If and Only If: A Journal of Body Image and Eating Disorders Winter 2015 | Page 57

if we are monks observing our vows.

In the summertime when the leaves are heavy on the trees, we can’t see our neighbors. But on warm weekend nights, we can hear their music: a heavy rotation of 1970s rock anthems like Stairway to Heaven, Hotel California, Born to Run, and Free Bird. Earl, the husband of the couple who lives in the house nearest us, likes to barbeque on his homemade grill—a cinder block pit topped by a large industrial grate. While we sit on our back deck quietly eating dinner, we smile at the music coming through the trees.

In the weeks after we closed on the house, we came up on the weekends to gut the place—to tear up the Pergo floor and remove the old appliances and steam off the wallpaper in the bedroom. One day, Earl and his wife Pam pulled up into our driveway in a silver Nissan 370Z Coup. I was outside in the garage while my spouse was inside working on plans for the renovation.

I was embarrassed when they pulled up because I smelled so badly from working in the house that I thought I would offend them.

My mother instilled in her sons a paranoia about their own bodies. To keep them fit and properly clothed and sweet smelling as if body odor was a sign of internal rot. We never left our house without having showered first and brushed our hair and made sure that our breath did no harm.

At work, I keep a stack of Altoids on my desk that I eat as if they were jellybeans, and constantly breath heavily into my spouse’s face and ask him if my breath smells bad.

It took me years being upstate on the weekends to allow my body to stink as much as it wanted. To refuse to take a shower and let the day’s smells accumulate on me without worrying that it presaged anything. To allow the country air to rid my body of the toxins it accumulated in the city during the week and regain a balance that I’ve been trying for decades to reach between my present and my past.

But that first summer up at the house when Earl and Pam pulled into our driveway, I was still caught up in the idea that my body could easily