I was 18 years old when I agreed to meet up with a fat girl I met on the Internet. I think I met her on myspace. Up until that point, I’d never even hung out with fat girls, because I didn’t have many fat friends.
She was from my hometown, just three hours away, and apparently she’d seen my band play live while I was still in high school. Also, she read my website and followed the controversy behind how it went down. So she claimed to know me and, after a few phone calls, was very interested in seeing me.
‘What could it hurt?’ I thought. I said okay. She seemed nice, and her voice was cute. Besides, why be down on someone just because she’s heavy, right?
She arrived in town shortly after I gave her the okay to come out and John – my roommate and best friend at the time – offered to help us out by meeting her at her car and driving us back to the dorm together.
We parked and walked casually down the sidewalk toward the street where she was parked. Then, he spotted her about a second before I did and asked, “That’s her, isn’t it?”
I fought the urge to grimace and forced myself to continue smiling. “Yep, that’s her,” I replied through gnashing teeth.
John laughed.
And on that fateful February evening, as the girl lumbered toward me, wearing flip-flops and a light hoodie, I braced myself for what would turn out to be twelve laborious hours of tolerance. It was then I knew nothing about this night could be romantic.
On the car ride home, she told us how difficult it was to navigate through Richmond, because of all the one-way streets. John and I stared silently forward, but I knew it was important to keep the mood light so I pulled out a pipe, and some marijuana.
“Oh muh Gawd!” the fat girl exclaimed. “I only done this like once before, so don’t y’all laugh at me.”
‘She didn’t sound this southern on the phone,’ I remember thinking. ‘Why is it coming out now?’ And that is how I learned that some people – when put in unfamiliar situations – will revert to a simpler version of themselves, as a sort of defense mechanism.
And it works, because I realized even though she can talk like a regular person when she wants to, she is a bumpkin at heart and no matter what happens, I’d better just go easy on her – as in, no intense debates, no really deep conversations. She’s already in the “big city” and I wouldn’t want to rattle her cages.
We all got stoned and talked about our favorite bands. LSD came up during the conversation, too.
For security reasons, my dormitory required visitors to be signed in, and in order to do that you have to fill out a few lines in their binder and leave your identification at the desk. This gave the security guards plenty of time to look us up and down and make assumptions.
As I handed ID cards over to the security guard, I detected an air of superiority from him. I could feel him judging me. But I was also very stoned – and as John and I had only very recently discovered LSD, I had become overtly aware of every little vibration – or so it would seem. Or maybe I was.
The three of us got up to the dorm and listened to Kyuss, smoked some more weed and discussed our ambitions. Mine include fame; John wants money; the RA wants to know what that smell is; and the girl was so stoned she didn’t know her name.
On that note, I wish I could remember her name so I don’t keep referring to her as ‘the girl.’ It was something like Lynn, and Laura Lynn makes bread, which is food, which fat people love to eat, so from now on I’ll call her ‘Lynn.’
John left to meet our friends – and not wanting to be seen in public with my adoring bumbling behemoth, I offered to stay back at the dorm and just hang out for a while. Quickly shutting down was my naive open-mindedness I had going into the night.
Finally alone, I was afraid her eyes might fall hungrily upon me and I would have to fight off the bear. But I’d clearly suffocated Lynn’s ego with weed, an effect I had not foreseen but was eternally grateful for. Recognizing the benefits of intoxication, I offered her a beer; however, it was not beer that she wanted. Nay. What does the beast require? She squealed out in ecstasy when I offered her a Little Debbie cake from behind the mini-fridge.
“Ooooh eeeee! AHHH! OH my GOD!” Lynn shrieked, tearing into the packaging. I felt almost as sorry for the little snack treat as I did for her.
She gorged herself on junk food and flopped onto my bed, grinding her filthy black feet into the pillow, where I lay my face at night. I watched in disgust as she wallowed around on my bed like a dry manatee. The situation was worrisome but I still found it hard to hate someone willing to go in on a ten-strip of acid with me even though she’d never tried it. For that I figured there must be something to her, some insightful spirit that needs nurturing, as we all do, and at the very least I could be friends with someone like that.
I had a paper due the following morning so I told her I needed to get to work, and she passed out quickly. Over the course of the next three or four hours, I finished her beer, wrote my paper and smoked more dank marijuana.
