I'm Fat and Stuck in My Tub

By Phil Jacobsen, AlterNet. Posted April 1, 2000.

I am fat. Lardo. El Gargantuan. Call me a name I've heard it before. Fatty fatty two by four. Wide load, wide ass, but never wide-eyed and bushy tailed. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but I'm fat and you can't break my blubber.You laugh at me -- I laugh at you. Ha. Count those calories. You ate ice cream. Feel the cream sliding down your esophagus into your small intestine looking for a place to stay, not to rent, but to call home, "Home sweet Rocky Road Home."When I was young, I didn't have friends. I had food. I played hide and seek with my Ho Ho's. Cops and Robbers with my Devil's food cake. I'd throw a ball to myself. And, occasionally, I'd toss my cookies.Thighs, eyes, butt or back -- you are getting fat. I see you looking at me. You are beginning to look like me. Right now you are the skinny person screaming to be fat, succulent and serene. Once, I recall, there was a skinny person inside me screaming to get out. Fifty pounds later you can hear a whisper, whisper of a scream, scream of a skinny person. Put your ear to my belly button and you can hear that scream in vain from a useless belly button. Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons? Michelangelo seemed to think so on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. That cliche is solved. So what came first the chicken or the egg? Breakfast comes first, therefore, the egg. Why did the chicken cross the road? Who cares? Why can't possums, deer and armadillos cross the road? That is the true question.When I was a teenager, I took Dolly Madison to the prom. I lost my virginity to Sarah Lee. And Betty Crocker? I ate her, yes I did.The calories are counting on their own now, they have taken over sleeping cities of cellulite and have begun higher education. You count your carbohydrates and figure your fat content. I am content in my pup tent clothing. I waiver from a diet. You waif. I am in to M&M's and S&M's. You snicker and I'll shove my buttered finger up your candied ass.I don't care if I put on a pound. For me a pound is as meaningless as the ramblings of a drunkard on the boardwalk of Atlantic City. You wear a pound like a sailor wears a tutu. Don't ask. Please do tell.I want to be the role model for fat people. Rosie O'Donnell has the "happy jolly" fat market cornered. Orson Wells, Chris Farley, and John Candy have the "dead" fat guy thing down. Monica Lewinsky spilled the presidential beans on her blue dress. Thanks to Jenny Craig, now she's learning to keep her food down and overcome her over weightiness.The only weight I want to lose is the weight of the world and its fitness craze. Richards Simmons is a fat woman trapped in a chubby body. I can sling slurs like a lunch lady slings hash, because I am the lowest common denominator on the prejudicial scale. Rosa Parks sat in the front of the bus. I can't fit on the bus. The handicapped have more on and off ramps than the entire envisioned Eisenhowered interstate system. The world is not accommodating to the obese. Rub-a-dub-dub I'm stuck in my tub.The happy fat man? That's Rosie. I revel in my rolls of fat, though. I cater to my craters of cellulite. The jolly-jelly-bellied-eyes-a-twinkling-obese-monstrosity. Don't look away if you see me coming. Don't shield your eyes, but rather, take the opportunity my shadow affords, to look at me and then yourself. My appearance is a pleasure to me. Can you say the same for yourself? Don't go on a diet. Go on a binge. Don't lose weight. Find it.

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