Ftrain, by Paul Ford

Talking with A-- today he told me his ideal weight is below his current 205, and he is taller than I am. What is my goal weight, he asked? And I said maybe 250. Maybe not. At 250 I'll know what my next step is. There really is no goal or plan. There is just one day, one set of data, then the next. To that end last night I tried on my suit-jackets, all of them, and they're loose useless. There's one at work that might do in a pinch. So that's $2,000 in fabric defunct, until we find a homeless man with 58-inch shoulders--and yet if I purchase another jacket now I'm an idiot, because in a few more months I'll need to repeat the process. It should be inspiring, but I find this all vaguely unsettling and disappointing. Maybe because I'm still a puddle in the moonlight. To my friends I have lost weight but to strangers I'm another giant. Strangers never see progress; they seek attractive convenience. Sometimes I talk to the heavier folk of my acquaintance and they note that I've been losing weight and they make it clear by various comments that they are disappointed in this outcome (yermakinmelookbad!), and that they would prefer if I did not lose any more. I can understand where they're coming from, I guess, but I think to myself: I guess they're worried they'll have less back to stab.

R-- explains:

Every few months, take one "disposable" single-breasted jacket (e.g., that frightening velvet job) to King or Ramon or G&G to get the center seam taken in. Once you've been at a stable weight for six or eight months, try a few other jackets and see if they can be salvaged. However, at any size you're tall enough that you'd eventually do best with a few reasonably priced custom jobs from Midtown.

Weight: 312 lbs