Communion, Michael Garrigan

logically, many people feel shame about their bodies (too much fat here or there, too short or tall, acne), but not everyone self-induces vomiting, refuses to eat an almond croissant.

The more relevant shame, then, is directly linked to the more immediate compulsion to feel the presence of one’s own body. This other type of shame, the embarrassment in front of a stranger in line, is more immediate, more of the body, and it drives a person to even more shameful actions.

Once, for example, in a nice restaurant in the city, in the bathroom, which was four-stalled and immaculately polished black-and-white tile, I was in the throes of my vomiting when three teenage girls walked in. There was no sink in the stall to run to mu e the sounds. They quieted immediately and whispered to each other. Through the crack in the stall door, I could see them poised, each girl, in front of her own mirror. I could wait them out, I knew. I had done that before, waited until the bathroom had cleared until I could safely rinse my mouth and wash my hands. During this period of the disorder, I did not mind what my companions, if I had them waiting for me, thought I was doing in there, unless of course they suspected the vomiting.

Initially, a positive byproduct of my disorder was that I had become unembarrassed about any length of bathroom stay so long as vomiting was not the suspected activity. This is obviously no longer the case, since vomiting and bathroom have become synonymous, any bathroom usage of any length of time worries me.

But that day, with the three teenage girls, I resolved myself to attempt the excuse I had not yet attempted, though it had occurred to me some time before. I flushed and opened the door to their curious, embarrassed faces.

Perhaps one of them understood what was really happening—teenage girls are always a risk to their own bodies, hiding their secret disorders from one another. I looked the one closest to me directly in the face—a smooth, tanned face with a small pierced nose and thick blue eyeliner.

Are you OK? she asked me.

And the others nodded in agreement with the question.

Pregnant, I said, rubbing my belly like I had seen my sister-in-law do. But shhh, I said, no one knows yet.

They all seemed relieved by this disclosure, despite the fact that I have always looked younger than my age, that even in my distorted, disordered body image, I knew from the mirror that I looked only a few years older than them.

Congratulations! they exclaimed.

And I left the bathroom, not disordered but expectant, triumphant.

I WONDER NOW, in my spider-infested trailer studio with the sun almost fully up, the roosters still overly excited, if maybe I should have taken my lie and turned

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