If and Only If: A Journal of Body Image and Eating Disorders Winter 2015 | Page 58

offend and that it was my job to keep it in control.

Earl is a cook at the local diner. A tall guy with a big gut and full head of silver hair. He was born and raised in the small town where our house sits, and has only recently accepted the fact that more and more city people are buying up cheap property here and driving up property values. He struggled to pull himself out of the driver’s side seat. Pam is bubbly and smart and sweet. She popped out the passenger side, and both of them walked towards me with a friendly smile and hands extended. I kept my distance from them as they introduced themselves and welcomed me to the neighborhood.

When my spouse came out of the house, Earl’s face fell. He turned stony when he saw that his new neighbors were a gay couple. Pam, on the other hand, smiled enthusiastically as if our arrival signaled a new and exciting era in this conservative town. I immediately put up my guard and stood farther back from them.

Earl recovered from his initial shock and greeted my spouse warmly, but still with some reserve. My spouse, who never concerns himself with how others react to him or to us, was as pleasant and nice as he always is.

When we bought the house upstate, we downsized our apartment in the city and shipped half of our furniture and belongings to the new house. When the movers from the city arrived upstate, they couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Two young Hispanic guys from the Bronx who’d never been out of the city. The isolation and the wildlife and the hillbilly nature of the place frightened them. They told us they had to get back to the city before dark as if when the sun went down they’d become prey just like the coyotes and foxes and wild turkeys that roam the woods.

We laughed at them.

Immediately around the house, we built a fence to keep the dogs from roaming around the woods and picking up ticks or from being confused for wolves by the hunters or from making their way out to the Taconic. The fence keeps the wildness at bay, too. Inside the fenced-in area, I tend to the lawn the way my father tends to his, edging around trees and flowerbeds and along the driveway. I weed whack along the cinderblock