowed to serve them anything to drink.

Dejected, I scoured the classifieds. Then I saw it:

“Phone actors wanted. Work from home. Make your own hours.”

Could it be true? Or was this some sort of telemarketing scheme? I called the number. A friendly man assured me that this was completely legit.

“You’ve heard of the Psychic Friends Network, haven’t you?” he asked. “This is just like that.”

Yes, I had seen the commercials. My brothers and I mocked the company’s spokeswoman Dionne Warwick. When we were little kids, our parents took us to one of her performances at a Lake Tahoe hotel. She sang a few songs, coughed and asked for water. It was a short show, and my parents were disappointed they had wasted money on it.

“The thing is, I’m not sure that I’m psychic,” I confessed. There were times I suspected things were going to happen before they did. But did knowing my family was going to throw me a surprise party for my 15th birthday count as mystic instinct?

“That’s OK,” he said. “We’ll give you everything you need for the job.”

I called my mom for advice. She wouldn’t hesitate to tell me if she thought this was a bad idea. We both believed in psychics. In fact, one of my mother’s closest friends had this power. Although Grace was elderly and forgetful, she was truly clairvoyant. She even adopted a rottweiler for protection because of a premonition she had about being robbed. One day she left the dog at home, and she was held up.

“As long as you can work from home, I think it’s fine,” Mom said. “You’re insightful, and you can probably be very helpful to people.”

I attended one short training session, where I filled out a 1099 form so I could become an independent contractor. (That sounded so glamorous, until I learned that this meant I would get reamed when it came time to file my taxes.) The trainer said that some of their contractors made thousands of dollars and worked constantly. He stressed that we didn’t necessarily have to be psychic to do the job; we could learn how to perform a tarot card reading to achieve the same effect. I bought a deck along with an instruction booklet at one of those psychic specialty bookstores that sells more crystals than books. I also had to get rid of call waiting. Aside from the obvious distraction, it posed too big a risk of disconnecting conversations. Callers got my undivided attention. Considering I couldn’t tell the future, it was the least I could offer.

The main thrust of the job entailed keeping clients on the phone for as long as possible. At $5 per minute, some lonely, needy or desperate person could pay hundreds of dollars for a chat. (By the time I joined the 1-900-number business in 1998, laws had been passed to automatically end the calls after an hour. Too many sad sacks had racked up thousands of dollars in phone bills they would never be able to pay. After lots of complaints, the government intervened.) The company lured callers with the promise of three free minutes, but as soon as they heard the beep, the meter started.

As a professional phone psychic, I would earn $7/hour until I logged in 20 hours of calls. Then I would get a bump to $8/hour. The ultimate goal was to work my way up to $15/hour while the company pocketed the rest. I never made it that far.

The trainer had also suggested that I create a nom de phone. So clients knew me as Anita, the name of one of the nurses at UCLA Medical Center who cared for my father in the first days after his liver transplant. I associated her with kindness, healing and nurturing, a good omen. At the beginning of each conversation, I told callers to ask me a question, shuffled tarot cards and tried to interpret what they meant.

Anita had only positive things to say about everyone’s future. Trust me, no one wanted to hear otherwise. I had never called a psychic hotline, but Mom’s friend Grace had read for me in person. (She didn’t use cards.) Positive or not, I didn’t always agree with what she said. Naturally, I liked the occasional bits of conversation when she told me the things I most wanted to hear, like that I was going to (eventually) find lasting love.

So I gave every card a positive spin. “Oh, I see we’ve pulled that Death Card. How exciting! You’ve overcome a lot. This means good things are going to happen for you.”

In response to what most women wanted to hear, I said: “Well, of course you’ll find love. And soon.”

And for men: “A new career opportunity will give you lots of options and more money.”

About half of the callers were onto me immediately. They would tell me that they thought this was nonsense and that I was a fraud. The first surly customer I encountered pummeled me.

“Thank you for calling. This is Anita. Is this your first reading?”

“I don’t believe in this garbage,” Angry Man said.

“I’m so sorry you feel that way,” I said in the most chipper tone I could muster. “Have you had a reading before?”

“No.”

“I’m shuffling my tarot cards.” My voice got higher. “Now ask me a question, and we’ll see if they can give you some of the answers you’re looking for?”

“OK, genius. What’s my wife’s name?”

“Oh,” I stammered, “It doesn’t really work that way. That’s not really what I do. I …”

Click.

I panicked. The trainer said that if too many calls ended before the three-minute grace period, and monthly calls didn’t average a minimum of 10 minutes, the company would dump me.

So I tried a different tactic, agreeing with people’s concerns about psychics and 900 numbers and convincing them that I only spoke about what the cards revealed (as if I actually understood how to read them properly). People liked the idea of the cards having power instead of me. Some customers still screamed and quickly hung up. But a surprising amount of skeptics enjoyed telling me off for several minutes to vent their disgust while intermittently asking about their futures.

But I began to realize why I got rejected from the theater program in college. My role-playing skills sucked. This job came more easily to others. My friend Russ, a talented actor, worked for another psychic hotline. He thoroughly enjoyed perpetrating a fraud. He told me that he started each call by saying that he just drank a vial of lamb’s blood to give him fortune-telling superpowers.

“You can’t be serious. Does that really work?”

“Some idiots believe me,” he said. “But most people just think I’m funny, and we wind up having a nice talk.”

