Diary of a Mad Fat Girl (2 page)

I flip the television on just in time to
catch a commercial for the gym that docks my checking account $40 a
month and that makes me feel worse than I already do.

What the hell was I thinking when I gave a
voided check to that Ken doll looking man with no hair on his arms?
Was I thinking that I’d pack up and go to the gym five times a week
and love every minute of it? Was I thinking I’d lose sixty pounds
and be able to wear those Lucky jeans I haven’t been able to
squeeze my ass into for three years? I don’t know what I was
thinking and I’m not in the mood to try and remember.

I don’t want to think about the damned gym.
I don’t want to think about Lilly sitting pretty in her first class
seat en route to the Charles de Gaulle. I don’t want to think about
all the beer I drank last night. I don’t want to think about the
beach or ocean or all the raw oysters I had planned to eat this
week. And I don’t need to think about Mason McKenzie.

The only problem is that I like thinking
about Mason McKenzie and I can’t help it. It’s one of many bad
habits that I have no desire to break.

I met J. Mason McKenzie at the First
Methodist Church shortly after my family moved to Bugtussle when I
was eleven years old. My parents made me go to a youth fellowship
meeting on a Sunday afternoon and that’s where we spoke for the
first time. Our short conversation was stilted and awkward, but it
was one of the happiest moments of my life and I remember it like
it was yesterday.

My mom had dropped me off at church thirty
minutes early because she always got everywhere thirty minutes
early. I distinctly remember sitting in the far corner of that
rectangular room in a cold metal folding chair all alone and
completely terrified. The youth leader wasn’t even there yet.

After fifteen minutes of pure agony, other
kids finally started showing up and I stared at the floor because I
was embarrassed for being there so early. I could sense the room
was filling up, but the chair beside mine remained unoccupied. I
was entertaining the thought of bolting to the bathroom where I
could hide until the evening services when Mason McKenzie made his
dramatic entrance.

I looked up when I heard his voice and the
moment I saw him, I fell madly and deeply in love. My young heart
was beating like a jungle drum as I watched him survey the room,
looking for a place to sit.

All the angels in heaven started to sing
when he choose the seat next to mine.

I started staring at the floor again because
I felt like I might die if I didn’t and he tapped me on the arm
said, “Hey! Who are you? I’m Mason.”

I could barely utter my own name.

We became good friends and then best friends
and I fell more in love with him every day. In high school, we
hooked up a few times in between his steady girlfriends and the
losers I ran around with, then we married and divorced other people
and lost touch for a few years.

I ran into him again one chilly Saturday
afternoon at an Ole Miss football game and he begged me to move to
Florida and marry him and I quickly agreed. We were both thoroughly
intoxicated at the time, but seven months later, I moved into his
three story house two blocks from the ocean in Destin, Florida.

I was so happy I couldn’t stand myself. I
laughed more in the six weeks I spent with him than I had my whole
life up until then. We walked on the beach and drank beer out of
plastic wine glasses. We told each other our wildest dreams and
darkest fears. We shopped at the local farmers’ markets and ate
boiled shrimp and raw oysters whenever we liked. He bought me a
sweet little chiweenie puppy and it took us two weeks to come up
with the name Señor Buster Loo Bluefeather. I went to bed every
night with the man of my dreams and woke up every morning to the
smell of salt water and gourmet coffee.

Shortly after I moved back to Bugtussle,
Lilly told me he had a ring in his pocket the night I left. Then
Ethan let it slip that he had purchased a building on Back Beach
Road and was going to give it to me for my birthday. Ethan asked me
what I would’ve done with the building and I couldn’t bring myself
tell him about my dream of owning an art studio.

I take a long, slow sip of the lemon-lime
tonic, flip off the television, and snuggle down into the couch
with Buster Loo. He moans like a dying cow as I hug him up next to
me and close my eyes.

