Food means something different to me now than it did when I was a girl

I crack a cannoli in two to split it with a friend. The shell crunches between my molars and the ricotta filling is sweet, fluffy, and just a little acidic. I stir brown crystal sugar into whole milk cappuccinos, two packets, sometimes three. Then, I sip the foam off the top, the heat filling my mouth and the fat coating my tongue. I pour fragrant, garlic-infused olive oil onto my rice and it dribbles down my chin. I catch it with my tongue. I whip heavy cream into peaks. I’m liberal with the vanilla. I eat it with a spoon. I put butter and homemade jam onto my toast every morning, and they melt together and land on my tongue, sweet and salty. I buy white chocolate peanut butter cups from the grocery store and savor them as I walk home. I make a turmeric ginger chai latte and I ice it. Once a week I buy a sandwich with: marinated tempeh, garlic aioli, avocado, fresh tomato, and pickled onion, all on house-made ciabatta.

If you want to understand me, you have to understand that David Bowie, in The Man Who Fell to Earth, awoke in me a longing I misdiagnosed. I thought, I want to be skinny like him. That summer, I stopped eating most things because I thought I had parasites and I didn’t want to feed them.

I told a friend, and she told me not to be stupid. She took me to IHOP and bought me waffles, which I thanked her for but did not eat. “Look,” she began. “Look. Do you know how many bones are in your body? Neither do I. Don’t try to count them.”

When I got home I counted them. I watched a zombie movie and fantasized about being eviscerated. My body has never felt like one thing. At the eye doctor I compared lenses and learned that my prescription puts me at high risk for retinal damage. I haven’t been to the dentist in three years, and I have lied to my mother about this.

When I tried to shed weight on purpose, I found myself fretting over small things, like oat milk lattes. I sweated them out in yoga studios, and I tried to run on ten-degree Boston Fridays next to the frozen Charles River. I wanted my body to be like the ice floes I looked down on from the bridge.

I never really wanted to be skinny like David Bowie. I still wore dresses when I watched The Man Who Fell to Earth. I don’t wear dresses anymore. Tonight, I had an apple-cider vinegar cole slaw with shredded purple cabbage, just enough sugar and pepper, and I had tofu coated in barbecue sauce, sweet and smoky, and I had German potato salad that was creamy and a little sour, and then after dinner I had truffle potato chips, and then I went on a long walk with my friend, and she asked me what I learned this summer. I told her, “I used to think of gender as negative space, everything I wasn’t. I’m more comfortable with positive space, now.”