Ftrain, by Paul Ford

"How does this look tucked in?"

"No. Pull it out."

"But my brother tucks in his shirts."

"When your belly is above your belt. Not before."

"Yeah," I say, "okay."

"You're too lumpy."

I can't pretend it doesn't hurt. But it doesn't have anything to do with love; it's about making me presentable to the outside world, so that I come across with confidence. Thus I guess it does have a great deal to do with love. From memory:

Chris Farley: You have this song that goes, "And in the end, the love you make is equal to the love you take."

Paul McCartney: Yes.

Chris Farley: Is that true?

When Farley died he was messed up on heroin, 33 years old, having just spent the night with a hooker. He passed out holding rosary beads. His brother found him. I'm now one pound heavier than he was when he died.

Before he did his Chippendales bit he called a friend in tears. "They were going to make him dance with Patrick Swayze. 'They were making fun of the fat boy,' - that was his quote." But he got up and owned it, shirtless and live on national network television. Later when there are 30 billion of us, and Mars has been terraformed, and all media is fragmented into tiny pockets of shared interests and language, that won't seem as impressive. But there's no way he wanted to take off his shirt. It's not healthy to always be the joke. It would of necessity make you distrustful, forever shifting in your skin. Feeling so lucky to be included and yet always expecting humiliation. And if one more person says to me, "you actually look normal" I will strike them with my giant fist. And then I will go live in a van down by the river.

Weight: 297.25 lbs