Free Fat Girl Walking: Sex, Food, Love, and Being Comfortable in Your Skin…Every Inch of It by Brittany Gibbons

car.
    “What’s wrong?” he asked alarmed. He had been growing out a mustache and it was the most ridiculous thing I had ever seen.
    “I feel like a girl right now,” I admitted, laughing up at the gray felt ceiling of the car.
    “I hope so,” Andy answered. “Because I definitely saw at least one pussy down there.” I cringed at the word, but forgave him.
    We both found our places back in our seats and re-dressed in silence. He put his car in reverse and drove me back down the bumpy dirt road to my house. I had sex with a boy who would go on to take me to prom, introduce me to his parents, and never leave me at a restaurant when I wasn’t looking. So many of my skinny, gorgeous friends have absolutely horrible stories about losing their virginity, and aside from an unfortunate eighties song about the Cold War, my first time was perfect.
    As I reached for the handle on the car door to get out, Andy put his hand on my arm stopping me, leaned forward, and kissed me goodbye for the very first time.

5
MY ANDY GIBBONS
    I CAN’T REALLY talk about anything else before first talking about Andy Gibbons. I’m going to be mentioning him a lot going forward, and it’s rude not to introduce someone properly. Like those people who tell you stories about their family by saying, “Oh, did I mention Mom was in the hospital?” And I respond like “What!? I thought Mom was in her living room watching Deadliest Catch !” Because we actually don’t have the same mom, and it’s weird to assume we do, because we look nothing alike and we just met. It’s called a possessive determiner and it helps me not freak out about my mom being in the hospital.
    I met Andy Gibbons, my Andy Gibbons, on his birthday. While we attended the same school and had a few mutual friends, I had absolutely no idea who Andy was, and at that point was really only hanging out with boys who were gay or ashamed to be seen with me.
    On April 5, Andy turned sixteen, passed his driver’s test, loadedup three of his friends into the black 1988 Honda hatchback he inherited from his older brother, and spent the celebratory afternoon driving around and listening to rap music. I met him three hours later when he knocked on my front door and asked to use my phone. (It’s weird to think we didn’t have cell phones back then. We just left the house untethered, assuming we’d eventually show back up in one piece. Now I can’t even sit at a red light and not check my iPhone. The one time I left home without it, I tried to use the pay phone at the gas station, but when I picked it up, the part you spoke into had been removed and the hole stuffed with used condoms. The fact that there were multiple condoms in there confused me; I wasn’t sure if someone was having regular sex into the speaker hole, or if it was the work of a really horny squirrel.)
    Andy needed to use my telephone because he had been in an accident in front of my house, and while physically okay, he needed to call his mother. I gave him our cordless phone and went to the kitchen to get him a glass of water since it seemed like the polite thing to do for someone who had just been in a car accident. I was relieved my parents were both at work that day so I could corral all the dogs into their bedroom at the back of the house, muffling their barking and whining at the door. When he later recounted this series of events to his buddies, I didn’t want him referring to me as the weird girl who had a hundred dogs in her house.
    Andy looked terribly young. Tall and thin with thick messy black hair covering his pale blue eyes, and acne along his jaw. He wore a basketball jersey as a shirt, a gold Nike swoosh necklace, and his baggy jeans appeared to be ironed. I sat down next to him on the cement of our front porch and listened as he explained to his mom on the phone that a car had tried to pass him as he was turning, and T-boned him into my front yard. His voice was shaky, but he assured her he was fine and