FAT

(Note: As I mentioned a while ago, I’m taking a short rejuvenation break from Substack writing after two years. While I’m resting, I’ll be re-posting a “Best of” piece every Wednesday. This is one of them. See you with new writing in mid-October.)

There’s a specter hovering over me and its name is FAT. It dogs me through my waking hours and haunts my dreams. It convicts me of  weakness and self-indulgence; it makes every mouthful a transgression. Because of Fat I know no peace.

In one breath my culture, and my doctor, say, “Eat and be merry for that is the good life,” and in the next they say, “Be thin.” Does anyone else detect a contradiction here?

Even the prospect of company for lonely evenings hardly compensates for the shock of realizing that there may soon be enough of me to make two.

There are days, and this is one, when it seems as though the sole purpose of my existence is to outgrow my pants. At ten this wasn’t so bad. When Aunt Kate (no waif herself)  exclaimed at how short my pants had become since her last visit, I cringed, but deep down I felt a youthful pride. Now, when the Chunky and Chubby Apparel Shop salesman smirks on hearing my waist size, and suggests I try two sizes larger, I simply cringe.

But do I mind assuming the shape of a pear with legs? Do I resent the sleek young things in the Facebook ads? Does Limburger smell?

When my neighbor (no word mincer) asks, “How did you get so fat,” am I taken aback? Does she not know that the English language is rich with euphemisms she could have picked instead: “filled out,”  plumped up” – two ego boosters if I ever heard them? (Will she feel any trepidation when I tell her my words to live by: Never forget and never forgive?)

I try confronting Fat directly to no avail. “Fat,” I say, “why have you chosen me to settle on?” And Fat replies, “Because you’re there,” and chuckles, but its chuckle is sinister, not jolly.

“Fat,” I ask, “when people in the world are starving, why do you stay here” – and I point to various parts of my own person – “where you’re not wanted?” And Fat replies sneeringly, “Let them eat cake.” After a moment’s pause for reflection, Fat’s gaze goes glassy and it elaborates: “Let them eat butter cake with French vanilla ice cream.”

“Fat,” I say, “I’ll promise never again to diet if you agree to stop at current levels in ‘filling out’ my hips and thighs. Otherwise it’s war. It’s Paleo, Keto, Atkins, grapefruit – whatever it takes.” But Fat’s a ruthless bargainer. It knows my Fat Wars rhetoric will crumble against it’s sugar cookie arsenal.

“Diet all you like,” it says, riveting me with a look that might cow even Weight Watchers. “Your hips are mine already; your thighs don’t stand a chance. Remember the cinnamon roll!”

A tear comes to my eye: I do, indeed, remember the cinnamon roll … and the chicken and dumplings, and the apple cake with crème fraîche. I never seem to forget them.

But if reasoning with Fat is impossible, and bargaining difficult at best, what’s left? Ignoring it isn’t an option. Mind you, I’d be perfectly happy to ignore it – or at least pretend I did, despite mirror and conscience – if others would do the same. Thanks neighbor lady and suit salesman for making it clear they won’t. So what course is left to me?

Perhaps acceptance.

“How,” I hear you natural thinnies raging at me over your strawberry jammed croissants, no doubt after a cheese and bacon omelet swimming in butter and a cup of coffee with heavy cream, “can you accept Fat? At least you can go on fighting.”

“How,” I reply, with a defeated shake of my head, which you fellow fatties can probably see in your mind’s eyes as vividly as though you were here, “can I not?” Sometimes as our friends at Overeaters Anonymous tell us, the last desperate gesture and the first necessary step are the same: acceptance.

“Fat,” I say with bravado, hoping it will be unnerved by my boldness (while thinking it highly unlikely), “I’ve decided to accept you as a fact of life. You and I are now one – or two verging on two and a half depending on the light – but we needn’t let numbers bog us down now. I admit that I am powerless over Fat, that my life and my thighs have become unmanageable.”

Fat looks at me suspiciously, as though I’ve offered it a deal on a bridge in New York. After a moment Fat asks, “What is this, a trick?”

“No,” I chuckle, at last the jolly fat person of fable. “I’ve given up tricks. No more sacks of Oreos hidden in the laundry hamper. I’ve realized that only a force greater than Metrecal and my will power combined can restore me to thinnity. Put ‘er there, Fat.” And I reach out my pudgy hand to shake.

Fat shudders a little, but, still confident, puts ‘er there. “Remember chocolate cheese cake,” Fat says, expecting that the mere thought will turn me into a quivering mass of blubber, as usual.

“Oh, yes, I remember it,” I say, and Fat does a little smart-alecky swagger, which I have come to loath over all these years. “But I’ve decided to turn chocolate cheesecake over to a power bigger than both of us, if you can imagine anything that big.”

Fat stops in mid-swagger. It looks at me like a bookmaker sizing up horse flesh. To be honest, I find Fat’s grouping me with horses a bit insulting, but I have vowed no longer to nourish resentments. I’ve taken that first step. I back off a few waddles to regroup. I waver, but I hold firm. To the untrained eye I may still look as “plumped up” as ever, but Fat and I both know that things are different now. I may still look fat, but inside I’m getting thinner.

West End Word (St. Louis), January 9, 1986, p8A – revised July 2023