R.I.P Ringo Dingo Dawg.

There are worse things in the world than digging a hole to bury your dead dog in the front yard in the dark so the boys don't see his body in the morning and hitting a root or a rock or cement or the limit of your own shallow strength or Whatever with the shovel and tripping backwards, somehow, and spasmodically (I'll call it falling but empirically you would really have to say it's more accurately termed) flailing into the street and hitting your gimpy shoulder, which is gimpy because now you "swim to stay in shape", flat on the curb, as if Tony Soprano had kicked you. There are worse things. I've experienced, them, and god fucking knows (or willing) I'll experience them again.

But let's just say this wasn't the best night ever. Let's just say that.

We don't know how old he was. We got him when Robbie was about a year old I think, a little more maybe, because we had decided it was time to get a dog. Like you do. We had the house, we had the baby, we had just built a fence....so next comes the dog. Natch. Dawn wanted to be selective, to go through a service, to look at labradors and golden retrievers and such. Like you do. Me, I wanted a mutt. A mangy mangled moppy mick of a mutt. Who needed a home to go to, and a bowl to drink from, and a door that would open.

And though she may deny it, I didn't really have to make too hard of a sell once we saw him. He reminded her of Scruffy, the old family dog that patrolled the backyard of her youth, and he didn't have a harmful bone in his body. He passed the "kid test" with flying colors--you could yank and pull and pinch and poke the fuck out of him, and he was cool with it in his mangy way. So of course we got him. And of course we called him Ringo.

My work friends didn't know I had a dog and were always shocked to find out I did, because they always talked about their dogs like their dogs were kids, like you should recognize the name of their fucking dog when they use it in a conversation. I referred to myself as a 1970s style dog owner. We feed him and give him a place to sleep and clean up his shit when we get around to it and pet him when he seems to want it and he, in turn, acts like a dog. And it's cool.

And he got old quick. He got deaf, and then he got mostly blind, and then he pretty much got totally blind. And we didn't know what to do for him, after awhile, the last few years, except just make him comfortable, and give him a place to be who was, and so we did.

He seemed better lately, Dawn had just said. But he wasn't, not really. I wonder if we broke his heart, a little bit, when we got Candy this spring. A beautiful fuzzy little puppy with the best credentials that we paid a bit less than one month's mortgage to secure and had been waiting for and talking about for weeks upon weeks. We acted like we had never had a dog before. We treated her like a kid. We expected other people to recognize her name when we use it in conversation. I wonder if that fucked him up on some level.

But he did liven up the last few months, with a puppy nipping at his heels. He got a bit of a hop to his wobble. This morning when I woke up he was just standing in the hallway staring blindly into the computer room. And I wondered what he was seeing, in his mind's eye, where his journey was taking him. And I patted him on the back, or at least I'm going to choose to believe I did, and he in that moment knew I loved him.

Because I did, godammit. I did.

RIP Ringo Dingo Dawg. RImuthafuckingP.

A Narrative of the Recent History of My Thoughts Told Through Hyopthetical Internet Search Terms

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Be The Noodle

One night last week I found myself alone in a crowded, trendy "gastropub" near my office scoping out a seat at the bar within view of a big-ass television on which to watch Game 6 whilst imbibing a red ale from a microbrew that you've probably never heard of and scarfing down bold reinventions of classic American comfort food resulting in a bill big enough to feed a family of 12 at a place that served classic American comfort food, minus the bold reinvention, which I think means cilantro. Or sea salt.

That's not what happens most nights. Most nights I go home to my family and boldy reinvent whatever I do or don't feel like boldly reinventing on my own damn time. And that's the way I've come to like it, by Jimminy!! But I had an evening to kill before a softball game, so there I was. I found a seat, eventually, and watched the game and ate the sea salted delicacies and drank the Very Earnest Beer. I was sitting right next to a couple of Japanese dudes wearing waiter uniforms from what I presumed to be a Japanese dining establishment having a conversation in Japanese and drinking Bud Light and eating turkey burgers, I shit you not. About halfway through the game the first guy got up to go smoke a cigarette (as I gathered after the fact by the the smell on his clothes when he came back) and the other dude very drunkenly decided to engage me in conversation. The conversation consisted of him holding his iPhone up to my face and showing me pictures of food while loudly saying, respectively:"Japanese Noodle! Japanese Noodle!", "Japanese Steak! Japanese Steak!", and finally "Japanese Cake! Japanese Cake!"

It went on from there. A few beers in I was playing international fucking pictionary with the guy and his friend trying to tell him, Hey, I stayed in Roppongi once for three days! In good time we parted in good company, left with no fucking idea what the other party said throughout most of the conversation. Later, I thought, wait....did that guy show me all those pictures of food because I'm so fat? Because I kind of think he did. I'm Godzilla to that dude. He was taking the piss, as the British say.

But everybody plays the fool, like the man says, so fuck it. Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn't. You can choose to stay home all the time or to not stay home all the time. You can choose to just connect, like the other man says, or you can just turn it off.

Later that night I ejected myself from the softball game in the 9th inning for telling a guy to go fuck himself after coming dangerously close to a fistfight for the third time in the last few months and then got mad at my wife for not showering me with sympathy when I got home and before I fell asleep I thought: Japanese Noodle, motherfucker! Accept the noodle. Or at least the picture of the noodle. Slurp it up. No...Be the noodle. Be the fucking noodle.

So I'm going with it. I'm a Tom Noodle! I'm a Tom Noodle!

Stay tuned to see how that works out. As if you don't already know.