3

I skip church Sunday because I don’t feel
like answering ten thousand questions about why I’m still in
Bugtussle, Mississippi, when I’m supposed to be at the beach in
Florida and everyone will be asking where Lilly is and I don’t feel
like lying to church people on the Lord’s day.

So I decide to spend the morning at the gym
instead. I pull into the parking lot hoping against hope that a
good endorphin rush might lift my spirits or, at the very least,
make me feel better about those monthly payments. As soon as I‘m in
the front door, I pick up on something peculiar that somehow
escaped my notice during my two previous visits to this voluntary
torture chamber.

I am, without a doubt, the fattest girl in
this place.

I look around to see if anyone else notices
that I‘m the only person in the building who has to shop in the big
and not so tall department, but no one seems to be paying
attention. So I try to forget about it.

But I can’t forget about it.

I am keenly aware of my fatness as I feign
invisibility on a walk of shame past a never ending line of big
fancy treadmills with micro LCD screens and more USB ports that my
home computer.

“
Who needs all that crap?” I mumble
under my breath. “It’s a freakin’ treadmill, not a Boeing
747.”

Even if I had sense enough to work one of
those monsters, I wouldn’t step foot on the thing if my life
depended on it. I would literally die before I hopped up there with
that Bratz pack of little jogger ladies with their shiny, straight
pony tails and their tight little gym shorts stretched over their
tight little rumps.

I make my way back to the old clunker
treadmills and it only takes a second for me to spot the one I’m
looking for. It’s parked between two dusty machines with “out of
order” signs taped to the monitors. No Bratz dolls piling up next
to me. Ha. Those little fitness freaks wouldn’t dream of abandoning
their front and center Boeing 747 treadmills and I don’t give a
rat’s ass anyway because I happen to prefer the guaranteed
privacy.

I don’t need some hairy-ass bald man coming
up, sweating all over the place, trying to talk to me about the
economy or the weather or some stupid crap like that. I mean, how
does a man loose every spring of hair on his head, but look like a
wooly mammoth from the ears down? How does that happen? I honestly
feel sorry for those dudes, just not sorry enough to listen to
their slobbering opinions regarding the state of affairs in the
world today.

I push the start button and tell
myself not to look down at the timer, but I do. I look down at it
every three or four seconds. I try to stop, but dammit! I can’t. It
makes me dizzy staring at that stupid monitor, but the only other
place to rest my eyes is on that floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall
mirror, and goodness knows I don’t want to feast my eyes that.
Mirrors that size are not natural or normal and they insult my
intelligence because they cannot reveal
to
me a single thing
about
me that I don’t already know.

I know my pie-shaped face is red as a
beet and my frizzy hair is soaking wet with sweat after ten minutes
of warm up. Talk about a gorilla in the midst. Ha. I know my black
yoga pants are spotted with bleach specks from the knees down, but
it’s the only pair I have that aren’t worn out in the thighs. I
know my socks don’t match each other
or
my faded Lane Bryant tee shirt and I didn’t
think much of it until I realized that every female in this place
is dressed like an Under Armor mannequin at sporting good
store.

What the hell am I doing here?

And why doesn’t this gym have a separate
area for fat girls? Girls who need to lose a little more than that
last five pounds.

That last five pounds. Is that supposed to
be some kind of a joke? If I got that close to my ideal weight, I’d
throw myself a three-keg pizza party. And that’s why I’ll never
have to worry about that last five pounds because I’ll always be
battling that first thirty. Or forty.

At any rate, these gym owners need to
take a hint from department stores and designate a
plus size
or a
women’s
area. We need a place of our own so we
don’t offend the Under Armor wearing Bratz packs of the work-out
world with our fatassness. I take a moment to fantasize about
stretching out on the floor without someone thinking I look like
the Michelin Man on a Twister mat. Or doing sit-ups without
worrying about a roll of fat slipping out somewhere and being
mistaken for a renegade boob.

