My Secret Family

Stalking Sophie

Max

92 kg and falling

So I figured I must leave her alone, but she had bumped me when I was out trying to jog for the first time, as if to say, hey, come and play. Then she pretended not to notice and ran away. She was playing with me.

I watched her stretch, and because I had been watching her I felt instantly guilty but also I had to tell her that I wasn't the only one watching her.

But how could I tell her? Tell her that I had parked down her street just to catch a glimpse of her. And there he was, her boyfriend, fresh from dropping off another girl at college, giving her the little goodbye kisses that lovers do. After he left I thought he was there to pick up Sophie, but he sat and waited, slouched low in the front seat of his Mustang. He followed her when she drove off.

It didn't feel right, she hadn't waved at him or greeted him and clearly did not know he was there, watching.

Or me.

If I told her that her boyfriend was secretly following her it would look like I was trying to sabotage their relationship, which in a way I was. My stomach growled. I was hungry but forced myself to walk in the park instead of getting a burger.

I don't know how it happened. One day I was at a normal weight, with maybe a few lines on my stomach where a little puppy fat folded over when I sat down, and the next thing I knew I was 30 kilograms too heavy. I never saw it happening, I always thought I looked away. I only found out when I was drawing in the park one day and bumped into a friend from school. He said, 'You're becoming one of the big boys, huh?' I didn't quite understand what he meant at the time, I thought he was speaking metaphorically, my ego let me believe he was talking about my art so I ignored it.

Over the years my shirt size had crept up to a Double XL, I thought it was because shops were now importing clothes from China, that it was the clothes that had become smaller.

I was messing around with a new camera one day and, being an idiot, took photos of myself naked. It was like seeing myself for the first time, the uncomfortable truth about myself stood starkly in front of me. The rolling flesh around my upper body looked like raw bread dough that had gone out of control, a plot from a 60s sci-fi horror. How had I not seen this in the mirror? I always thought I looked good. Somehow I had convinced myself that 120 kilograms was normal. Still, even when I knew I was obese I had no to change. I was caught in the carb trap, getting too tired to go out and look for fresh food thanks to the buzz that carbs brought, opting instead for pasta and rice and easy meals to lift me up. But what goes up must come down, and the carb high eventually made me feel tired all the time.

When I met Sophie, beautiful, wise and witty Sophie, I felt my world change. Ever since I can remember I wanted to be an artist, but now I wanted to be Sophie's artist. I'm corny like that.

It was my second year of studying art, having failed miserably in my first year l at first wanted to change to something more lucrative, something more in line with my parents' expectations, but I could not let go and begged my parents to give me another chance if I paid my own way, which I did. So I started again at Alameda College and worked odd jobs to pay for the store-room of an apartment where I had no space to move freely, but just enough to paint.

Art is magical, art is wonderland, art is life. There was nothing I would rather do with my life, even if I didn't make a cent I knew art was the only thing I was made for.

Three dreadlocked students in Contemporary Art 201 occasionally put on impromptu shows in the cafeteria, acting out a social issue in ever more abstract ways. Today they were jumping and shaking, in what they explained before their performance was an ironic interpretation of the socio-political constructs of consumerist agriculture to illustrate how we were all sheeple. I'm pretty sure they just made that up as something to justify their jumping up and down, because they seemed to enjoy expressing their socio- political angst quite a bit. After a few seconds people got bored of watching half-naked people jump around and they wandered off. The group promised to do a show completely naked if people promised to show up the next week.

To me, performance art was supposed to be about something real, something that touched people's day-to- day lives. Who cared about the abstract concepts the three students, now lighting up a joint behind the wash-room to protest the subjugation of the human spirit by the pharmaceutical machine, were communicating?

But the idea of performance art stuck. It could be a powerful message if someone used it for a reason.

In the back of my mind a plan grew. I made notes. I knew my plan would take a lot of energy, something I seemed to lack lately. Instead of skipping breakfast like l usually did I woke up early every morning to eat before college, stopping at the Early Bird Cafe, a little hole in the wall bistro that served cheap but relatively nutritious food.

On Wednesdays and Fridays after college I put on the only jogging clothes I had and took my sketchpad to the park. Drawing real people moving around was always a challenge, capturing their spirit as well as their form and proportion. Sophie jogged there almost every day and I started to wait for her at the fountain where she would stretch. Lost in her own world she never saw me sketching her. I was not following her in a cloak and dagger behind-your-back sort of way, but simply adding her to a drawing I was working on, part of what I hoped would become a painting. I tried to give her a smile, or give a little wave when she jogged past, God, I am so pathetic, creepy even, but she didn't notice me, she just carried on in her own world. So I started jogging too, or at least run in short spurts whenever she jogged past at exactly 4:35pm every day. I didn't have any of those tight fitting jogging clothes everyone wore, they looked stupid on me anyway, so l wore the only jogging clothes I had - an old pair of orange shorts and a pair of lime green running shoes. If she didn't notice me now then there was something clinically wrong with her.

I sat on the park bench one Friday, taking a quick sketch while waiting for Sophie to arrive, ignoring the occasional titter by other passing students. I figured the leg warmers were overkill. Finally Sophie arrived, surrounded by an aura of mist from sprinklers nearby, jogging gracefully and effortlessly. I calculated that she jogged 5 miles every day, heck, if I walked 5 miles I would probably die of a heart attack. We were in different worlds, but not for long.

I caught up with her by taking a short-cut across the kids playground, causing a bunch of moms to shout at me and pull their kids out of the way. Sophie stopped and put her hands on her hips.

"So I was wondering, " I tried to calm my breathing as I stood in front of Sophie in the park, sweet, graceful, beautiful Sophie, "if you would pose for me sometime."

She laughed. "Really, you want me to pose for you?" Sophie looked around, probably looking for the nearest cop in case I was a psycho who wanted to turn her skin into a lampshade or something.

"Yeah, you know, for some sketches. If you wanted. I want to draw real people."

"You mentioned in class. Uh, maybe. " She put one foot up on the bench and straightened her leg, effortlessly stretching and touching her running shoe. "I've never been sketched before."

"I can't believe that."

"Okay, I'm curious, what would I have to do?"

"Just show up and sit. You could bring a girlfriend if you wanted. But a guy, well, that would be awkward, " I said, because the guy I had seen her with looked like he would punch me if I looked at Sophie the wrong way.

"Yes, I imagine it would. Okay, well, why not? Send me your address and I'll be there, my number is..." she waited for me to pull out my phone and told me her number.

"Wow. Thanks. I'd pay you, of course."

"That's okay. Just remember me when you're famous, okay?"

I laughed. "I'd remember you forever."

"Okay. Later, mister artist, " she said and jogged off down the path.