Darryl Halbrooks
Gretchen of Wisconsin
Gretchen descended from Wisconsin, all puffed up on beef and dairy, into the land of the lean, alighting at the Thundercloud Christian Camp, a retreat run by the Baptists high in the Sangre de Christo mountains, to partake of the fellowship of other young crusaders against premarital sex.
Frank Jr. found his way to the encampment from his home in Georgia. J.R., as he was known to friends and family, was similarly bloated on biscuits, gravy, and Peanut Buster Parfaits. Like Gretchen and all the other young people at the conference, Frank Jr. was a right-wing religious celibacy zealot. These young oath-takers gathered, just outside the tiny ranching community of Sled Lake, to swear off sex -- until lawfully wedded to a God-fearing partner of the opposite gender.
At the camp, Gretchen and Frank Jr. were outsiders. The other young people were mostly wiry, outdoorsy granola types from this fittest of states. Frank and Gretchen definitely stood out from the crowd. Still, everyone was nice enough to them. They were all Christians after all, and as such, went out of their way to show tolerance.
“So is this your first time in Colorado?” asked Jenny, a nice, small town girl from Moffat.
Jenny was petite, blonde, blue-eyed -- thin. She looked just like all the other girls Gretchen had seen here.
“Yes. In fact, it’s the first time I’ve been west of the Mississippi.”
“I’ve never been to Mississippi,” Jenny said.
So, Gretchen thought, being thin doesn’t make you any smarter.
“Well,” Jenny said, “the altitude can dehydrate you. So you need to drink lots of water. If not, you’ll get like -- sick. OK?”
“OK.”
Jenny showed Gretchen to her bunk, where instead of drinking water, she ate one of the Snickers bars she had packed along from Wisconsin and got really -- like -- sick.
The Christian young men Frank Jr. met at the camp, treated him with similar kindness. Even back home in Georgia, where being overweight was not uncommon, he still drew some ribbing for his excesses. Of course, as his friends had advanced into their late teens and early twenties, their own girths were beginning to close the gap on his.
But these guys were nice. They showed him to his bunk and they warned him about the altitude and they told him to drink water and he nodded to indicate that he understood and he ate candy instead -- and he got sick too.
In the morning, after the devotional and group sing-along, Frank Jr. was the first to speak. It was his job to lay the foundation for the theme of this particular assembly of young believers.
Believing that true love waits
I make a commitment to God
to myself
to my family
to my friends
to my future mate
and my future children
to be sexually abstinent
from this day
until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship.
Signed: ________________________________
Date: __________________________________
This was the text of the pledge that Frank Jr. waved before his youthful, like-minded audience.
Enthusiastic cheers met Frank Jr.’s pronouncement. In the audience, Frank saw Gretchen looking back at him with admiration. Amidst the sea of fit, slim, westerners, the gravitational force of their masses seemed to be pulling them into a mutual orbit. Despite the righteousness of their cause and their moral struggle against human weakness, something irresistible stirred their corpulent loins.
Other speakers followed, including Gretchen, who told of pregnancies and disease resulting from this wickedness that she had witnessed first hand at her college in rural Wisconsin. At the end of the day of testimonials, the attendees lined up to sign their pledges and pin their badges, proudly proclaiming their oaths of abstinence.
“Hi,” Gretchen said, “I’m Gretchen Olsen.” She reached out to shake Frank’s hand. “I really enjoyed your talk. It was so sincere and inspirational. And I just adore your accent.”
“Thanks,” Frank said. “I could do without the accent part though.”
“Well, it’s just so unusual to hear somebody with a southern accent who seems...” she fumbled for the right words now, blushing.
“Smart?” Frank suggested. “Or at least not stupid? It’s quite a combo,” he admitted. “A southern accent and...” He patted his rotundity with both hands.
“Well,” she said, “I’m not exactly a super-model myself.”