I think I’ll send an email to the gym
manager and suggest he designate a separate room for big girls and
while I’m at it, I’ll tell him to take down those billboard-sized
mirrors and put up some posters of Justin Timberlake and Marky
Mark. Then all the chubby girls could have their very own private
room in the gym and maybe I wouldn’t be the only one here.

A Fat Girls Only Work-Out Room.

Throw in a big screen TV and every season of
the Biggest Loser and we’re talking about fitness center
perfection. Who knows, if I could exercise with other big girls
while watching Bob and Jillian work their sadistic magic, I might
come to the gym more than once a month. I might turn my flabby body
into a Bratz doll, go buy a flat iron, and take a class on how to
work those big fancy treadmills.

Hell no I won’t.

My left knee hurts and my hands are numb and
I’ve only been on this bastard for 31 minutes and 42 seconds.

I’m going home. And I’m not leaving for the
rest of the week.

4

Monday morning arrives too soon and it’s
back to school.

Another day, another dollar, another
anti-depressant.

I get there fifteen minutes late and wish it
would’ve been thirty. Coach Logan Hatter is standing in his usual
spot between our classrooms with a smug look on his face.

Coach Hatter has been on several of our
Spring Break trips. Once as my boyfriend, once as Lilly’s, and the
rest of the time just for fun. He said “I do” a few weeks before I
married my first husband and his divorce was final a few days after
I said “I don’t” to my second.

“
Still hung-over?” he asks, smiling.
“You didn’t get much of a tan. Don’t tell me you’ve started using
sunscreen.”

“
Not hardly, Hatt,” I mumble, “we
didn’t go.”

“
What? Didn’t go? What are you talking
about?”

“
Lilly couldn’t make it, so I stayed
home and cleaned out my closets.”

That got a laugh out of him. “Cleaned
out your
closets?
Why didn’t
you call
me
?” And there is a
shining example of why guy friends are easier to get along with
than girl friends. They don’t want a bunch of details; they just
want a little action if they can get it.

“
You had baseball games, Coach Hatter,
remember?”

“
Yeah, but I like knowing I
could’ve
gone,” he grins and his
navy blue eyes sparkle. “Good times, Ace, good times.”

“
Are you about to slap me on the ass?”
He looks guilty. “Please don’t because here comes the Lard
Lady.”

I’d rather be shot in the face than to
listen to anything Principal Catherine Hilliard has to say to me
this morning.

“
Miss Jones, I’d like to see you in my
office during your planning period this afternoon,” she hisses
through crusty, chapped lips, “and try to be on time if it wouldn’t
misput you too much.”

“
I’ll check my planner and see what I
can do, Mrs. Hilliard,” I retort with all the smartassness I can
muster up.

“
Your plan,” she says and snorts like
a pig, “is to be in my office at 1:35, sharp.”

Coach Hatter fidgets with his keys and looks
like he’s squeezing back a surge of diarrhea.

“
I’ll see what I can do, Cathy.” I
swear if I had a gun I would stop talking about it and shoot
myself. Or her. “What’s this concerning?”

“
A private matter. I’m sure you don’t
want to discuss it here.”

“
I don’t mind at all discussing it
here.” Some people worry about write-ups and getting fired, but I
don’t because I hate my job.

I love art. I love teaching art. I just
don’t love where I do it at. I work my ass off to give my students
the best learning experience I can, but never get any credit or
recognition because the only way to get credit in this school is to
have your head stuck shoulder-deep up Catherine Hilliard’s barn
sized ass.

I’m too much of a chicken shit to quit a
steady job with half-way decent insurance so I spend a considerable
amount of time daydreaming about getting shit-canned. If I could
just get myself fired, then I would have no choice but to start my
own art studio like I’ve dreamed of doing my entire life.

But that won’t happen. I’ll retire from
Bugtussle School District with a comfortable retirement and twenty
years worth of discontentment under my belt.

“
Be there, Miss Jones,” she smirks.
“On time.”

She turns to Coach Hatter, who flashes her a
big, shaky smile.

“
Good Morning, Mrs. Hilliard, good to
see you. How was your break?”