The Soundtracks of Our Summers

We’re all living our little lives, with our little earbuds, hoping to live out loud, writing the soundtracks to our lives, as they happen. We all must think it sometimes: that our lives are movies with their own soundtracks. I’m thinking it, even now, as I type this. With the day I’ve had, I’m thinking it would be Paolo Conte singing Via Con Me. Not that I know much about French music. I’m just a freak when it comes to Kevin Kline and all things French Kiss. I also spent much of today reading children’s books to the tadpoles. Fancy Nancy was my favorite, so it seems fitting to choose a fancy-ish song.

Recently, I eagerly agreed to write a little something for Largehearted Boy about the soundtrack of my latest memoir Moose. In the Book Notes section of the site, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. I know, fun, right?

For your convenience (and to avoid having to dig for it when Moose becomes a feature film) you can read it here as well:

I created the playlist for Moose before even writing Moose. That’s the kind of procrastinator I am. I was on the hunt for new music, prowling for newer artists whose lyrics would inspire me. Really, I was looking for songs that tapped into moments of abandonment or freedom, songs that made me ache and feel alive. There was also mood music to consider. Playing a big red Barolo of a song while writing about food always helps. I wanted to taste a wooden spoon in a song. Rosemary Clooney’s "Mambo Italiano" kept me company into the night. That’s the thing about good music: it sounds like a warm story you’re told by a stranger at a bar.

The newer artists, however inspiring, weren’t getting the job done. Instead, I’d need to entrench myself in a time I affectionately refer to as The Thunder Years. I crammed my office with camp letters, mix tapes, and puffy bedazzled childhood diaries—in whose pages I’d pronounced my fierce love for Peter Cetera. As mortifying as it was the first time ’round, I’d need to relive the "Glory of Love" if I had any chance of writing about it.

Four of the chapters in Moose get their title from songs on my playlist because that’s how I filtered my world at thirteen. Through mix tapes and midnight dedications on radio Love Lines. The songs I include in Moose are the ones that ground me to a childhood campfire, to the freckled boy with shoulder-length hair, to the first time I went skinny dipping in the lake—only at fat camp, we called it "chunky dunking."

With a title like Moose, it’s easy to go to the obvious place: "Fat Bottomed Girls." Stretch further, and you can almost hear the camper skit nights, where we’d point to empty McDonald’s bags, singing En Vogue’s "My Lovin’" with special emphasis on "No, you’re never gonna get it." But having spent five summers at fat camp, I’ve learned that it’s never that easy.

"American Pie" by Don McLean

Aside from Allan Sherman’s "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah," I’m not sure it gets more classic than "American Pie" as far as camp songs go. The eleventh chapter of Moose shares the same title because it’s here where I reveal a major turning point, and fall, in my story. And what better song than one depicting such a monumental moment in music history. Throughout the chapter, I weaved lyrics and imagery from McLean’s song—even changing the name of a girl I knew to "Holly Valens"—wanting to underscore the power of that pivotal falling moment for me. "When she opened her eyes, and looked into the pupils of mine, her response to my presence was measured, slow and exacting, as though read from a recipe for disaster. She just smiled and turned away."

"Blame It on the Rain" by Milli Vanilli

It always seemed like there were thunderstorms at camp during rest hour. But the threat of a storm never interfered with our shaving parties. Girls sat V-legged on the pavement with basins of foamy water, shaving cream, and orange Bic razors. A boom box blared Milli Vanilli’s "Blame It on the Rain" as plump teens swished plastic razors over their meaty legs, hoping that night, someone else might be touching them for the first time. Back at home, we weren’t noticed for our legs unless it was for their cellulite. At fat camp, the playing field might have been wider, but it was leveled. And far from the watchful eyes of their parents, left in the care of teenage counselors with their own libidos and agendas, campers would spend the summer exploring and discovering a bit more than their bodies, themselves. They’d explore the opposite sex. Thus 350-pound romances would ensue. And they’d extend way past dirty dancing at the DJ Dances. In loco parentis, I’d learn that summer, translated loosely to "petting past curfew." Soon there would be evenings spent naked in groups, in bushes, pranks leading to chunky-dunking, sex in cabins, wiggling to fit two on a single cot without making the bed squeal. Tramp out in the woods behind the infirmary, and you’d see camper sex—imagine two pigs fighting over a Milk Dud. But for now, there were shaving parties and a slight possibility of an afternoon thunderstorm.