Over dinner of beef and vegetables, washed down with iced tea, served up by healthy young people with the giant letters STAFF spelled across their shirts, Gretchen and Frank Jr. discussed their interests, their college majors -- hers art, at UW Stevens Point, his -- music, at Peabody in Nashville, their travels -- hers Florida a few times -- his Europe, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. They each ate modest portions in an attempt not to appear piggish in front of the other. Gretchen was somewhat uncomfortable with calling him J.R. as he had asked her to -- it seemed so NASCAR.
He was equally uncomfortable with her name, wishing there was some diminutive for “Gretchen.” So cold -- so northern-sounding and formal.
Over the next two days, the natural order of things saw a pairing off of newly-met, abstinent couples. Among them were Frank Jr. and Gretchen. During pauses in official conference business, they went for walks along local segments of the lower trail that ran the sixty-mile length of the range. It wound along the drainages at an average elevation of around 9000 feet. The globular pair struggled for breath each time the path inclined in front of them. But each day it became easier, and they ventured further from the camp. Many side trails led off from this artery into the upper lake basins. Most of the lakes lay in alpine valleys between 11,000 and 13,000 feet.
“You want to try the Lake of the Clouds trail?” Frank asked.
“I guess we could start out on it. We can always turn back. Right?”
“Right.”
Along the way, other campers and hikers from all over -- families with small children, elderly couples with bandaged knees and walking sticks -- gained on them and passed them by. At a spot where they could look out over the valley, nowhere near the first lake, they stopped to rest. Frank put his arm around her as they admired the scenery -- panting. Gretchen was getting one of the headaches she had been having since her arrival. Sometimes they got so bad they caused her to throw up, especially after she ate, so she had taken to eating very little. Frank noticed that his appetite had also waned. His new friend Richard, from Colorado Springs, told him that loss of appetite was a common side effect of the altitude.
“I think I’m going to have to turn back,” Gretchen said.
“Sure, that’s OK. I’m getting pretty tired myself. Did you see that old guy that just passed us? He must be 55 or 60, and he just strolled by like he was walking down a city street. It’s killin’ me.”
“Let’s come back here in one year,” Gretchen said. “We can train for it and we’ll hike up to the lake. Maybe even go on to the top of...” she looked around, picking out a peak. “That one. Do you know its name?”
He didn’t. But he noticed that the mountain she had selected was not the highest around. It was maybe third highest. He estimated it to be a little over 13,000 feet, because he knew the middle one was Kit Carson, a “fourteener,” clearly the tallest in this group. He doubted they would be able to make that ascent a year from now, but her suggestion meant something else. She wanted to come back here with him. When was the last time a girl had made a similar proposal to him? Never?
He turned to look into her eyes. It was one of those movie moments when there will either be a kiss or an awkward, embarrassing change of subject, a moment with lost opportunity written over it forever in future reminiscences. They brought their lips together in what was, at first, a pretty abstinent sort of a kiss; then tongues became involved and Frank knew that if their bellies had not served as a blockade to the lower regions of their bodies, she’d notice more than his tongue and they might be tempted to rethink their recent pledges.
After dinner, Gretchen had a relapse of her headache and once again found herself hugging the toilet. They hiked again the next day, stopping to kiss or hold hands, making certain promises to each other about keeping in touch, or perhaps exchanging visits during the school year or at vacation periods. There seemed no need at this point, to discuss the voracity of their celibacy pledges. But if the time came, they were both prepared in their hearts to honor the promises they had made to the world here.
When Frank Jr. arrived back at school, people commented on his appearance.
“You been on a diet, J.R.? You look good, man.”
He hadn’t really noticed, but when more and more people commented, he took a critical look at himself and it was true; he was appreciably slimmer in the face, and maybe around his middle, but that wasn’t all.
Frank Jr. had taken on an aura, the familiar glow that surrounds a person in love.
Back in Stevens Point, people took notice of the changes in Gretchen too. There were words of praise for her weight loss also, which like Frank, she had not even been aware of. Friends demanded to know her dieting secret. And then there was, of course -- the glow.
They called each other most nights on their "free nights and weekends" plans.
