Adult Braces

In the summer of 2021, author and cultural commentator Lindy West was singing the Beach Boys' "Kokomo" to her dog after his neuter surgery when she felt the first stirrings of rebellion against her life of constant worry. For years, she had convinced herself she was an indoor, agoraphobic person, largely because of the stigma she faced as a fat woman in public. She realized that clinging to safety had left her feeling dead. She decided to drive solo from Seattle to the Florida Keys in a rented camper van for a month. Her husband, Ahamefule (Aham), a musician, enthusiastically supported the trip, telling her she was "actually not allowed to not go" (8). Kokomo, the song's tropical paradise, turned out to be fictional, but Lindy decided the real Florida Keys would serve the same symbolic purpose.

Before leaving, Lindy reflected on the adult braces she received in 2020 after stress-clenching shifted her jaw into a crossbite. She had always clung to a childhood dentist's compliment that she had perfect teeth, one of the few times anyone praised her body. The braces became a symbol: Teeth were not fixed in the skull but loose and movable. Her seemingly immovable life could also shift if she was willing to endure pain and vulnerability.

The deeper crisis driving the trip was her marriage. In September 2019, while recording the audiobook for her second essay collection, The Witches Are Coming, a stranger messaged her that Aham had been seen kissing another woman. Aham reminded her he had always identified as polyamorous, a fact Lindy knew but had spent years suppressing. They got together in 2011, and a key condition of their reunion after a breakup was nonmonogamy. Lindy agreed but privately strategized to prevent it from ever being acted upon, martyring herself to accumulate emotional leverage. After Shrill was published, her mental health deteriorated: She stopped writing, isolated herself, and became consumed by anxiety while publicly modeling confidence. When the affair surfaced, she learned Aham was seeing two women: Roya, an arts organization director in Portland, Oregon, and a younger local woman. One night, after a fight, Lindy experienced a shift from passivity to something stronger and told Aham she would leave if he did not stop. They entered couples' therapy and began rebuilding.

Lindy reflected on her parents' competing legacies: Her father, a copywriter and entertainer, pushed her toward performance, while her mother, a Norwegian-American nurse, instilled the Scandinavian Law of Jante, a cultural code that prized humility over individual distinction. Her father died of prostate cancer in 2011. She recounted her dream of stand-up comedy, derailed when a 2012 Jezebel article called "How to Make a Rape Joke" made her the target of years of online trolling, including rape and death threats. When Shrill was adapted into a Hulu TV series, she felt marginalized on her own production. The show was canceled in 2021; a commemorative photo book did not include a single picture of her and misspelled her name as "Linda West."

The road trip began on June 8, 2021. Lindy drove east on I-90 and camped at the Snake River KOA, part of a national campground chain, arriving after dark. At 4:00 a.m., she woke in terror to a freight train roaring 10 feet from her van and reflected that "a monster stays a monster forever if you never turn on the light" (59). Near Yellowstone, Aham called from the hospital with suspected diverticulitis and told her not to come home; Roya was traveling from Portland to care for him. Lindy stayed, recognizing this as her first test of independence. Roya sent detailed medical updates, and Lindy reconsidered the practical benefits of polyamory.

Between stops, Lindy examined her relationship with food. Diet culture's deprivation led her to eat defiantly and publicly, which became its own form of control. Her career was built on modeling self-love in a fat body, creating pressure never to express ambivalence. She tentatively identified her eating as disordered. When she sought help, a nurse practitioner prescribed Wegovy, a weight loss injection, which she rejected. A nutritionist named Grace diagnosed her with binge eating disorder and explained that the cure was eating, not dieting. A clinician also denied her a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), calling her too successful.

Physical challenges rebuilt her confidence. She completed an eight-mile solo hike through Badlands National Park in 90-degree heat, feeling like "a big, strong animal" (116). Key West, the trip's symbolic destination, proved disappointing: A snorkeling excursion turned disastrous, and no one accounted for her when they returned to the boat. She found the Key West she wanted in a quieter moment, walking through Old Town in the rain and eating Cuban food at El Siboney. Floating in the hotel pool at sunset, she texted Roya to say their interactions had been healing and began to accept that Kokomo was never a place but a state of openness.

The trip's most joyful days came in the Florida Panhandle, where Lindy reunited with her friend Jessie and Jessie's friend James. They swam at springs, ate fried seafood, and lounged on a Gulf Coast beach. At Wakulla Springs, Lindy jumped off a two-story diving platform, overcoming her fear of heights. That night, she photographed herself in her underwear and saw, for the first time, a woman at ease in her own body.

A turning point arrived in Opelika, Alabama. Lindy asked Aham to show Roya one of her photos, and Aham revealed that Roya had always had a crush on Lindy. Lindy felt a teenage thrill and created a group text with both of them. In Kalamazoo, Michigan, visiting her friend Sam and Sam's wife Kirsten, she got a septum piercing and her first tattoo, feeling euphoria at claiming her own body. After missing a highway interchange, she was rerouted through Kokomo, Indiana, a town she did not know existed, notorious for hosting the largest Ku Klux Klan rally in history and for expelling Ryan White, a teenager who had AIDS, from school. She reflected that happiness was real but might not be where you expect it.

The final leg took her through North Dakota, where she camped near her great-grandparents' homestead on land taken from the Three Affiliated Tribes through the Dawes Act, a federal policy that facilitated the seizure of tribal land. She reflected on her grandmother Clara, whose choice to stay in Norway and marry was both self-determination and a source of generational pain. Near Glacier National Park, she slept in a canvas tent, feeling like "just an animal in the world, all one piece" (297).

Lindy returned home and hugged Aham. For his birthday, she suggested Roya come to Seattle. At the train station, she felt Roya was "black-haired sunshine, the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen" (308). A year after the trip, Lindy got her braces off; her teeth looked the same but were structurally healthier, and she had to wear a retainer every night or they would drift back. The three formed a household at Lindy's family cabin. Lindy acknowledged she still had depression, binge eating, and difficulty with sexual intimacy, but did not want to return to her old marriage. She completed Snow Lake, a hike that defeated her 20 years earlier, and finished Lummi Peak with Aham, discovering they had turned back just before the view. The book closed with Lindy affirming that change did not make the past a lie and that what she loved most was being herself.