Autoscopy #2: If Only for a Little While

Growing up, I sometimes fantasized about being really fat. But it wasn’t an escapist fantasy of wanting to be an astronaut or wanting to fly or wanting to ride ponies all day or wanting to be anywhere else but here. I was perfectly content being who I was and where I was, as long as that meant I could be really fat—if only for a little while.

Actually, as opposed to those escapist fantasies, I would consider this one—about being really fat—to be more of a practical fantasy.

I wanted to be fat because I was curious. And I wanted to be fat because I was bored. And I wanted to be fat because I was jealous of—well—fat kids. I saw them in class playing with themselves—and not in an autoerotic way. They could tug at their big cheeks. They could poke their double chins. They could jiggle their arms and thighs. And I thought that was completely unfair. If I was bored in class and pulled out some silly putty from my desk and began playing with it, squishing it between my fingers, the teacher would have taken it away. It would have been confiscated as contraband. But the teachers couldn’t take away their silly putty. I mean, after all, it was attached to them!

While I was at it, I also wanted to run a 100-meter dash really fat. Some people, I suppose, dream of having long thick hair for wind to blow through because they think the sensation would be liberating. I dreamt of running fat for similar reasons. I wanted to run as fast as I could and feel all that fat bounce with each stride. I wanted to feel that resistance and delayed response that must be like watching your hand move while really stoned. Rather than an equal and opposite reaction, I wanted every action to have a delayed and maybe even amplified reaction. I wanted every movement to have more weight.

I spent a fair amount of time thinking about this kind of stuff. And I thought I had it all pretty much figured out. I fully understood the health issues involved in being fat and I knew that really fat people couldn’t really run. That’s why I only wanted to be fat for an hour or maybe a day at most. And I didn’t want to get fat as much as be fat. I wanted to be instantly fat. Like Cinderella, but fat. A fairy could come visit me at night or even right there in the middle of class and wave its magic wand. And instead of a pumpkin turning into a sleek carriage, I could turn into something more like a pumpkin. By midnight I would turn back into the skinny kid again. I figured that by making it a wax-on wax-off deal, I would still be able to do all the things I normally do, just that I would be doing it with a whole lot of fat. I just wanted to try it out. A test drive, if you will.

It was around this time that I was preparing for my bar-mitzvah (which is when a fairy, on you thirteenth birthday, waves its magic wand and turns you for all Jewish intents and purposes into a man, albeit a young man). Part of that preparing was planning my bar-mitzvah party, a black tie affair at a hotel catering hall in midtown Manhattan. My parents handled most of the planning, like picking out the venue, the menu, and anything else that dealt with the adults invited to the party (family, family friends, etc.). But they let me do some of the planning when it came to entertaining the kids. There were something like sixty kids coming to the party; school policy was that you had to invite everyone in the grade.

I was given a catalogue of party game options. There were some standards like a basketball shootout, arcade games, and less active activities like sand art, and other souvenir-making things, but there were also larger activities, the main attractions if you will, of which I was allowed to choose one. It was important to me that I got something that none of the previous bar- or bat-mitzvah parties in the grade had (there were many previous bar- and bat-mitzvahs). And there it was in the brochure: sumo wrestling.

Now, I don’t remember exactly how the sumo wrestling was described in that particular catalogue, but a comparable party planner, on their website, describes it as follows:

Probably the most widely known 'interactive' game around, sumo wrestling suits have long been a favorite for company meetings, grad parties and a host of other special events. With sumo wrestling suits, two contestants put on oversized vinyl suits and are instantly transformed into gigantic Sumo wrestlers, complete with wig and miwashi [sic] belt. The referee starts the match and the giant sumo wrestlers try to push, pull and 'blubber' their opponent to the floor. The hilarious appearance of the overweight sumo wrestlers might just bring the spectators to the floor, so watch out! This one is a real crowd pleaser!

Racist undertones aside, I was pretty excited by the prospect. Just look at those verbs: push, pull, blubber. That’s what I was looking for. And then when I was done, I could take off the fat suit and show off my skills in the limbo contest. It seemed perfect.

Of course the parental veto nixed my fat suit plans. Something about kids in suits and dresses putting on big hot vinyl outfits and then wrestling seemed less than ideal. There was also something about liabilities. We ended up settling on laser tag, which was not as cool as it sounds (it turned out be laser tag inside a six foot by six foot space enclosed by a black sheet, where you weren’t allowed to run around and basically just hid behind a plaster “crater” until your time was up).

Looking back on that however I know that no fat suit would’ve ever satisfied my true desires to be really fat. Fat suits are too stiff. They are too fake. They’re not designed right.