“My friends all say I’ve lost a bunch of weight,” Frank said.
“Me too! I didn’t even know it. How is that possible in just a week?”
“It must be all those walks we took,” Frank said. “Also, I didn’t eat a lot. And I didn’t really like the food that much. Still...”
“I know. Same here. You know what it could be though,” Gretchen said. “It could be that we were so fat, that we burned off lots of excess quickly. Fat’s just nature’s way of storing up for when it is called upon. Once the fat is gone, you have to start burning muscle. I don’t expect that will ever happen to me. But anyway, from here on in, it will get much harder.”
“What will get harder?”
“To keep it off,” she said. “To keep losing more.”
“You’re going to try to lose more?” he asked.
“Yeah, I want to be thin. Just think what that would feel like. You know, J.R., I didn’t mean that you were that fat, but you’d probably feel better if you kept on losing.”
“I feel fine. But if you’re going to do it, I will too, up to a point.”
“Ok,” she said, “I’ll come down at Thanksgiving. Lets see who’s lost the biggest percentage of total weight.”
“You’re on,” he said. He paused. “You know, Gretchen, you don’t have to be thin for me. I like you the way you are.”
She didn’t answer. She was looking at herself in the mirror, imagining the possibilities.
“Change of subject,” Frank said.
“OK.”
“How’s your artwork going?”
“Oh fine, I guess. How’s your music?”
But it was clear that these had become secondary issues.
Gretchen plucked the photo from her dresser. It must have been taken before her father left her. Was it Gretchen he left, or was it her mother? He must have taken the picture. The tips of his boots showed at the very bottom of the snapshot. Her mother’s hair, still dark and luxurious, spread out over the snow-covered earth. The picture had been taken from above. The two of them -- laughing; lying next to each other in the snow, arms and legs splayed like Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing of the human proportions.
She was so flat. That was before she had sought out food for its medicinal effects.
She replaced the picture next to her newly framed photo of Frank Jr. and fell backward onto the bed which, received her bulk with a groan of protest. Gretchen reviewed her week in Colorado, trying to come up with just what it was that had caused her weight loss. Then she hit on it.
The vomiting.
Frank Jr. began with walks. He walked three miles a day, but gradually he found that walking took up too much of his time, so he began to run for short segments of his course, just to get it over with sooner. Then one day he realized that he could keep running beyond the point of discomfort. He added a new vow to his vow of celibacy.
“From this time forward, I will run at least two miles a day until the day I die,” he promised his reflection.
Most days he was able to stick to his guns. The pounds fell away. Frank didn’t change his dietary habits all that much, except to avoid between-meal snacks and his switch from regular to diet soda, which was a little hard at first, but after a while you got used to the unnatural taste of its bitter chemistry.
He felt good about himself for the first time in his life. His new size 36 jeans were still a bit snug, but the image he saw in the mirror was that of a regular guy. Nevertheless, he put all his old size 45’s in a drawer -- just in case.
When Frank Jr. went downtown with his friends on Thursdays, he stuck to diet soda or bottled water while his buddies got smashed. He was the designated driver. He noticed that girls were paying attention to him for the first time in his life. Inside, he felt like the same nerd he had always been, but apparently that didn’t show though his new, fit exterior. They seemed to see only the regular guy, and a not too bad-looking one at that. In fact, it was pretty clear that one blonde in particular -- Stephanie was her name -- an English major from Vandy, was definitely coming on to him. Frank played along, but he had made another vow to himself; he would be true to his Dairyland sweetheart.
On the phone to Gretchen, he described his days, which consisted mostly of study, his individual piano instruction with Dr. Evers, and his daily run.
“Dr. Evers thinks I should enter this competition in Atlanta. If I place third or better, he’s going to prepare me for the Van Clyburn in Dallas.”
“That’s great,” Gretchen said. “How’s your weight coming?”
It was pretty clear she wasn’t all that interested in his future career posturing.
