Ftrain, by Paul Ford

"Like a crazed, 300-pound Black Friday door-buster shopper." -- Washington Post. 300 pounds is a certain quantity. 300-lb monster violates toddler; 300-lb tumor removed from local woman; 300-lb baby hippo loves Cap'n Crunch cereal; 300-lb man arrested for sex thoughts. It's never a good thing. On the other side of that, in the 200s (men), is linebackers and weightlifters, and normalcy.

People are asking about the weight, as I have purchased new pants. Dockers, in fact, which offer a fine fit for the value. This means that, while before I was special fattie-pants size, with occasional expanding waistband (always a fucked-up way to start your morning, the feeling of cheap circus elastic between your fingers), I have now made it to corporate douchebag size and look like a big American asshole instead of a giant American weirdo. Dockers! Coworker C--, she of the size zero (tact), greeted me with "hey fat guy" in the middle of the office, attempting irony (as I am no longer quite so fat as I was) but failing; this led to weird chuckles and to further discussion with peers. I had a nice bike ride home coming up with the perfect insult to deliver in public, hopefully starting an intra-office flamewar to pass the time (I unintentionally startled a passing Hasidic man on Kent Ave. by saying the insult out loud to hear it, vocalizing in my monkey-fashion), but later she called to leave yet another lengthy apology on the answering machine. Thus the matter is sadly closed, prospective insult shelved.

Appearance has always confused me--the appearance of myself and others. I used to think it was because I was not sexist or lookist or any number of positive things but I'm just bad at people. Names, faces. I make an effort to notice when others dress nicely and when they put work into it, as then it's clear they want me to notice. It usually takes me about two years to find out if someone is short; often they need to tell me. They always do, just as I always warned strangers before meeting them at bars: "I'm tall and fat. Hard to miss. Wearing a blue shirt." Everyone needs to externalize their weirdness, even if it's obvious (like short, fat, or tall) in order to demonstrate that they understand that there is a normal and that they don't hew to it; if they do that, if we do that, perhaps we'll still be allowed to partake in normal events, or at least not be hated for the difference. (Is it worth it? I have a memory of being on a date and being crammed into the Cyclone rollercoaster by two bucktoothed incompetents who both had to push down to get the restraining bar clamped over me. Ashamed in front of my date I was convinced for the entire ride that I'd burst through the bar and be tossed into the sea; there was no thrill, only regret. Another big friend was forced by employees to get out of a rollercoaster at Pennsylvania's Hersheypark--a park dedicated to candy--for not fitting the seat; he had been sitting at the front and was required to walk the length of the coaster back to the entrance, trudging in his giant sneakers past dozens of other riders, all of them delayed in their fun by his girth. His daughters, left behind on the ride, sobbed in shame. You must be at least this thin to ride this life.)

It once took me about a year to see that an acquaintance was missing much of her arm. I started checking all the arms in my life after that. Despite the appraisals of others I don't look very different to myself yet. I feel different--not meaning "I have more energy," or "I have more confidence," or "I now ejaculate from my eyes," or any of the typical side-effects of thinnery, but in the gross physical sense; I'll lean over and the leaning will not be as I remember it; I'll go to scratch my side and my side will have moved. I look in the mirror more. For about a year there I squinted every time I passed anything reflective, putting off the inevitable. Now I look at all of it, undraped, even though this body is still a crowd of sorrows. I look not thinner--that's a category that I don't really take in and I still have 100 to kick--but less distorted, is the way I'd put it, with the sonic meaning of distortion rather than the visual one. Less static surrounding me. Do you remember making transatlantic phone calls to poorer countries in the early 1980s? That is what what I looked like sounded like. (The previous sentence is correct.) Expensive and heavy and over-layered, like a My Bloody Valentine song. And airplane seats were a nightmare. I want to be modular and cheap, like IKEA furniture. Normal.

There were many reasons to start losing: blood pressure and the fact that hearts in my family go off like fireworks, ka-pop; the thought of what it would be like for my wife in the waiting room while I had weight-loss surgery; the fact that I appear in public and give talks and lectures; but the most serious concern was my increasing paranoia. I was constantly aware of the way I was treated by others, the distance friends put in place, the fucked-up things said by strangers, especially when I did anything approaching exercise. Black teens, clustered together in Fulton Mall, had much to tell me, and I braced my shoulders and looked away whenever I came in proximity. The city, unless you are very wealthy, gives you little opportunity to hide. Biking at least got me through a crowd faster, but still I was slightly scared and angry all the time, and ashamed of feeling thus, and thus eating. The whole city had become a middle-school lunchroom turned against me. Elevators were particular exercises in paranoia. When people say "you've lost weight," I hear: "you're invisible again," and I am grateful.

Weight: 297.25 lbs