"Baby Can I Hold You" by Tracy Chapman

On rainy camp days, I listened to Tracy Chapman songs on my boom box as we played jacks on powdered cabin floors, sitting on one another’s beds, asking about the photos another camper had posted to her walls. "Maybe if I told you the right words, at the right time, you’d be mine." Story of my life; story of every teenage life. If only we could think up the right words, the cool slang, find that perfect opportunity to make everything in our lives change forever. Oh, well. Too bad. Quit moping. It’s time for slimnastics class. With rows of rain boots by the door, we’d lie on the padded floors of a weight room, doing leg lifts to Terence Trent D’Arby’s "Wishing Well" as the rain spit in through the window screens.

"Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix-a-Lot

My last summer at the fatty farm was spent as a counselor, teaching obese eight-year-olds how to pee in the woods and walk so their thighs don’t rub together (Baby powder is the ultimate salve when it comes to combating chub rub). But their schooling didn’t end there. For camper skit night, my co-counselor choreographed their moves, and we led them onto the stage, where we all did a bit of rump shakin’ to "Baby Got Back." Unfortunately, they committed all the lyrics to memory. But far more disturbing than an eight-year-old singing "knock-kneed bimbos walkin’ like hoes" was what I overhead one afternoon during rest hour.

"I Don’t Want to Be Your Friend" by Cyndi Lauper

As soon as I heard it I looked up. One of my campers was sitting on her bed folding laundry, singing. It wasn’t a purposeful singing, where you sing into a broom handle or into the mirror or in the shower. The lyrics to Cyndi Lauper’s "I Don’t Want To Be Your Friend" were turned out unconsciously as she continued to fold. Here I hadn’t only taught them the importance of diet and exercise, but I’d unintentionally set them up to expect catastrophic romantic breakups. I’d blared songs about unrequited love as if they were mantras to a religion rooted in scorn. "I’ll forget I ever let you into this heart of mine baby" aren’t exactly the words you’d expect to hear from a girl who wears Wonder Woman pajamas.

"All Out of Love" by Air Supply

One night when I’d snuck into my camp boyfriend’s bed, he placed his headphones on my ears, instructing me to listen to the lyrics. The words were about hurting, about missing, "thinking of you ‘til it hurts." He played me songs about being "tormented and torn apart" while we were still together. It was a luxury knowing what you’d miss, just as it was happening, even before having a chance to. It made us hold on tighter. The summer was almost over.

"When a Man Loves a Woman" by Percy Sledge

According to Percy Sledge, when a man loved a woman, he’d "sleep out in the rain if she said that’s the way it ought to be." So if there was some guy camped out in a thunderstorm to prove his love, I wasn’t about to let by camp boyfriend off with a simple, "Sorry" after one of our routine fights. He’d need to prove it. Beg for forgiveness in the middle of the night holding a stereo above his head. I wanted to love the way people did in the movies. It’s why I have a chapter in Moose titled…

"Hurts So Good" by John Mellencamp

My camp boyfriend and I were sitting in the movie shack with the rest of our division watching Ghostbusters when I swore he used his finger to write I LOVE U on my palm. By the end of the week, just before Family Weekend began, he handed me a mix tape he’d made for me. He’d listed all the song tracks on the back of the cassette case, modifying The Police’s song title to "Every Little Thing Steph Does Is Magic." There was an asterisk beside "Storybook Love" from the Princess Bride soundtrack. And the mix culminated with "Hurts So Good," which seemed to be true about everything except love.