“What do you think the percentage is?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I’ll just surprise you. We’ll see each other in a week and a half. I will say this though; regardless of the weight, I’ve never felt better. Running has changed my life. Are you still walking? You could probably try jogging some. It’s so great.”
“I walked at first but, I don’t know, I guess I’m not driven like you. I’m just sticking with my diet.”
“How’s your painting coming?” Frank asked. “You were going to enter that show in Milwaukee.”
“Oh, I don’t know. The deadline passed and I didn’t really have anything. But my roommate Sarah -- she got one piece in.”
In her dorm room, Gretchen lay awake. She hadn’t had the energy to actually go to class for two weeks now. She had the room to herself. Sarah, who only came in occasionally to pick up something, spent most nights at her boyfriend’s apartment.
Messages were piling up on Gretchen’s email from the Office of Student Retention. The subject line was "at-risk student." But after the first one, she never opened them again. Lying on her back, she felt her abdomen, reveling in its new flatness. There was still a slight swell just above her pubic area but she felt certain that would soon be gone too. She ran her hands up higher to where they encountered two protruding points of resistance. It was a delightful feeling -- the edges of her ribcage.
She had always known that she had ribs somewhere under all that flesh, but now here they were. She moved her hands up higher, allowing the tips of her fingers to work over each rib, playing them like the keys of J.R.’s piano. She moved one hand up to caress the nipple of her new, smaller breast. She allowed the other to work its way back down over the slight swell and on down between her now thin thighs. She tried to imagine J.R., probing the new Gretchen, but the only face she could come up with was Brian, a guy she had met at a bar in downtown Stevens Point. Brian was good looking, on the tennis team, a guy who, before her new improved self, wouldn’t have given her the time of day. But he had been all over her.
So much for that pledge.
There had been a few others since Brian. She wasn’t really interested in any of them, not in the same way she was interested in J.R., but he was in Nashville and they were here in Wisconsin. She got up and walked to the desk, naked. She admired the silhouette of her body -- her new toy -- in the mirror over her dresser. She opened the drawer and helped herself from her stock of Snickers bars.
Then she went into the bathroom and stuck a finger down her throat.
Frank Jr. met her at the Nashville airport. At first they both looked past each other. At last, a spark of recognition showed when their eyes locked. They kissed, a friendly sort of kiss, then -- they held each other at arms length to get a better look. It was clear that they would have to reestablish their familiarity, as each had shed an entire person. The voices were the same they recognized from their telephone conversations but the experience was somewhat like seeing a radio personality for the first time.
Frank took her to his school, showed her the practice room where he prepared for his recital in Atlanta, played Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata for her, took her to Vanderbilt’s football game where they endured the painful first half of what Frank’s friend Chris, called Tennessee’s annual Commodore ass-kicking, then took her out to dinner. At the restaurant, she picked at her entrée, but ate all of her Double Chocolate Fudge Devil’s Temptation before excusing herself. She was in the bathroom for what Frank thought was an extraordinary length of time. When she returned, looking somewhat pale, he had long since paid the bill.
“You OK?” he asked. “You don’t look so good.”
“I’m fine. Just a little tired from the trip I think. It’s been a long day. Look, I know you wanted to show me around some more, but could we just go back to your apartment? I’m really exhausted.”
“Sure.”
Frank was a bit nervous about what would come next. His roommate was gone for the weekend. But there was the pledge. This was going to be a little awkward and it was undeniable; he ached for her. But a promise is a promise, and Frank was a man of conviction.
They listened to music and watched some TV until it was time for bed. Frank had cleaned the apartment to the point that it looked better than most men’s apartments ever do. He had even scrubbed the toilet bowl. His bed was made up with clean sheets and pillowcases. It would be hers while he slept on the couch. When Gretchen emerged from the bathroom in a revealing, pink he-didn’t-know-what-to-call-it, he had to avert his eyes.
“Well,” he said, “if there’s anything you need, I...”
Gretchen came over and snuggled up to him, taking his hand and guiding it up under the delicate garment to her breast while deep kissing him. Frank pulled back.