Moreover, as the party planners say, they are “crowd pleasers;” putting on a fat suit wouldn’t be for me, but for others. I had no interest in the “hilarious appearance” (again, as described by the party planners) of a skinny person made fat, or the easy jokes of fat-face comedies that have become norms in the comedy industry since The Nutty Professor won an Oscar for Best Makeup in 1997 (films like Austin Powers, Shallow Hal, the end of Dodgeball, Big Mama’s House, Medea’s Family Reunion, Jiminy Glick, Just Friends, Norbit, etc.). I wanted to be fat for purely selfish reasons and purely sensational benefit. Not for the amusement of others, but the purely physical amusement of myself.

Today, I’ve maxed out at just under 6’ tall and I’ve never broken through the glass wall of 140 lbs, regardless of my eating habits and exercise routines (or lack thereof). By all accounts, I could be described as somewhere between slim, thin, and skinny. And I always have been. I can’t say that my fantasizing of being fat has completely stopped, but it has certainly become increasingly infrequent, especially ever since I grew enough facial hair to play with and tug at whenever I find myself in those unbearably boring situations. Simple pleasures. Fantasizing about being fat today, is more a fantasy for nostalgia’s sake than anything else for me.

Recently, I’ve talked about my old fat fantasies with a number of friends that have always been skinny themselves. (I thought it best not to bring it up with some of my less skinny friends. Respectfully.) Anyway, I asked them if they ever had similar fantasies about being really fat when they were young. The answer was a pretty solid No. And everyone seemed shocked by the idea. Not to say that any of them are especially weight conscious. They just thought the whole idea of such a fantasy was strange. As if I was the only person who thought about those things.

Maybe. Although I have a hard time believing that I’m that original.

When I was fifteen years old, I went on a three-day trip to Pennsylvania with my camp. We went to Philadelphia, Amish country, and on the last day we went to Hershey Park. Besides all my friends that were on the trip, there was Becky. I knew that she liked me and that she thought I was cute. Her friends had told me so. Moreover, I knew that she knew that I knew she liked me and thought I was cute. Her friends had told me so. And I liked her too. We had gotten to the point where we would talk to one another in passing, which was really a big deal considering we had never spoken a word to one another the previous few years we had been in camp together. When it came time to get on the bus for the four-hour bus ride back to camp, she was standing right behind me on line. And when I kept walking down the bus aisle, she followed me. And when I finally sat down in a seat, she sat down next to me. I didn’t even have to ask her if she wanted to. The bus started to drive and we were together, sitting right next to each other.

We talked for a little while. I thought it was going really well. I thought that maybe this was the night; we’d kiss and start dating, making it possibly the best summer ever. After about an hour, she put her head on my shoulder either to go to sleep or to pretend to go to sleep. I’m not quite sure which, but it didn’t matter. It was very exciting. I thought about maybe even putting my hand on hers. But just then, the bus hit a small bump and we bounced in our seat. Her head hit me on the shoulder, right where she had been resting it. She sat up straight almost immediately. She said that I wasn’t very comfortable, that my shoulder was too bony for her to rest on. I wasn’t sure what to say. And I wasn’t sure what I could do about it. I mean, it was my shoulder after all. I had another one, but I didn’t think that it would be any better or any more comfortable. I guess I could’ve pulled out some of the Hershey’s chocolate I had bought and start to eat it—I could’ve stuffed my face with it right there even—but I knew it would not have helped. It probably would’ve just made me car sick. We sat there for a few minutes quietly until she got up and moved to a different seat. And that was the end of that. We never dated and she pretty much lost interest in me after that. After all, what’s the point of dating someone if you can’t lean on them once in a while. I still remember the rest of that bus ride being long and the scent of urine had begun to leak out of the bathroom. I remember that scent very vividly. I still associate it with failure.

It was the first of many similar accounts: I’ve been reminded repeatedly that I’m just not very comfortable. Sometimes it’s sitting on some other bus. Sometimes it’s sitting on a park bench. Sometimes it’s someone I’ve been dating and sometimes it’s someone I’m just getting to know. I never know what to say to it. And they usually don’t have anything to follow up with either. It’s because they’re disappointed. They wanted something, something from me, something of me, that I couldn’t give them. In that silence, I’m pretty sure I know exactly what they are thinking about.

So maybe I’m not all that original at all. Because maybe I’m not the only person who has fantasized about me being really fat. If only for a little while. Just long enough for you to rest your weary head.