"Cecilia" by Simon & Garfunkel

Every night, we’d fall asleep to the muffled sounds of classic rock, courtesy of our counselor, who was sitting OD on our cabin porch after lights out. "On Duty" entailed keeping watch for trespassers, dodgy strangers who might penetrate the barbed wire periphery of camp. She composed mixed tapes on our porch—"Pinball Wizard," "Desperado," "Hotel California," and "Fire and Rain"—while wrapped in an unsightly afghan, burning a citronella candle, with a bundle of stationery and envelopes of stickers at her side. When we made too much noise, she’d threaten us like an impatient young mother: "Don’t make me come in there." When I think of camp, I think of the songs that, if you knew their lyrics, you’d earn an invitation to sit with the cool group by the campfire.

Stephanie Klein and Moose links:

Stephanie Klein’s website
Stephanie Klein’s Wikipedia entry
Stephanie Klein’s Twitter
reading guide for Moose: A Memoir
excerpt from Moose (PDF link)

Austin Chronicle review of Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp
Books on the Brain review
Entertainment Weekly review
Everybody Goes to Haleywood review
People review
Starling Fitness review
Voice of America review

DadLabs interview with Stephanie Klein
Jewcy.com essay by Stephanie Klein
Newsweek interview with Stephanie Klein
Smith Magazine interview with Stephanie Klein
USA Today profile of Stephanie Klein

2 YEARS AGO: The Friends We Keep
3 YEARS AGO: Last Comic Standing
4 YEARS AGO: I Dig ‘Em

Oh, nuts.

Smut. It’s what they caught me with, age 15, at sleepaway camp for fat kids. I was then lectured by a man who asked me if I thought I knew a lot about boys. Fellatio, as far as I was concerned, sounded like a flavor of gelato I might like to try. You know, like stracciatella.

A man with a knuckled chin lectured me about porn when my nickname was still Moose. Mind you, he did nothing wrong, and he certainly wasn’t a pervert. But I was am. I accidentally caught a glimpse of his manly bits and have forever thought of them as his golden oldies. Just thought I’d share. Excerpt below.

“I asked what your parents would think about all this.”

I didn’t think the word “porn” would trigger any feelings of surprise on my parents’ behalf. Poppa referred to me as “Little Miss Hot Hormones,” a term that still bothers me today. Hearing “hormones” coupled with “hot” from my father makes me want to run down the halls of my house with my arms flailing, chanting “go away go away go awaygoawaygo” until I can hear nothing but the sound of my own voice. Certainly my parents wouldn’t have been surprised by a phone call alerting them that I still had raging hormones. If anything, perhaps they’d find it reassuring that I was still the very same daughter they’d last seen through a tinted bus window in a Yonkers parking lot.

I wanted to say this to Doc, tell him that my parents would mostly be pissed that those bastards rummaged through my belongings and stole from me. But I wasn’t certain how they’d react. If Mom answered the phone, I’m sure she’d have just apologized and replied with tsking sounds. “I just can’t believe it,” she might’ve said as if she were told I mutilated a finch. Instead of answering Doc, I just sat there, trying not to notice his oldies.

A YEAR AGO: Napa Next Week, Silk Purses and Sow Ears
2 YEARS AGO: We All Have Bad Days, Ruby Red
5 YEARS AGO: Opportunity Cost Analysis, The Notebook

I’m at the airport on my way to Denver. Scheduling delays. I couldn’t sleep last night, worried about the pilot story for Straight Up and Dirty, struggling with whether or not it’s the right story to tell, wondering if it sets up the series and tone of the show the way I want it to.

I wonder if it’s like a wedding dress. You know, something that when you try it on, you just know it’s the one. I’m waiting for that to happen, but with the twenty or so stories I’ve come up with, I don’t feel that about any of them yet. It’s why I’m hoping it’s less about the story I’m telling and much more in the telling of it.

It’s no small task: establishing the characters, and how they fit into Stephanie’s life, carving out where the show will live (apartment, hangout spot, office, etc.), all while showing her frame of mind, externalizing her internal struggle, setting up conflicts between characters, defining desires and needs. Her desires can’t be vague, either. "She wants to find herself," just ain’t gonna cut it. They have to be specific enough that the audience knows the moment she gets what she wants. Or doesn’t.

