I first realised I was getting fat when a friend of mine, who writes his own fanzine, had decided on a nude centrefold and invited me to be his first one. I think he thought it was a compliment, a way of telling me I was attractive and sure to thrill me because being attractive is better than being, say, intelligent or kind. Certainly when a man says it to a woman. It worked too, I accepted.

He came over to take photos of me, front, back, sideways, wearing different outfits, naked. I was bigger in the photos than I usually am looking in the mirror. I wondered why. The mirror has borders but then so does a photo. I stand close to the mirror and I rarely stand sideways. Maybe that was it. It was disconcerting.

“The best way to do a nude,” I said, “would be to cut the photos in pieces and juxtapose them, so my nose was near my hips and my eyes on my stomach. Perhaps my legs on top. Like a Picasso painting.”

He didn’t like the idea.

“This way you’ll be making a commentary about nudes in daily papers,” I said. “It’ll be more interesting, and questioning.” He wasn’t interested. I was still thinking about how I looked so fat in those photos. How could it take me by surprise like that.

I realised I first started getting fat when I was a teenager, a time of life when girls (and boys I suppose, though this is about girls), when girls are insecure about their appearance and learn to starve themselves. I don’t know why I didn’t starve myself but I was definitely worried about my appearance. I tried makeup and went shopping with my girlfriends, desperate to buy the trendiest clothes which sadly didn’t suit me. You were supposed to be super thin back then, like a stick figure, and although I wasn’t fat then, I was never thin. I was sort of voluptuous like my mother. Big-breasted.

I frowned a lot. I remember a strange man once who told me I’d be much prettier if I smiled. I remember my stepfather, and his friends, making comments about my body. I preened sometimes, though when strange men grabbed bits of bum and tit as I passed in the street, I felt wrong. I hadn’t wanted that sort of attention. I hated walking past building sites, men would gather to whistle and cheer and quite frankly, it was frightening.

“It’s a sign you’re attractive,” my mother said, “they’re admiring you.”

“Couldn’t they find a less frightening way to do it.”

The curves I’d inherited from my mother had become increasingly larger love handles on her and she decided a visit to Weight Watchers was in order. She thought I would benefit too so she brought me along to the meeting and complained loudly when they told her I didn’t weigh enough to join. So they raised my weight, or lowered my goal weight, or did what they had to do to keep a customer happy, and I was accepted as a fat person who needed help losing weight.

I got up early to prepare my solitary egg for breakfast. My stepfather would find me there. He would come out from the shower wearing a towel around his middle. While I was poaching my egg and preparing my piece of toast, he would take it off. Clearly he didn’t think me too fat to be attractive. I ignored him beyond saying “Good morning” but I was 15 and had no brothers, I did sneak a look and I think he saw me. He put the towel back around and went to wake my mother.

I ate salads for lunch and tiny serves of meat and veg for dinner. Mid-afternoon I was hungry, so I’d sneak some biscuits from the tin we kept for visitors. There were less and less biscuits but I convinced myself my mother wouldn’t notice. I reached my goal weight, my mother didn’t and she found other things to do, like avoiding bankruptcy when her caryard failed. We gave up Weight Watchers.

At first I didn’t notice I was getting fatter. I was young and had things to do and places to go, and when I did think about my weight I would think with despair that I’d always be fat. I wished I was effortlessly thinner but I ate what I felt like and always thought of myself as fat, so I didn’t notice that more fat crept on. I had no trouble attracting men, they were still making a grab for bits and pieces of me, though there were now some lawsuits by woman who were saying you can’t do that. I felt justified whenever I thought of my mother and those lawsuits but I didn’t notice that some men were looking away. Until my friend took the photos and I realised it mattered.

I was teaching software to people in the ambulance service at the time. I had to go to ambulance stations with a suitcase full of training materials and a terminal which showed how the software worked. I met a lot of good people and not all of them were thin, some could barely fit behind the wheel of the ambulance, but the men in the rescue service were very fit and super healthy and some of them were revolted by me. They didn’t say so, they were mostly friendly, but they would jerk backward when I reached across the computer to show them something and when I touched them in the course of teaching, they would pull away. For me, there was nothing in the touch, I was working, I teach that way, but they would pull away nonetheless.

I noticed it other times too. I might touch someone on the shoulder, or even just smile at someone, and men would turn away, careful not to give me the wrong impression. I wondered if they thought I was desperate for a husband. I wondered if I was. My family weren’t impressed with the fact that I didn’t have a husband, they certainly didn’t think my opinions were worth hearing. Mostly I ignored it, life had been interesting so far, but I was nearly 40 and with no husband on the horizon and no likelihood that we would make a family, I was already thinking about buying my own house.

“At least I’m not as fat as our mother,” I said once to my sister.

“No, you’re fatter,” she said. She’s lying, I told myself, she just wants to make me feel bad. The worm of doubt remained. It seems that a woman with a husband has knowledge and gravitas even if she stays at home but a woman who supports herself but has no husband has no value. At least in my family.

 I started looking for a husband. Not that I expected sudden respect from my family but I was getting older and I was lonely. Some of the men made it very clear when they saw me that they were disappointed, or perhaps my pleasant voice had misled them. One man demanded a photo before he met me and then decided on the basis of the photo, not to meet me. Many men patronised me, which grated. One man ate the same meal, three times a day, at the same café. No matter where we were in Sydney, even if it meant a long drive, we returned to that café. He was boring.

Another man told me I was adequate and he would arrange a flat for me where he would come a few times a week. I told him I had a flat thank you and perhaps he wasn’t what I was looking for. There was a third man too, who turned up in a Mercedes and was looking for another wife to look after the child he’d stolen from the second wife. I made him pay for oysters. Other women find husbands, I thought, maybe I’m being too choosy. Do other women really put up with this or did I miss out on all the good men because I didn’t find one early?

I don’t really need a husband, except for companionship. Other women need husbands. Someone needs to help buy the house and maintain a better lifestyle and men earn so much more and have much more chance at progression. I’m qualified and good at what I do, I earn more than most men and can pay my own mortgage, though it would have been nice to have a sick day now and then. Maybe that makes me more choosy.

One day I decided to give up. If I meet a man and we like each other I might give it a go but I’m not going to search anymore and I’m not going to worry about my appearance. I’ll do the basics. I won’t even hope. I’m retired now, I have my own house and still no husband. I’m sometimes lonely, but I have friends and I find things to do.

I’ve begun to lose weight lately. In the last four years I’ve lost 18 kilo. I thought I might be sick but the doctor said it’s unlikely, the weight loss is too slow. Maybe I started living again. Maybe I really didn’t want a husband.