A few of my calls lasted an entire hour and consisted of me reassuring the person on the other end of the line that everything would be OK. Those folks really didn’t give a damn about psychics or readings. They just wanted to talk to a friendly voice. Some people had terrible problems and cried a lot. I had a list of crisis hotline numbers to give to those who confessed to thoughts of suicide and other equally alarming problems. I kept these calls short, told the troubled souls on the other end of the connection to save their money and gave them toll-free numbers for help.

An 18-year-old caller from Alaska helped me more than I helped him. He wanted to know if he should enlist in the military so he could pay for college. He talked about the long, dark days of Alaskan winters and the exciting prospect of being stationed in a warmer climate. He spoke longingly about the way this choice would take him to places he had never seen. He didn’t have any money, and his parents were gone.

I cringed. How was this poor guy ever going to pay for this call? My stomach hurt. I identified with his uncertainty, his searching for a place to fit in, and his desire to escape, but I had a safety net. He didn’t. That’s when it occurred to me that I had no business trying to guide anybody’s major life decisions. I had enough trouble with my own.

“So what do the cards say, Anita?” He sounded so hopeful.

I stared at the untouched deck in front of me. “Honestly, I don’t know. I think you should talk to your friends and relatives. Or maybe ask your pastor for advice.”

We had only been on the phone for eight minutes, but I told him I had to go. He didn’t get mad, which actually made me feel worse. That’s when it dawned on me that burger flippers, toilet scrubbers and those who facilitate elephant mating had cleaner jobs (and probably took more pride in their work) than I did. My psychic days ended with that call.

In retrospect, the only satisfying tête-à-têtes during my stint as a telephone psychic came from errant horn dogs who thought all 900 numbers were created equal.

“Hi!” I began. “What is your question for me today? What would you like to know about your future?”

“You sound hot.”

“Well, aren’t you nice! What would you like to find out about today?”

“You know what I’m doing?” he said, panting.

Once I met my 10-minute minimum, I gave up trying to steer the conversation toward my fake tarot reading. “Oh yeah, I know.”

“Well, what do you think about that? Do you like it, baby?”

“Fine by me,” I replied. “You’re the one who’s getting screwed.”

: Erin Auerbach is a writer, former features reporter and a past recipient of the Art Buchwald Award for Humorous Writing. She can't tell you your future, but you can email her at erinauerbach805@gmail.com. More Erin Auerbach

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What this professor learned in prison

My colleagues don't believe in second chances for violent offenders. I know they're wrong

By Pat MacEnulty

Topics:Mortifying Disclosures, Life stories

I’m a middle-aged college professor. I sport no tattoos, no piercings beyond the traditional one hole per earlobe, and no visible battle scars. But I have spent time in prison.

In 1979 I was sentenced to two years in the state penitentiary for my role as a driver for an armed robbery. Between jail time, prison time and work release I spent 17 months incarcerated. Then I went on with my life. I went to college, became a wife and mother and put my outlaw days behind me.

Though I’ve written about this before, many people in my immediate circle of acquaintances still have no idea. A couple of weeks ago at my university, a colleague gave a talk on prison reform. He was adamant that draconian drug laws had filled the prisons with people who were not criminals and who deserved treatment rather than punishment. He gave several examples of people who were locked up for the relatively minor offense of possession of marijuana and whose lives were ruined by harsh sentences. One young man committed suicide after repeated rapes by other convicts.

My colleague had worked in prisons, and he formed a distinct dichotomy between people who were dangerous and should be locked up forever, and those who just liked to get high and shouldn’t be locked up at all. He referred to the case of a guy who was ridiculously drunk when he ran out of beer. He then took a gun and went to the mobile home of his neighbor, whom he robbed at gunpoint for a 12-pack. The drunk man was sentenced to seven years in prison.

“Is that fair?” my colleague asked the audience. Another professor sitting next to me nodded and said, “He did the crime. He should have to do the time.”

I looked at her. She knew me quite well. We had been friends and colleagues for several years. In fact, I had once been her teacher. But I realized that she had no idea I was one of those bad people, one of those people who had violated the law and deserved punishment. I wondered if I should say something.

I decided not to because I didn’t want to embarrass her. Besides, the right answer to his question of fairness was not “yes” or “no.” The right answer is that perhaps the drunk robber should have done some time — long enough to sober up and choose another path, but not so much time that functioning in society would be difficult if not impossible when he got out.

When the time came for comments, I raised my hand and said that I believed programs were necessary for all inmates, not just the ones who wound up in prison because they were caught with a few blunts. But even my colleague who had worked in the prisons didn’t seem too concerned about the well-being of violent offenders. He thought they should be locked up forever.

That’s when I had my “It’s a Wonderful Life” moment. I thought about all the things that wouldn’t have happened if I’d been locked up forever: the beautiful, gifted daughter who wouldn’t have been born; all those students I wouldn’t have taught; the friendships that would never have existed; the books and articles I would never have written.

I am so grateful that when I was a prisoner there were programs that engaged my mind and helped me figure out a different path. I am so grateful that a kind judge looked at me and thought that I was salvageable. I am so grateful that there were people who saw beyond the idea of punishment and offered me another chance.

I’m not saying there aren’t people so damaged that they may never be able to make it out here without hurting other people. Certainly there are some. But we owe it to ourselves to create opportunities for people who have made mistakes (even serious mistakes) to turn their lives around and to become productive citizens.

So here’s my mortifying disclosure: I am an ex-con. I am not one bit proud of it. But I would be even less proud to be one of those who are willing to throw away someone else’s daughter, son, mother or father because of some petty notion of revenge. In fact, that’s downright shameful.

: Pat MacEnulty's most recent book is "Wait Until Tomorrow: A Daughter's Memoir. " More Pat MacEnulty

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