~josh

Beach Ball Martyrs

Our appreciation of music is more than an aural experience. While music has become increasingly accessible through the technology of downloadable and portable mp3s, we, the listeners (or consumers) constantly desire the most basic form of the music-experience: live concerts. (Similarly, given the technology of mp3s, record labels and musicians see concerts as one of the few ways to make a buck on music.) If we just cared about the audio, we could just stay at home (or go out) and listen to those same notes, rhythms, and melodies at our leisure. But we want more out of our music, to be informed of and by our favorite songs in ways that only a live show can offer. That’s why we spend money or (when free) time on these oh-so-ephemeral events. It’s the context, stupid. There are those dimly-lit and smoke-filled jazz clubs, where your senses all fall into some dizzy haze or another. There are those arenas where you think the whole world is cosmically unified in singing its heart out with the screeching chorus about hope, redemption, or triumph. There are those basements, where energy is oozing from everywhere at once and the dancing is so intense that the only things sweating more than you are the walls. There are those dusk concerts outside where the music kisses the day goodnight, evoking mood and emotion of poets, painters, and prophets.

This past weekend, I went to another kind of concert, the day-long summertime concert that epitomizes the greatness and party-readiness of summer days. It was sunny (too sunny even) and it was hot (too hot even) and it was great (too great even, considering how tired I still am). These are the experiences that nostalgia is made of, the things that I can look back at as both unique and familiar, specific and general. Things that I’ll one day compile into a single memory of youth, summer, and awesome. And it’s only possible because these sorts of festivals are so consistent and therefore so strong in my mind. Really, if nothing else, you can be sure of seeing the following things at these shows: (1) at least five people from school you didn’t plan on meeting up with, but are happy to talk to (or at least say hello to), (2) a whole lot of women wearing American Apparel bathing suits, and (3) at least two beach balls of varying size.

Item (1) is always great, because even if you don’t really like the person you run into, you may very much like their friend who will be back in just one minute. Alternatively, these small bumping-intos seem to have the power to make the world go round.

Item (2) is sometimes great, depending if you are (a) a man who is attracted to women in American Apparel bathing suits, (b) a woman attracted to women in American Apparel bathing suits, (c) really love American Apparel and the scene that wears it, or (d) don’t deduct points for unoriginality. Regardless, it’s a harmless phenomenon.

Item (3) is usually not great at all. Or actually never great after about, say, five minutes. Sometimes these are beach balls with company logos on them passed out as advertising by the concert’s sponsors. Sometimes these beach balls are just plain beach balls brought from home by someone. I’m not sure which is more alarming. Regardless, they are always present at these types of shows and as far as I can tell they are never tolerated for long.

The course of the crowd’s relationship to beach balls is fairly standard: at first the crowd is happy to see beach balls surfing over the crowd—people even compete to get to hit the ball themselves, as if the entire crowd was participating in one large communal game in which everyone is a winner and recipient of good cheer awards; the crowd’s attention however soon shifts, either a band comes on stage or people just get bored, but most of the crowd generally loses interest in any beach ball that may or may not be coming their way; this, of course, leads to a beach ball hitting you or a loved one in the head, which may not hurt (although some of these beach balls are pretty big), but is generally annoying; reacting to this nuisance people begin to hit the ball harder, trying to get it further away from their section of the crowd; of course the receiving section of the crowd doesn’t want the ball either so they just hit it back equally hard; a passive-aggressive situation, leaning more on the aggressive side ensues and the entire crowd gives each other looks of annoyance and castigation until someone finally stabs the ball with something. The fact that they stab the beach ball as opposed to just letting the air out of course makes them complete garbage to be picked up by event staff at the end of the day.

Without leaning too heavily on the-world-is-a-beach-ball analogies (which by the way could have been reinforced by the invocation of globe beach balls, but wasn’t, due to my own restraint, sort of), there is an important social phenomena on display. Namely, that no one actually deals with the issue at hand (i.e. the beach ball). Instead, everyone is pushing their problem (read: the problem) on someone else, which only gets pushed on someone else, a chain reaction resulting in a whole lot of annoyed people.

In the past, I’ve used these balls as inflatable beach chairs between acts. This past weekend, my friend earned extra points of respect and admiration for collecting beach balls at his feet, simply catching them and putting them down. In both situations, the idea was to take a pro-active and non-violent stance towards a care- and beach ball free concert. And yet, the people around us shot us both dirty looks. But we were doing it for everyone! We spared everyone all kinds of future pains! Here is the solution! You’re welcome!

But they wanted none of it. The beach ball and the ups and downs therewith are part of the experience. It’s part of that summertime nostalgia that we are already, at a young age, creating for our future reference. We may not want to deal with the beach ball at the moment, but we want it there in our memories to draw threads of continuity between familiarities. It’s a powerful image, suggestive of warmth, youth, softness—all good things. Too colorful to pass up on. The type of detail that makes memories seem all the more authentic, despite their soft focus.

Our suffering will be rewarded one day, not in our next life, but later in this one. We are all beach ball martyrs. Hallelujah.

~josh