Her opponents (regular opponents, not random men who ask her to go dutch on a date) need to attack her greatest weakness so she’s forced to grow. And these opponents have to be necessary, with their own weaknesses and opposing values, yet share similarities with her, too. Each of her opponents has to attack her weakness from a different angle, and in as different a way as possible from one another. All this, and it has to be funny. It is, after all, a half-hour comedy. I might think too much, but I need the answers to these questions before I can think about the funny. I need the bone structure so I know it has longevity. I’ve actually already worked that bit out and am now left with the task of creating the story I’m going to tell, of all the possible stories in the book. In less than thirty minutes, we need to know where Stephanie is now that she’s divorced, what it is she wants, and get a sense of what’s in store for her now…and all while referring to myself in the third person.

Then tonight, I’ll need to shift gears and speak about chubb rub and chunky-dunking. I’m not really planning on reading from Moose, but I might just slip in a quick page or two, to give the audience a better sense of the book. You know, show, not tell what the book’s about. I NEVER know what to select. It’s the same issue I have with choosing just one pilot story. There’s so much there. So many topics covered, and I only get one chance to convince people to stick around and watch it, or read it. From those of you who’ve read the books, I’m listening.

This is the kind of stuff I’m now cutting from the Moose manuscript.  All things analytical are driving me to ctrl + X.  I wonder if it’s the right decision.  I’m also cutting out tangents… this is a part where a very thin coworker of mine asks me for her help.  This is of course a flash-forward into my adult life.  It just can’t fit because it throws the reader off the path and point I’m trying to make.

In the weeks that would follow, she’d ask me to grocery shop for her.  “It’s just that Trey Beck is coming over, and you’re so good at all that domestic stuff.”  And?  “And, I don’t have time to do it all myself.  I have to go out and buy plates.”  Of course she didn’t own plates; she didn’t eat.  Still, who doesn’t have plates? I blinked at her.  “I have to put food in my cabinets, or he’ll think I’m a freak.”  You are a freak.  “Can’t you make me seem normal?”  It would be a miracle at the 34th street supermarket. 

I’d food shop for her apartment spending too much time analyzing.  What exactly would corn flakes say about her?  Wholesome, with an appreciation for the simpler things.  I walked amid the colorful rows of food products looking for other statements.  The red and navy canister of Quaker Oats declared that she had patience.  Microwave popcorn: the girl appreciates technology.  I added a pound of Bavarian old-fashioned pretzels to the shopping cart because girls are always snacking on pretzels.  LornaDoone shortbread cookies.  I paused.  No, men like Mallomars.  Impressive, he’d think upon seeing the yellow box.  I bet she likes sports.  I’d buy nothing low fat or low sugar.  She wouldn’t want him to think she ever thought about her weight.  Instead the goal was to wow him with her genes, a girl who can eat and still look like that!  A six pack of Dr. Pepper and a tub of Jif and I was done.

I retraced my steps to the LornaDoones despite deciding on the Mallomars.  Screw it.  I began to fill the cart with everything I wanted.  Pizza flavored Combos, potato skins, frozen miniature hotdogs, and a red bag of tater tots.  A jar of Cheez Wiz.  Tostidos.  A half-gallon of Moose Tracks.  A canister of Pringles.  The cart brimmed with all the things I could never have.  A tub of icing.  Now we’re talking.  A box of cake mix, no—not just cake mix.  Mix with pudding in the batter.  Ooh, what else?  How extraordinarily freeing.  Take that Dough Boy.  Oh yes I can! How delicious to pretend I could be this free from food.

When I reached the checkout counter, I began to pick at my nails.  People are going to think this is all for me.  Well it’s no wonder, they’ll think as they eye my arm lard.  What am I doing?  Just look at yourself.  You have no control.  But she gets to.  Yeah, but she doesn’t eat it.  She just uses it as decoration.  Go home to your husband, the one who thinks you’re too fat to fuck.  I abandoned the cart in the checkout line, pretending to double back for a forgotten yet essential item.  I left the store empty-handed. 

