I woke up the other day, rolled my lazy butt out of bed, and looked at myself in the mirror. Whoa! I should come with a warning label. In the mirror was a total stranger, a totally fat stranger. It was as if my brain had been transplanted to some older, fat guy’s body who had my eyes. I didn’t see myself in the mirror at all. I saw a dude who looked to be in his second trimester of pregnancy—a guy about to have a cheeseburger for a baby in three more months. A guy who is lucky he’s married because he wouldn’t be worth much stock on the marketplace. I thought to myself, “I need to do something nice for my wife today. I’m gonna need her to stick around.” I was absolutely hideous, or maybe I should say fateous.
I’ve spent most of my marriage hearing my wife complain about her self-image. I always disagreed with her, and then paid her a compliment (even if I didn’t mean it). That’s what husbands are for. I never really understood why my wife went through all that self pity until the morning I woke up and was shocked by the horror that was my fat body. That was the first moment where I really saw myself for who I actually am: an overweight fatty Mcfat guy. I wondered how I was able to leave the house the previous day with a smile on my face and a skip in my step. I usually walk around like I’m “The Man.” I normally don’t worry about my appearance. Now I’ve seen things. Big things. Now everything is different. I had a moment of clarity in regard to my weight. I got fat, and I look like hell, or to bring back a phrase from the ’90s, I got hella fat. Ignorance truly is bliss; two days ago I had no idea. Nobody in the world was more surprised than I was that I was fat. I was the last person to find out.
I should have known this day was coming. There were definitely signs. A few months ago, my little 5-year-old nephew described me as his “fat uncle.” I thought it was funny. I thought the poor kid obviously had some vocabulary issues and problems remembering faces. I was his “fun uncle.” His fat uncle was Uncle Danny. Looking back on it, I realize that I was just in denial about my weight. Kids don’t lie about stuff like that, husbands do. If my wife asks me if she’s fat, of course I’m going to lie to her. There is a reason there is nothing written in any wedding vows regarding “telling the truth” in marriage. They keep things precisely to sickness, health, death, yada, yada, yada, but nothing about the truth. The truth is ugly. The truth is fat.
This particular morning I kept staring at myself, wondering where it all went wrong. Was it the double double-doubles I had at In-N-Out? The brownie sundae at Chilis? The cheddar and sour cream super mashed potatoes? The extra large milkshake at 10 o’clock in the morning? Hmmm, yum, the memories. There were so many things to blame, I couldn’t really pinpoint the exact moment my belly became something large enough that I may have to pay property taxes.
In a moment of weakness, I got all girly, broke down, and said something to my wife, hoping for an encouraging response, “Baby, I look terrible. You’re married to a fat guy now.” Do you know what my wife, whom I love, said? “Yeah, you have put on a few pounds. I think you’re the heaviest you’ve ever been. Do you want me to go to Costco and buy you some bigger Dockers?”
Oh my God! Can you believe she said that? If I had said anything resembling that sort of insensitivity in 14 years of marriage, I would have been married for only 14 minutes. Obviously, she was completely out of practice. She was supposed to lie to me. Ignore my belly and compliment my biceps, my calves, my earlobes, anything. Didn’t she understand the game?
In her defense, she is a rookie. I’ve been playing pro “Am I fat?” dodgeball for more than a decade, so I spot in advance when a question is coming directly at my face. I know how to duck, how to deflect, distract, and, most importantly, compliment. The letters L-I-E are strategically hidden inside the word compliment. That is no accident. The word “compliment” comes from the Latin word comopleate, meaning tell her what she wants to hear or it’s going to be a long night. I know how to say nice things when my wife needs to hear them. I don’t offer to go out and buy her fat clothes.
Since my wife wasn’t going to make me feel better, the only way to actually feel better was to separate myself from the fat gut that was swallowing me whole. If I was ever going to be able to leave the house again (literally to get my ass out of the door), I was going to need to diet. “Diet” is another word containing a hidden word and literal meaning, this one being “die.” The dilemma I’m facing right now is which is worse: being hungry and miserable (wanting to die) or fat and miserable (wanting to diet). At least fat and miserable comes with mashed potatoes.
When Rob got home from work, he found three new pairs of Dockers from the fat adult section of the store.
This article appears in Sep 30 – Oct 7, 2010.
