Romance:From Fat To Fatale(3)
Damn! What was wrong with them? So many kids from outside the neighbourhood - even college staff - and they were in great shape.
And that was when I started to look at myself a little differently in the mirror. Despite Mama's constant advice about the dangers of being thin - you'll catch pneumonia, you'll never have children, you'll get wrinkles, (Mama with hands on her hips, wiggling those rolls of fat, eyebrows jumping up and down suggestively) men need something to hang onto - I began to suspect that maybe, just maybe, I could actually be a little thinner. It would be a first in the long history of the Bulgari clan.
And why was being thinner suddenly so important? No guesses and no prizes for the right answer. The hottest girls on campus were the damn skinny ones with legs all the way up to their cute, collective, wiggling asses. When it came to romance, I was about as popular with the guys as a case of botulism in a fried chicken joint. I couldn't help noticing that boys would skirt around me like they were negotiating a pile of hazardous waste. And when some chisel-boned jock with muscles in his spit stuck a paper sign on the back of my chair with 'Caution - Wide Load stencilled across it, I knew it was time to take action.
The first step was to call up and call in for a full medical and evaluate the problem from an objective, professional point of view. The second step was to 'accidentally' swing my laptop case as I stalked along the corridor - and whack the muscled humourist right in his overloaded jock-strap. 'Sorry, sugar chops. Guess I didn't see you standing there. You want me to rub it better? No?? Anybody got some ice? No, don't worry. I'm sure my laptop survived. Unlike you, honey buns, my package is always hardened.' That's right. Don't mess with the big gals. We can be feisty!
Feisty? Yep. I guess that could be true. I suppose for the sake of complete and uncensored honesty I should mention one episode from around this time but I hope you're not eating lunch at this point because I sure don't want to spoil your appetite. Now you might be a well-travelled and fully-seasoned explorer of the broad canvas of human nature but it might come as a real surprise to you to discover that there are certain individuals out there who get their thrills from the stranger side of the greater menu of fetishes and perversions.
That's right.
There are folks out there whose idea of complete bliss is an overflowing handful of lard from the rear end of an out-sized lady.
Or, even better, two out-size ladies! These are the rare but persistent fat freaks, those incurable devotees to blubbery babes who can't get enough of the jumbo gals that most guys hide from. So I was shambling along the road from the bus stop to the high school gates one morning when a guy in an old raincoat - I'm serious here.
He was wearing a raincoat. Like he needed to advertise! - walked up alongside me, both hands buried deep in his pockets and said Hi. He was an older guy. Maybe even my dad's age, wearing the thickest glasses I'd ever seen. They looked like they'd been cast from the bottom of two soda bottles and wired together.
He was wearing a baseball cap really low on his forehead, like it was supposed to disguise him or something. And he looked kind of familiar. He asked me if I wanted to meet him after school for a coke and an ice cream in the park. I stopped and my jaw went a little slack because his hands looked a little too busy on the inside of his raincoat and it was pretty obvious that he about to show me what was going on in there when I suddenly shouted out - Hey! And I called out his name because I'd just recognised my old class teacher from when I was around six! Small world, eh? I said but he was already stumbling backwards, trying to keep that old raincoat together as he ran off down the road. Funny thing is - I never saw him again. So much for youthful romance.
Chapter 3:
The Doc gets physical
Medicals. You know they're important but there's something inexplicably weird about stripping off beneath those unforgiving fluorescent lights and being examined by some ancient, cold-handed medico who missed his real vocation as a mortician and ended up as a physician on campus with an endless supply of young bodies to play with. Creepy is too kind a word for the old freak. But he was thorough even if his dentures seemed to be a little too mobile for his gums, slipping and sliding around his mouth like
a demoniacally-possessed hockey puck as he mumbled and made notes, those plastic teeth threatening to escape the confines of his pinched face and launch themselves across the examination table at any second.
I thought about bringing a catcher's mitt to the next appointment but I guess he'd learned the knack of wrangling those old dentures back into the corral with a swift swipe of his leathery old tongue. It surely was not one of Nature's prettier sights. And, like I said, he was thorough. He wanted full spectrum blood analysis, stool and urine samples, a list of everything I ate - and the major source of his professional concern turned out to be my blood pressure. You see, as a family, we don't really do exercise. Apart from eating, papa Bulgari is a dedicated sports fan, of course, but that only involves screaming at the TV screen and making obscene gestures at the ref from the comfort of his La-Z-Boy lounger. My brother starts to sweat as soon as he wakes up. He yawns and every pore of his body opens up. Phee-uw!
And my sister only gets exercise when she's playing human trampoline on the back seat of a pickup truck. So my family hasn't really been noted for its athletic prowess since the dim and distant days when our ancestors used to make a living in the old country by stealing sheep and rustling goats. You had to be fairly nimble to hustle a bunch of sheep across the hills with a crowd of torch-waving villagers on your heels, baying for your blood and swearing to feed your extremities to the dogs. Sure kept you in good shape though!