Romance:From Fat To Fatale(2)

My precious family. Mama Bulgari still loves to bake pretty much every day on an industrial scale. She always talks about the rigours and hardships of her life in the 'old country'. Right. Try to cover up that yawn.

She was barely four years old when gramps and grandma sold up the goat meat salami shop and migrated but, to hear her talk, you'd think she'd just stepped off the boat last week. These days the 'old country' mostly seems to specialise in exporting cheap cigarettes and hookers but, according to Mama Bulgari, it's still the cradle of civilisation and the last place on Earth where men are still men. And yes she does take her medication every single day.

My dear little sister Mavenka is - unfortunately - even bigger than me.

Sorry. I had to stop for a moment there to wipe the tears from my eyes and get over the hysterical bout of laughter. When she was a kid, she was convinced that she was destined to become a nun. Jesus was calling her a lot in those days. She might have made it too but her rampaging hormones suddenly steered her ninety frigging degrees right from the pathway of true virtue - and full speed into the back of those sweet chariots of love, those sweaty, tobacco-stained pick-up trucks that made every Friday night - romance night!

Yee haa and praise the Lord! She sure can't be criticised for lacking generosity when it comes to sharing her affections. And - come on, we're aiming for total honesty here - there's an awful lot of her to go around. Thank God for all those half-drunk guys and the blessings of darkness because those deep, evening shadows in the back of a bouncing Chevy pickup sure do hide a multitude of chins. Amen, sister, and pass another slug of your finest communion wine, if you please.

There'd been all those unmissable moments of adolescent fantasy too as I started to grow up as well as grow into the out-size section of the clothing stores. The school football team had a quarterback who was the focal point of a great deal of female, teenage interest, his broad shoulders and shock of black hair hinting at some Latino forebears.

He provoked sighs and giggles and palpitations every time he limbered up on the touchline, fuelling countless adolescent fantasies as he flexed his chest muscles and mopped the sweat from his broad brow. Girls used to push their noses up against the windows of the school gym doors as he worked out - before being shooed away, still sighing, by one of the teachers. I had the wildest, most intense dreams about him and I guess they must've been inevitable because he was always on my mind, a permanent background feature of every waking moment and the occasional companion to my nocturnal adventures of the imagination, even though he was completely and utterly oblivious to my existence.

All I had to do was close my eyes and my favourite scene would instantly unfold: he'd be riding round to the house on his motorcycle in the summer heat, stripped to the waist and ready to cut the grass. I'd take him a chilled glass of Mama Bulgari's super-syrupy, home-made lemonade to refresh him and he'd wipe his mouth with the back of his arm and say - Why, thank you, Misha - as he took me in his arms and kissed me, the sweet tang of the lemonade on his lips and his biceps drawing me closer to his glistening, sweat-stained chest.

We'd fall to the newly-cut grass and I'd feel the weight of his body on top of me, his broad hands exploring my body as I shivered with anticipation and ached for the moment when our love, our passion, our need for each other would be consummated.

Yeah. It got pretty steamy but I noticed that the alarm clock absolutely always interrupted me at the most critical moment. The smell of breakfast frying downstairs and me alone in my bed, having to get up and face another day at school, reaching for a handy, bedside snack before my feet even touched the floor.

The

quarterback finished high school and graduated years ahead of most of his girlish, adoring fans and years later I heard that he'd eventually settled down with another purposefully built and athletic young gentleman and made a successful career for himself on the gay stripper circuit. By all accounts he was perfectly happy with his life and - No, you really never can tell. I remember shrugging at the time as if the news in some way explained why he'd never noticed me. Yeah. Right.





Chapter 2:


Jumbo isn't just the name of a circus elephant





So, enough of the personal details. You've probably already guessed that since we're all pretty much on the double-plus, extra-large side of the clothing rail, food has always been very, very important to my family. We have a strong, calorie-crunching tradition of eating, snacking and munching pretty much all the time. There's always a snack or leftover while we're making breakfast. There's usually something to nibble at the bedside in case we're hungry when we wake up. Stubby fingers reaching for a cold, half-eaten slice of pizza or a fistful of pretzels. Even before the chubby little toes hit the carpet.

Eating is a fairly continuous process that just rolls on throughout the waking hours and, if you're not eating, Mama assumes you're sick and makes one of her famous goose-fat soups that could clog the arteries of a rhino and stun any bacteria into submission with just one spoonful.

Skinny people, according to Mama, must obviously be unwell. Feed them! Then feed them some more!! You grow up with this. It seems pretty normal. And everyone is carrying some extra weight so you don't really notice that you look pretty much like the rest of the herd. And this might've been my fate too.

But then I surprised everyone by getting good grades at school and ended up going to the local college to study computer science - loved the idea of sitting in front of a keyboard all day with plenty of room on the desk for my fries and diet cola - and suddenly discovered a world full of people who were not only skinny - but healthy too.