Tuesday, October 11, 2005

 

CENTRALIA
A Novel

Chapter 2
FAT AND UGLY

I’m Fat and ugly. Just hearing those words must be painful for you. Sorry about that. They also make for a lousy introduction. I wish that I could say that I was thin and beautiful. Everyone likes stories about people who are thin and beautiful but as I said, I'm fat and ugly—the two worst things to be in this culture.

I was born ugly. Ugly goes way back in my family, generation after generation, as far back as photographs could document. You can see in photographs that my parents, grandparents, and great grandparents—on both sides—didn’t have much in the looks department. Before the camera came along to document my family’s homeliness my kin were simply described as being ugly. If one of my ugly ancestors had their portrait painted it hasn’t survived. Why keep around a painting of an ugly guy? It would scare the kids. Ugly is my birthright, a sort of feudal duchy I have inherited. I look in the mirror and bask in my domain.

As far as the fat thing goes I’m proud to say that I’m self-made. I’m first generation fat, the first one in my family with a waist bigger than you can get both your arms around. I would like to tell you that it was difficult, that I struggled long and hard to be fat; that I did it completely on my own, but—like most “self-made” millionaires—I had plenty of help. I would like to thank a few people: Ben and Jerry, Little Debbie, Mister Frito-Lay, MacDonald’s, Burger King, Coke, and Pepsi. The list is long and distinguished.

I wasn’t always fat. It happened over the course of several years. It sort of snuck up on me. Yeah, that’s what happened, those 50 extra pounds snuck up on me when I wasn’t looking—probably while I was busy eating. Be careful or it could happen to you.

Fat is such an ugly word. These days we just say that people are overweight. In fact we are saying that over half of Americans are overweight. It is probably more by now—it’s a growing problem. Pardon the pun, but that brings up another subject. If you are overweight, along with the fat they should hand you a sense of humor about it because you are going to hear an endless barrage of fat jokes and comments about your weight. It goes with the extra territory.

You would think that with the numbers we represent, the lard-asses of America would take over and set a new standard for beauty, make our own rules. We could say that being five foot nine inches and two hundred twenty pounds was normal. We could boycott advertisers that insisted on using famine-victim skinny models to sell their products. We aren’t a radical bunch, so we bow down to the television ideals which dictate that thin is beautiful and fat is not.

I sometimes think that I will win the battle with fat; that I’ll diet and exercise my way to thinness; that scientists will develop some miracle pill to cure obesity, but the ugly thing will always be with me. I don’t know who makes the rules but ugly is, and always will be, ugly. Not much you can do about ugly. Ugly never sleeps. There is no known cure. I’ve heard that wearing a hat helps; they work as a distraction. I’ve got a closet full of hats. I’ve got a freezer full of ice cream.

From the looks of the shelves at the bookstore you would think that half the country has written a book about how to lose weight. There have been so many fad diets that you could probably eat any combination of foods and it would make up someone’s miracle diet. I’ve tried my share of them. Nothing worked for me. Then I saw an old broad on a cooking show making a dish with everything the diet books had been telling me to avoid. The old gal looked great, she also looked happy. That’s when I decided I’d never go on another diet again. Now I eat whatever I feel like eating. I’m still huge but I’m not getting any bigger.

Lots of people say that working out is the key to losing weight. There is no shortage of gimmicky exercise equipment for fat people. That whole exercise angle seems like the same scam as diets. Everyone has a theory about why we are fat, how to lose fat, how not to get fat, how to keep fat off once you lose the fat, how to turn fat into muscle, and how to keep muscle from turning into fat. Fat people are the biggest suckers out there. We fall for anything if it promises us a chance at being skinny. Some say fat people need to change their lifestyles. I’m all for that, I just don’t know how it’s done. I can’t even work up the inertia to clean out the trunk of my car.

It is certainly a growing health concern, but most of our preoccupation with obesity is more about the aesthetics of being fat. Thin is in and fat isn’t where it’s at. Even at a time when most Americans are overweight, advertisers try to shove thin people down our throats. I meant that figuratively, of course, but if someone came up with a cannibalism diet, shoving thin people down our throats would probably be a big craze. I’ve seen worse diets. I’ve actually been on worse diets.

Now I’m trying a weight loss system I thought up all on my own. It’s called the STOP FUCKING EATING program. I have that written on the door of my fridge. Not very sophisticated, I’ll agree. It’s easier said than done, but what isn’t? I just decided that I got fat because I ate too much. But this isn’t a diet book. As I’ve said, there are enough of those to fill the library of Alexandria. I don’t think that diet books were what Gutenberg had in mind when he came up with the printing press. Our obsession with our bodies is pretty boring; it’s like talking about bodily functions.

Perhaps I’ll figure out how to do one of those lifestyle changes and I’ll lose a few pounds, but don’t hold your breath, don’t leave the light on, and don’t keep supper warm for me. Chances are I already ate.

The truth is that the lifestyle that I have is too comfortable for me to change it, as much as I know it needs changing. Like the extra pounds that I put on over the years, my lifestyle sort of snuck up on me little by little. For many years I never really thought much about the way I lived. I have a job, a car, and an apartment filled with stuff. I’m doing everything that everyone around me is doing. If there is anything else no one told me.

Besides being fat and ugly I am also getting older. Ouch! Getting older is almost a bigger sin in America than my other two flaws. The funny thing is that although I’m as big as a house, I hardly get noticed by anyone. People ignore me for the most part. It’s like if they pay any attention to me I will screw up their People Magazine 25 Most Beautiful People world where they want to live. People like me have become invisible. We also tend to keep quiet.

9:18 PM

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