We Are Fat and We Are Legion

by Benjamin Duffy

  * * *

  I had to defend Denny’s honor once. Don’t laugh.

  Denny and I set a date to go Christmas shopping together at the Holyoke Mall. It was about two weeks before Christmas so the mall was a claustrophobic nightmare of irritable shoppers trampling each other and cutting each other off to snatch up coveted parking spaces. Just the way the baby Jesus would have wanted people to observe his birthday, I’m sure.

  We split up so that we could shop for each other and neither one would know what the other was buying. I got him a cool gadget from Brookstone’s, plus some shoes and a couple of DVDs. I didn’t buy him any clothes of course, because stores don’t carry sizes for a wide range of bodies. Christmas shopping is different for fat people, just like everything else.

  We agreed to meet at the entrance just outside Pizzeria Uno at a specified time because our car was parked over on that side of the mall. I showed up a few minutes late, carrying a full load of gifts for friends and family. Denny was standing there on the curb when I emerged from the sanitized consumerist horror show known as the mall. He couldn’t see me yet as I walked up behind him. I wanted to give him a poke in the ribs just to say hello.

  A car had pulled up to the curb. A little silver car, I remember. There were two women inside; girls actually, probably at least twenty years old, but no more than twenty-five. Skinny bitches with blonde hair. They were heckling Denny.

  “Hey fatass!” I heard one of them shout. “I bet you haven’t seen your dick in years!” Uproarious laughter.

  Denny stood still as a statue. His only reaction was his rapidly reddening face.

  “Your tits are bigger than mine!” shouted the other one, grabbing herself at the bust and jiggling them up and down. Obviously a real high class broad.

  They were rattling him. I could see Denny struggling to conceal his emotions. His face was twitching a little. He was digging for a comeback, a real zinger that would shut these bitches up. “Don’t you have anything better to do?” he said finally. It sounded weak. The girls in the car began to cackle at his pathetic response.

  I had heard enough out of these little asswipes. I was a raging bull and that car was my red cape. I dropped all of my shopping bags on the ground without hesitating for a moment. I balled my fists and charged at the car, letting out a bellowing war cry as I descended upon them, windmilling both of my fists with all of my fury. Left, right, left. Bang, boom, pow. I managed to land one really good shot through the open window at the skinny bitch in the passenger seat. I felt the solid connection of my knuckles on her fleshy cheek. Ooohh…satisfaction. After that, she threw up her hands to block my punches. I continued slugging away at her upturned hands as I spat and swore and raged at her. Something had exploded in my head.

  The girls inside of the car were terrified. They never even saw this fat woman coming, I was so sneaky. I was like a fat ninja! I heard her shout “Just go!” and they sped off with a squeal of tires. The whole incident lasted about fifteen seconds.

  I stood there shaking with anger and adrenaline. I looked down and saw that my knuckles were bloody from poorly aimed shots that had connected with the frame of the car. It was my own blood, not hers. After the initial rush, my knuckles would surely ache.

  I let out one more primal scream and then just stood there in the middle of the roadway, catching my breath, “Of course his tits are bigger than yours!” I shouted. “That’s cause you don’t have any, you flat-chested bitch!” They couldn’t hear me. They were long gone.

  In any case, I had made my point. You don’t want to mess with a Portuguese girl, much less a fat Portuguese girl. It’s best not to mess with her man either. I don’t take crap from anyone, certainly not from skinny blonde waifs.

  I gathered up my gifts which were now scattered across the sidewalk. I grabbed Denny around the waist and buried my head in his chest. I was crying. “Oh, Denny,” I said. “I can’t believe they were talking to you like that.”

  How shocked I when Denny jerked me by the elbow in the direction of our car. “Let’s go,” he said through clenched teeth. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “What? Why? You in a hurry?”

  “I’m not waitin’ around to see if those girls call the cops.”

  I couldn’t believe he thought they would actually call the police. They were completely in the wrong. If anything, we should have been ringing the po-po’s to report on them. Even so, we hurried back to the car at a brisk walk.