Then she woke up again, hungrier than a hell-hound and quite vocal about it.
I had no real food, and I was hungry too, so we decided to walk down to the 7-eleven. I knew Lynn’s visit to Richmond was the most walking she’d done up until this point in her teenage life. Her flip-flops made an aggravating “suck-pop!” noise as she followed behind me and we strutted boldly down a frigid, windy Main Street. I felt bad for her. I would’ve offered her my jacket but it was too small to fit her.
And then all at once, within 18 minutes and 45 seconds, my sympathy for this person disappeared rapidly.
We walked in the front door of the convenience store and I headed straight for the back of the line, which is very long the closer you wait until midnight. Suddenly my hairs stood on end as I heard her squealing like an injured beast behind me. “Sweet Jesus,” I said aloud, and turned to look at her.
“Oh my gawd!” she screamed. “These Cheetohs turn your mouth blue!”
I got hot in the face, turning bright red and I tried to pretend like I didn’t know her.
After ravaging the Cheetohs display, Lynn cut ahead of a guy standing in line with a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon, to stand beside me. He politely said nothing but I could sense his annoyance. We awaited our turn to order Taquitos from the bar and, seeing as how I am a gentlemen and the bitch had already cut in line, I let the lady order first.
She demanded cream cheese Taquitos. He said they weren’t ready, but all the others were. She rose her voice and used my name, saying, “James! Can you believe they don’t have my favorite Taquitos? What kind of fucking 7-eleven is this? Arright, gimme the taco kind.” My asshole tightened, forming diamonds.
“Would you like three Taquitos for $3.33?” the man asked her.
She shook her head irritably. “Oh yeah, I want that. James, tell ‘im what you want sugar. Maybe they got what you like.” She bent over, placing one hand on the counter and the other on her equator, “‘Cause they sure as shit ain’t got what I like.” As if crippled by grief, she stared over her little bags of chemically-enhanced Cheetohs strewn across the counter.
I looked to my right, where at least ten people stood watching and waiting. The man holding PBR was now amused. I looked back at the clerk as I gripped the counter with both hands, afraid that I might lose control at any moment. Suddenly the idea of even ordering Taquitos was embarrassing. ‘What’s in this shit?’ I thought. ‘It’s probably giving me cancer. Diabetes. I am a disgusting human being. What the fuck.’ I mumbled my order to the clerk, swiped my credit card and almost left before he gave me my food.
On the way back, Lynn ignored a homeless person. He asked her for change and she pretended not to hear him.
“Hey wassup man? Your girl can’t talk?” He demanded an answer while approaching me with haste.
“I guess she didn’t hear you,” I said, and gave him a dollar.
“You could’ve said something to that guy,” I prodded.
“Yeah I know, but I never had bums ask me for money,” she explained. “I don’t know how to respond to that.”
“You just say ‘I don’t have it.'” I was nearly in disbelief at this point.
“But I do have money, silly!”
I said nothing.
I suffered through the excruciating pain of signing her in once again, making fat jokes in my head.
‘Will I need to sign her in as more than one guest? Maybe there’s a weight limit since I’m on the top floor.’
While writing her name in the book, I heard her wolf down at least one whole Taquito. By this point, I didn’t even care anymore. I just wanted the night to end.
As I typed away on my paper, Lynn sprawled out on the bed, dirty feet on my pillow once again, eating Cheetohs and yawning her mouth at me. From her open maw slid an indigo-blue tongue, flecked with orange pieces of Cheetoh.
“Blaeegh! Is my tongue blue?” she asked gleefully.
“Yeah, it’s like you ate dye.”
“Nuh-uh!” She ran into the bathroom to see for herself. “It is! Oh m’god, it’s so blue!”
Historical evidence that fat girls like gimmicky Cheetohs
We smoked some more marijuana, had a few beers and I blew her away with some very basic political discussion. I took this opportunity to transition into the social revolution of the 1960s, and then got her talking about acid.
I told her $20 would get her two hits of acid, and I’d just mail it to her after I bought the ten-strip. She said alright and eventually fell asleep.
I kept her money and took all the acid myself.
Apart from the occasional, “Where are my drugs or money?” emails, which came in for a few weeks and then stopped, I never saw or heard from Lynn, ever again.