“We made our pledges, remember?”
“Fuck those pledges.”
Frank was somewhat taken aback by her unexpected dirty mouth.
“We were fat. It’s easy to swear off sex when you’re fat. We’re thin now. Are you sure you want to miss out on this?” She pushed his hand lower.
“But since I made the pledge, I...I’m not...you know...prepared. I don’t have anything for...protection.”
Gretchen stepped away and reached into her purse, unfurling an accordion of condoms. She tore one off and handed it to him. Frank Jr. considered for a moment the ramifications of a girl who carried, what for him would have been a lifetime supply of condoms in her purse, but the situation being what it was, he abandoned his principles and his questions and let nature take its course.
“Well,” Gretchen said, lying on her back with her hands folded behind her head, “since you lost all that weight, I can see it’s made you very fast.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “you know, that was my first time.”
“You’ll get better at it. You know what?”
“Tell me,” he said.
"If we had gone say, seven minutes -- in that position -- we would have burned twenty calories.”
He propped himself up on one elbow to look at her.
“I’d say that was good for about ten for you and six for me. Next time we’ll do it from the rear. That’s supposed to burn forty. I don’t run like you, so I need the exercise. Now get yourself ready, Bucko. Let’s see if you can stay in the saddle a little longer.”
“Your scientific approach is going to corrupt me,” he said.
She slapped his buttocks and reached across him to the bedside table, ripping off another packet. During the remainder of the weekend they got enough exercise that Frank Jr. didn’t feel guilty about neglecting his run, although as Gretchen pointed out, twenty minutes of jogging burns 189 calories.
“When will I see you again?” Frank asked her at the airport check-in.
She was softer now, not as oddly tough and demanding as she had seemed throughout the weekend. He had almost gotten to the point where he didn’t like her. But now she seemed sweet again and his love began once more to overtake his lust.
“I have to go home for Christmas with my parents,” she said.
“Me too, but what about the week after?”
“I can’t get away. What if we went back to Colorado over spring break? It must be pretty there in the snow. We could go snow shoeing.”
“I don’t know if I’d get very far,” he said. “I tried it once and I kept crossing them over each other and tripping.”
“You’ll get used to it. We do it all the time in Wisconsin. Besides, you’re a quick study with me showing you the ropes.” She winked.
Back at school, Gretchen tried to get back into an academic groove. She started going to classes again, although she had to beg and cajole, to get her instructors to allow her back. She explained how she had come down with mono, and she could bring doctors excuses if they insisted. But she found that a gentle touch to the arm, an accidental grazing of breast on sleeve, the tossing of hair and pouting of lips, were all the excuse necessary. She had observed these successful maneuvers performed by thin girls in the past, from beneath her chunky camouflage. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out in every case. One of her professors was a woman.
The winter passed in phone calls and emails. When they met at the Colorado Springs airport, Frank was alarmed when he saw her. She had shriveled from slender to downright emaciated. Her jawbones protruded at a squarish angle from her tiny neck. Her face, though still pretty, had a hollowness about it that allowed an observer to understand precisely, the relationship of the human form to the skull beneath it.
“Gretchen! You...you’re too thin,” he said as he drew her to him for a kiss.
“Oh, you sound like my mom. She keeps saying, ‘too thin, too skinny.’ I feel kind of chubby actually. You look thinner,” she said. “You look great.”
Frank had increased the distance of his daily run. He ate like a horse now but his weight had stabilized at a healthy 195 or so, redistributed mostly as muscle.
She could see her own distorted reflection in the window as they walked toward the baggage claim. She was always on the lookout for it. She watched its translucent, concentration camp facsimile pass in front of the hulking shoulder of Pikes Peak on the other side of the glass.
They drove to Sled Lake in their rented Hyundai Accent, or as Frank called it, Hyundai Accident. The little car struggled to carry Frank Jr., their luggage, and his weightless girlfriend up the mountain. They went straight to the Early Bird Restaurant where Brandy, a girl from camp worked. Frank was starving. Brandy didn’t recognize either of them until they explained who they were. Her shock, when the moment of recognition finally came, registered on her face. She looked at Frank with what could be described as admiration and at Gretchen with what could only be described as -- a sense of horror.
