Heavy

The foods that Laymon binges on during the bulimic phases of his eating disorder often carry a lot of symbolic weight. Consider, for instance, the peanut butter and preserves he eats during the first binge he describes in detail. On the day of this binge, he’s witnessed his young friend being sexually abused by an older boy; he’s seen his weeping mother nursing a black eye from her violent boyfriend; he’s heard his mother and that boyfriend having make-up sex. He turns his pain and hatred inward onto his own body and reaches for foods that both comfort and obstruct. Peanut butter clogs his throat, keeping back the secrets he can’t tell; pear preserves, made by his grandmother, connect him to the love and safety he can’t find at home.

Laymon’s choice of binge foods is similarly symbolically powerful after Nzola breaks off their relationship. Laymon goes around to all the trash cans in his dorm and scavenges discarded pizza slices: abased, rejected food. Here, in a more-literal-than-usual sense, Laymon is eating his feelings.

Food, in Heavy, works in tandem with powerful images of weight. As discussed in the “Themes” section above, weight can be to do with the concealment of pain or the solidity of a whole. Food, similarly, has the power to carry consolation and nourishment; it’s shame that turns it into a deceptive punishment, promising consolation and delivering pain.