  Denny drove home, not saying a word until we were back in our kitchen. He prepared an ice pack for me and placed it on my hand. We sat down together at the kitchen table. It’s pretty rare for me to really tick him off, but it appeared that I had done it that time. His face was sternly serious. “You didn’t have to do that, you know.”

  “But honey…” I whined.

  “Completely unnecessary.”

  “I was doing it for you. I wasn’t going to let them talk to you that way,” I explained.

  Denny sighed with impatience. “I had the situation under control,” he stammered. “They were trying to get a rise out of me, so the best thing to do was not to give them that satisfaction. Just ignore them. Which is what I was doing until you came along.”

  “You shouldn’t put up with that crap,” I retorted. “You gotta fight back. Don’t take it sitting down.”

  Denny said nothing for a dozen heartbeats. Finally, he broke his silence. “Don’t fight my battles for me, okay?”

  “Just trying to help,” I said. “Sheesh. Give me break.”

  Chapter Twelve:

  The Calm Before the Storm

  Nutter begins to bark when he hears Denny’s car pull into the driveway. Headlights flash through the window and across the wall. Normally, I’m happy when Denny comes home but these past few weeks have changed everything.

  I’m relaxing on the couch with some microwave popcorn. I TiVoed some episodes of Intervention, my favorite show. I’m just getting caught up with this season. This particular episode is about some chick named Amy P. who happens to be dealing with bulimia. Go figure. I usually watch this show for the methheads, smack addicts and speed ball freaks, but tonight’s topic is bulimia. I can’t believe what some people will do to themselves to stay thin. Really sick shit.

  Denny comes into the house and falls down next to me on the couch. I put Intervention on pause. He’s still wearing his checkered chef pants and his white coat, speckled with grease and food particles, and he obviously needs a shower after a long day at work, but I won’t let that stop me from kissing him. Nutter waits patiently at Denny’s knee, licking his fingers. “Hey babe,” he says to me.

  “Hey,” I say back. “How was work?”

  “Same shit,” he replies.

  “Yeah.”

  “I gotta get a new job,” he says. “I’m sick of working around food all the time.”

  His comments baffle me. I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want to work around all of that delicious food. If I could cook like Denny can, I’d gladly work at the Yarde House. “Is that so?” I ask.

  “Yeah, it’s hard to stick to my diet,” he says. “I guess I’ll start looking at the want-ads tomorrow.”

  I wrinkle my nose. He’s trying to show off how much willpower he has. What does he want, a medal? If there’s one thing I hate more than diets, it’s dieters. Most of them can’t stop yakking about their diets. Just shut up about it already.

  Denny rocks his body to get up, then shuffles down the hall to the bedroom. Two minutes later, I hear the water flowing in the shower. I click back on Intervention. He emerges minutes later wearing his UConn sweats, his hair wet. He heads straight for the kitchen.

  There’s going to be a fight. I can feel it. This is the calm before the storm. I hear Denny grunt with dissatisfaction as he rummages through the freezer. “Gabby!” he shouts.

  “Yeah?” I try to pretend everything is normal.

  “What happened to my frozen meals?” he says in a panicked tone. />
  “Oh. They’re not in there?”

  “Gabby…don’t play dumb. They were there before I went to work and now they’re gone. Unless Nutter ate them, I can’t explain it.”

  I play nervously with the bowl of popcorn. He’s going to flip out when I tell him. “I threw them out,” I say finally.

  And I did. I grabbed all of them from the freezer and made a mad dash to the gas station, where I dumped them in a public trash can. I wanted to make sure he couldn’t just fish them out of the trash again.

  “WHAT?” he screams. “You threw away my food?”

  “Uh, yeah,” I say. I’ve pissed off the sleeping giant. His booming voice startles me, although I don’t want him to know that. I try to remain cool, monitoring my voice to ensure that it doesn’t betray the smallest hint of fear. “They were taking up too much room in the freezer.”