I went home and filled my empty hands with folded slices of white pizza.  I annihilated the pie and wondered how her date would go without the props that told the story of a life she didn’t live.  I couldn’t continue to live like this.   I too needed someone to make me normal.

It’s the title of one of the chapters in my new book MOOSE.  The Hate Diet.  It’s not about hating diets; it’s about a diet that worked because I hated.  Hate, not love, motivated me to lose weight.  In spite of someone.  Ever motivated by the deliciously dark side?

I wanted to lose weight to spite them.  An “I’ll show you,” and the more I hated them, the more they strengthened my resolve.  I wasn’t motivated by positive images of people who’d successfully lost weight as much as by the people to which I wanted to prove something.  Take that, you goddamn chowder-house. I’m thin.   I suppose it’s along the same lines as "the best revenge is being deliriously happy."  My best revenge was being thin.  Because you can’t really see happy; people can fake that.  You can’t fake thin.

Physical Fitness tests.  Some New York State standard.  Flexibility, strength, endurance.  Flex arm hang, sit & reach, crunches.  The height we got to write down on the paper ourselves, even our resting heart rate.  But when it came to weight, the gym teacher had to weigh us.  Why would a school even have a scale—I don’t get it.

I spent my early years in Mother’s closet, pulling out thin silk scarves and tying them around my chest.  I spent hours at her vanity table—working foundation into my skin, like creamed butter.  Pressing my lips together in pink—flawless.  I drew a beauty mark beneath my eye with a brown eyebrow pencil.  I was gorgeous.  Fabulous, took the pins that kept her rollers in place, silver metal clips, dangled them from my ears, the closest I could find to make me resemble Olivia Newton John at the end of the movie Grease.

For Halloween, I always wanted to dress as a witch, an excuse to wear black.  I never looked like a witch; I looked like a hooker.  Mother’s black feather boa was my favorite item.  I was never allowed to paint my nails red, either.  Pink nails dressed in navy were the closest I got.  She dressed me in pastels and florals.  Laura Ashley sneezed all over me.

When my father’s mother Beatrice died, I had nothing to wear.  In a closet full of nothing to wear, all that fit were shoes.  In the changing room at Ann Taylor, I broke down crying.  Mother had brought me there for a suit to wear to the funeral.  The largest size they had didn’t fit.  I cried without tears, silently, in the fitting room.  She walked me across the mall to J. Crew.  There we no more options.  We found a size 16 black gabardine skirt suit.  $600.  I heard her arguing with my father that night, through their closed bedroom door.  “Donald, I didn’t want to spend that much.  We had to.”  My father was used to having Mother carry back armloads of garment bags.
“How much did that cost me?”
“Oh, wait until you hear how much I saved.  Such a bargain.”

The only thing I ever heard them fight about was money.  She resented feeling like she was on an allowance, having to account for each penny spent.  She bought dented soup cans to save, but she shopped at Tahari for her clothes.  He resented that all she did was spend.  To this day, he has no idea what ladies shoes cost, or sheets or towels or a new frying pan.  I’m glad about the ladies shoes.

When mother changed to show me her different outfit purchases, she changed in the bathroom or in her closet.  As she changed, she would emphasize the bargain, calling to me through the door.  She fingered her cellulite thighs, jiggling them.  “Bad, so bad.  Will you look at this?”  Enter my role model.  She was of course, thin, and beautiful.  She can eat like a trucker, never dieting.  Now, we’re finally the same size—size 6.  Except when I’m miserable, I’m a size 4.

I read books about blonde twins living in Beverly Hills.  Girls who make midnight wishes for some boy to like them—their wishes always came true.

My dad said we wore the same size in jeans.