Frank ordered a steak and Gretchen took about three bites of a salad. When she left the table to disappear for her usual inordinate amount of time in the bathroom, Brandy came over.
“What’s wrong with her? It’s not something serious, I hope.”
Frank didn’t have an answer. He just looked at her, trying to think of something. His face must have registered a concern that, to Brandy, was some kind of explanation.
Brandy clamped her hand over her mouth and looked at him through expressive big eyes. “It’s cancer, isn’t it?” she said, slowly removing her hand from her face.
But before he could dissuade Brandy of that notion, Gretchen came back from the bathroom looking pale as usual, and even lighter in weight -- if that was possible.
In the Sled Lake Inn, they made love. It was easy for Frank now. His principles and his inhibitions had long since been discarded. Her body felt so much different than it had back in Nashville. He had never felt anything like it. She seemed only marginally human. He imagined making love to one of those creatures that you always saw descending the ramp of a flying saucer. Her head even seemed disproportionately large, the same as the aliens.
He felt embarrassed about his own muscular form. He ran his hands over his torso, probing for ribs. He went to sleep, intending to ask for her secrets in the morning.
Gretchen lay awake for some time listening to Frank’s slow, steady breathing. The feeling in her shrunken stomach produced the kind of high she thought that junkies must get from crack or heroine. It was the delicious pang of hunger. Hunger was her friend. Having allowed basically nothing to remain in her stomach longer than a minute or two for the past three days, she felt so happy -- and clean. The laxatives had purified the remainder of her digestive tract. She was also certain that she had now reached what she had thought previously to be an unattainable goal. The fat was gone. She was beginning to burn off the unwanted weight of muscle.
At last she fell asleep but woke again in an hour, still high on malnutrition, altitude and the instructions she had received just now in a vision -- from Jesus himself.
Frank awoke to cold. Gretchen was not in the bed beside him. It was still dark. He looked at the bedside clock. Four-twenty-six. The cold entered through the door that stood open directly onto the single story motel’s parking lot. He could see the moon’s reflection off the Hyundai’s windshield.
“Gretchen? Gretchen?”
He pulled his jeans on and slipped, sockless, into his loafers. He shrugged into his leather jacket without putting on a shirt and went out into the sub-zero early morning, calling quietly, “Gretchen! Gretchen!”
It was hours before he found her.
He had gone back to the room to put on warmer clothing. When the sky lightened he rang the bell at the front desk. A sleepy looking desk clerk emerged from behind a closed door.
“We don’t put the coffee out ‘til six thirty,” the guy said, when he saw Frank Jr. absently staring in the direction of the coffee maker.
“Listen,” Frank said, “I’m sorry to bother you so early but my...my girlfriend...has disappeared.”
The desk clerk merely looked at him. Frank could see in the guy’s face that it wasn’t really his problem.
“I mean,” he said, “she’s just gone. Walked out of the room in the middle of the night and...her clothes are still there. The car is still there.”
He pointed toward the little Hyundai, then made a sweeping gesture, taking in the entire valley.
“She’s out there somewhere. You gotta help, or at least call the police. OK?”
But by the time the local deputy arrived, Frank had found her. No wonder he had not seen her until the sun was up full. She was behind the motel, lying below the level of the snow, in an area that she had obviously scraped out for herself. Her paper-thin profile was only visible from above. There would be questions. He knew enough not to move her. But he was sure that the scene would be self-explanatory. He would not fall under suspicion when they saw her. He felt weak and guilty thinking of himself at a time like this, but he knew it would be best for him to leave her as she was -- a naked skeletal form, eyes open to the sky, in that familiar position he had himself, once assumed -- the first time his parents had taken him north, the first time he saw snow, the first time he had made a snow angel.
©2004 by Darryl Halbrooks