  It’s a lie. He knows it and I know it. Denny charges out of the kitchen, his face red with anger. “GABBY! Why in the hell would you do that? That’s my food! It’s what I eat!”

  “There wasn’t a lot of space in the freezer, so I—”

  “Bullshit!” he screams. “You threw them out because you’re trying to sabotage me!”

  “Denny…”

  “What?”

  “Just clam down,” I say in my most soothing voice.

  “I will not calm down!” he shouts.

  “Tone your voice down a little,” I say. “The neighbors are going to call the cops.”

  “Let them call the cops!” he shouts back. “I have a crime to report! Food theft!”

  I exhale deeply. “Denny, those meals the doctors gave you are junk. I looked at them. They don’t contain the nutrients you need. They’re only five hundred calories each. That’s fifteen hundred calories a day. A big guy like you needs more than that. That doctor put you on a semi-starvation diet.”

  “Gabby! Those were ten dollars a piece!”

  “I’ll pay you back,” I reply.

  Denny returns to the kitchen, swearing under his breath. I hear a thud and rush in to investigate. Denny has dumped the trash can upside down, leaving a pile of garbage on the kitchen floor—old coffee grinds, crumpled up paper, cellophane wrappers. “Where the hell are they?” he shouts.

  “You won’t find them,” I say. “I took them somewhere else to throw them away.”

  “Gabby, I come home from work and I’m friggin’ starving and then I find out that you threw away my food! What the hell has gotten into you?”

  I stand there with my hands on my hips. “Well, that’s half your problem there. Diets leave people feeling hungry, and when they’re hungry they binge. Just eat naturally.”

  “So now what the hell am I supposed to eat?”

  “Anything,” I shoot back. “Eat whatever you want. Listen to your body. Just stop this dieting insanity. The only ones who stand to benefit are Dr. Thompson and whichever food manufacturer he’s aligned with. So eat a damned roast beef sandwich or some chicken.”

  Denny sits down at the table and begins to rub his temples. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him this angry. Maybe never. “Gab, those meals are for losing weight. I’m trying to lose weight because I’m diabetic. Diabetes is a disease that kills people. What don’t you understand?”

  “What don’t I understand? I don’t know why you can’t love yourself the way you are.”

  He sighs. “There’s no getting through to you.”

  “The feeling’s mutual,” I say. “Denny, diets don’t work! That’s been proven over and over again. If a doctor recommends dieting, he’s actually recommending weight cycling.”

  “It’s not a diet!” he shoots back.

  “Let me guess—it’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle change.” I sneer. “Right?”

  “Yes, that’s right. I’m trying to change how I live. I’d like some support.”

  “That’s the same old corporate slogan that the diet industry has been using for years. They all claim they’re not diets because everybody knows diets don’t work. But if they’re telling you what you can and can’t eat, that’s a diet. Are you going to eat frozen meals for the rest of your life?”

  He nods. “If need be, yes.”

  “Even at Thanksgiving?”

  Denny rolls his eyes. “This is such a stupid conversation.”

  “It’s not stupid. Whatever change you decide to make, you have to ask yourself if it can ever really be permanent. Are you fighting biology? You have a lot to learn about how the diet industry manipulates people.”

  “Yeah, well I’m done with it,” he says. “This conversation is over.” He stands up and flings the refrigerator door open violently, nearly slinging bottle of condiments across the kitchen floor.

  “What are you looking for?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. Fruit or something. Is that okay with you if I have some fruit?”

  “I don’t think we have any fruit in there,” I say.

  “I’m shocked!” he shouts back. “You’ve got fifteen kinds of cookies, but not a single piece of fruit in the whole damned house.”

  Okay, that stung. Now he’s going to start criticizing my eating habits, getting all preachy with his dieter’s gospel. I don’t need a sermon. “This isn’t about me,” I say.