When it came to boys, it always came down to which one liked me.  I only liked a guy I thought might be into me.  I always had to pick a guy to like, a hobby, like choosing a variety of yarn I wanted to spend my evenings knitting.

Wooden hangers, all facing the same way, hang beneath shelves of piled jeans and one pair of black leather pants that must have only fit me for a minute.  They’re unreachable in every way.

The summer after Eric Fink broke up with me, two months later, he called to see how I was doing, to ask if I planned on attending Shiva’s party.  “I’m good.  I lost weight since we last saw one another.”  I was certain he would want me if I were thinner.  Man, even now, writing this, drinking my water, ignoring the growls, planning how little I can eat for dinner and be satisfied.  I feel that being thinner will make me happy.  When I’m fat, I got gardeners.  When I was thin, I got everything.  I always had emails and new voicemail messages waiting.  Being thin is being popular.  Attention from boys made you popular.

Lust makes me diet.  Wearing his shirt and nothing else—smelling seex on my fingers, at it all day, my stomach growls.  My ache feels like hunger.  Meals, menus, shopping lists are replaced with dates, candles, lingerie.

There is always one girl who wears the same shirt too often, her smell makes you turn.  She walks like a giraffe, careful and suspecting.  When you’re ostracized you walk differently, trying not to be noticed, to yield to the stronger colors, to fade like thin water.

Spanikopita is my Christmas.  Sweet butter pooling in the pan as the pastry crisps up, it’s ledges lifting.  Flakes melt.  Salty feta bounces.  I am too impatient for the cooling—I let it roll in my tongue—short Lamaze breaths.  Christmas.

Strips of phyllo are tented in damp cloth.  Work quickly.  Spoons.  Clear plastic bowls of melted butter—the milk solids separate and hover near the edge like beginner swimmers clinging to the ledge.  A larger bowl is home to the eggy spinach puddle.  Feta floats like buoys.  I want to taste it raw.  Salmonella.  “Eh, eh, eh.” Mother smacks my hand as it reaches for a dip in the bowl.  “Get folding.”

Layer of phyllo, zig zag butter drizzle, phyllo, butter, phyllo—it’s music.  “Baby It’s Cold Outside.”  Spoonful of spinach mix is tidy on the phyllo runway, folded in its triangular pocket, like a gem hidden in a handkerchief.

Other kids went on teen tours of Israel or across America—playing Jewish geography on bus rides.  In fat camp, we made detailed lists of all the foods we craved to eat with our return back to the “real world.”  We remembered our favorite foods in detail—like speaking of a dear friend with whom you had a fallout.  Living in the past, where friends seemed truer, times were more fun and outrageous, where the guy adored you, where your jeans were so damn tiny.  The past tastes better.

I continue to finger size 12 rack.  When I hear “fatty,” I am certain they mean me. When I got to college, I heard someone chant "Moose."  "Oh dear God, it followed me here!"  I was panicked.  Thankfully, once I turned around, I noticed a football player with moose antlers attached to his helmut. 

There’s a small fear in revealing that I’m a former Crisco Chick.  I imagine it’s akin to letting a guy know your mother hasn’t aged well and that she has let herself go.  Ugs.  It’s an indicator of what could be.  Well, ya know what, screw it.  This is me, stretch marks and all.  Deal.

A car brings freedom.  Music as loud as I wanted, making out.  Smoking.  It brought me freedom to binge—to hide in my car and shovel.  During binge drives, I feared I’d run into fran, with a shopping cart full of “how could yous.”

Being intimate at camp took work.  They had PDA rules.  Councelors were instructed to break up public displays of affection with a whistle, or a hose on a hot day.  I got wet a lot.  Evenings provided opportunities.  In the dark, no one was responsible.  You could eat what you found, and kiss until your lips hurt.  In the dark, we found freedom.

At night I writhed and heaved into my pillows. Curled in fetal position, I cried for God to please take the pain away, please protect me, please give me strength to get through this, please. Then I swallowed and let the tears go.  I felt left behind and alone.  It is the scariest place I’ve ever been.  I hated my life—my fat empty life.