  “Ah ha!” he shouts, pulling out a wrinkled Cortland apple. I don’t know how long it’s been in there, but probably quite a while since I can’t recall buying it. “I found one.” He takes a bite without washing it, a habit that annoys me to no end. “You know,” he says, chewing, “I’m not even supposed to eat this. I’m supposed to stick exactly to those meals. No deviation.”

  I groan. What kind of cockamamie weight loss scheme won’t even allow a person to eat an apple? Such is the insanity of dieting. Dieters surrender all control to an external authority. “It’s such bullshit.”

  “So, what now? If I get more meals tomorrow, are you gonna chuck those in the trash too?”

  I nod. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  “You got a lot of balls.”

  “I suppose. Or just a lot of heart. I don’t think dieting is healthy for anybody. The strain it puts on the body causes premature death. I won’t stand for it.”

  “You know what else is unhealthy?” he asks, taking another big bit out of the apple. “Weighing 440 pounds.”

  “Just a number,” I say.

  “That’s how much I weighed before I started this diet,” he explains. “Now I’m at about 395. I’m proud of that.”

  I nod. “I bet.”

  “And you want to sabotage me because you want me to stay fat.”

  He doesn’t get it. “I’m going to bed,” I say. “I’ve had enough.”

  * * *

  I went to college once but I didn’t graduate. Not even close. But I went.

  I graduated from Ludlow High School, class of 1992. I did well in school, making the honor roll for most of the marking periods. I was a smidgen on the brainy side and I took my studies very seriously. I was college bound and glad of it. My greatest fear was that I would end up hanging around Ludlow after graduation doing nothing with my life. A few of the kids who were older than me were doing exactly that. Just Ludlow townies.

  I enrolled at the University of Massachusetts for the fall semester. Being away from home for the first time was both frightening and exciting at the same time, out from under my parents’ roof and my parents’ rules. I lived in a dorm in the Southwest living area. I seem to remember that it was called Melville, named after the guy who wrote Moby Dick. Did it have to be a whale?

  I never did get around to declaring a major but I was leaning toward French. I had had a real flair for French in high school, impressing my teachers and acing my tests. To me, the language had the ring of sophistication and romance. French people were definitely smarter than Americans, and much more cultured as well. Being able to speak French would make me practically an honorary French citizen. I thought I might study it for a little while and then do a
year abroad in Paris. Picturing myself in the City of Light made me absolutely giddy.

  I sometimes think about how my life would be different today if I had stayed in college. Perhaps I’d be an interpreter at the United Nations. No, probably not. I doubt the UN hires fat people either. Even so, I would have a college degree. Surely I would be doing something better than stalking deadbeats via telephone.

  These days I can’t speak more than a few words of French. I can still introduce myself and explain where I come from. For some reason I remember how to say fingernails. Les ongles. Not much else. It’s been twenty years since I’ve taken a French class and it’s steadily eroded away.

  College was a real shock to my system. Due to my girth, I had never been at ease in social situations, but the atmosphere at UMass was absolutely unbearable. I felt so awkward and unwelcome everywhere I went.

  The campus seemed to attract shallow, plastic, soulless, skinny bitches who apparently went to college to study makeup and boys. They all seemed like clones of each other—party girls from suburban Boston who never seemed to have anything intelligent to say. I could not relate to these girls at all. They were like zombie blonde bitches from Mars. I found them absolutely hideous in their trampish gaudiness, but apparently I was in the minority. They seemed awfully satisfied with themselves and the boys thought they were pretty hot too.

  I began to withdraw from campus life. I went to class, of course, and to meals at the dining commons, but other than that I stayed in my room for most of the fall semester. I was a hermit in my college dorm.

  There was one brief exception to that rule. I met a boy who lived on my floor. He was a junior; calm and cool, not at all like me, the bewildered freshman away from home for the first time. His first name was Zack, although I don’t recall his family name. Zack was from Attleboro and he talked funny. Boston accent. I could hardly believe it, but he seemed to take a liking to me. It was like he didn’t care at all how much I weighed.