Mi Padre

I figured out that my dad was different somewhere around the same time I figured out that most people are kind of just assholes, really, somewhere around the time when "different" started to mean "better." And so I was never really embarrassed, not really, not where it mattered. In case you don't know my dad lost his voice to cancer of the larynx when I was 2 years old. Thereafter he had a hole in the middle of his throat through which he breathed, and he spoke with an artificial voicebox that he held up to his neck, and he sounded like a robot, and that was just how my dad sounded and it never seemed weird to me, not for years, because that was just my dad and so the fuck what? And by the time I understood what the fuck what, I was smart enough to know that what the fuck what didn't mean fuck-all for fuck's sake, so go fuck yourself, motherfucker.

I think actually that my dad taught me was how to be happy and smart and sensitive and special in a place like Vista, which means really in a place like Anywhere, which means really how to be different, how to be happy, how to be who I am. How to love the things I love and do the things I want to do and then just kind of filter out all the rest of the bullshit one piece of bullshit at a time.

And no matter how tight I hold my kids today, no matter how warm and safe and loved I feel today, no matter how much I enjoy Father's Day as a "father", I still am also and ever and always a son, and of course it breaks my fucking heart. It breaks my heart not to have my dad here, in my patio, eating steak and bratwurst and watermelon and pistachios and strawberry shortcake. No to have my dad here by my side watching Game 3 of the the NBA Finals, with my puppy in his lap fast asleep. It breaks my fucking heart and I miss him so fucking much.

Goodnight Dad. I love you.

This Man's Art and That Man's Scope

I stood inside a boat this evening that was docked to the shore and mildly rocking with the tide, and within a minute I broke out in a sweat and then didn't want to go down the stairs and then had to come back up the stairs and look out at the horizon and then suddenly had to get off the boat, right away, with the dog in my arms and everything. And as I stood on the dock, in my socks, as my wife and children waved from the deck, I thought--yep, I'm the guy on the dock, in his socks. I will always be that guy.

And in the past at points I may have felt sorry for myself for being the guy on the dock, or romaticized myself for being the guy on the dock, or been angry at myself for being the guy on the dock, or vowed then and there that I would get my shit together and figure out how to stop being the guy on the dock by the time I turned thirtywhatever. But tonight I just thought--that's cool, I'm the guy on the dock. Look at all this cool shit I can see from the dock! I think maybe I'm actually kind of done trying to be what I am not, and I understand that I am most happy when I am being who I am, or at least engaged in an activity that I think will help me understand who it truly is that I in fact am. Or maybe I'm just tired of wanting to be someone else.

We are, all of us, weak and fragile creatures, subject to the winds of circumstance and the fluctuations of time. I've chosen my constants, the things from which I will not waver. Everything else is just a change in the weather. My heart is my reason. My body is only an umbrella.

Land Where My Fathers Died

I am not patriotic. I don't believe in patriotism. There are very few things to which I pledge blind allegiance. Some of those things are represented by actual living people, some of them are represented by special books, some are even represented by a vague floating notion that nudges me ever so gently toward Grace. But none of them are represented by flags.

And yet, on a day like today, on in fact *this* day, it's all I can do to keep myself from jumping down and kissing the ground and belting out "God Bless America" (and brother I can hit the roof).

A beautiful Southern California day, with all the things I love deep inside my warm embrace, catching the wave that takes us to shore and deposits us comfortably on the cliff at sunset with the wind caressing our wet hair. A hazy back-of-the-El-Camino hug.

And I think of my father, on beach somewhere in the Pacific, beaten down and battle weary and half-exhausted with Malaria, wiping things off his helmet that wouldn't be permitted in an open casket. I think of him choosing (at an age when I was choosing between Mountain Dew and Dr. Pepper) to try to stay alive, maybe without even knowing why. Maybe just discovering then and there that he was, in fact, a fighter. Realizing this, of course, only after he had knocked that other motherfucker to the ground.

And then I think: Ok, yes. Yes. There will always be fighting and dying. There will be always be those who protect and those who are protected.

There will always be Fathers and Sons.

Is there a problem?

I have participated in what you could generously call "fistfights" on two occasions in my life. The first time I was riding my bike home from 4th grade with a friend when a bully out of central casting (I think his name was Kim, like a girl, which is probably why he was a bully, like the Johnny Cash song) growled some kind of bully growl (the details escape me) and I stepped in to object. The Boy Named Kim responded to my chivalry by tossing my bike into the middle of the street, and in an unprecedented burst of bravery I punched him, aiming I'm sure for his big fat face but instead landing a glancing blow on his...shoulder.  Yeah, his shoulder. He paused briefly, and then socked me square in the mouth. My braces cut my bottom lip wide open, creating a geyser of blood that quickly ran down my jaw and stained my Star Wars shirt, the sight of which seemed to freak Kim out (he didn't mean to kill me, after all) and sent him running back home. I retrieved my bike, wiped my mouth on Han Solo's face, and claimed victory.

The second, more recent brawl took place over two decades ago in Mrs. Miller's 7th grade reading class, when my friend Gregory Corso pushed me because I accidentally stepped on his black karate-shoe-clad feet with my clunky Reebok high-tops. I reflexively punched him in the nose and knocked him back into the pencil sharpener, giving him both a bloody nose and a nasty bump on the back of his head. I received Saturday School and a huge heaping of guilt in return, and vowed never to use those lethal weapons called fists again.

And yet for some reason I've come dangerously close to fisticuffs on two separate occasions in the last week, and I can't quite figure out why. I'm a grumpy, quick-tempered, moody fuck to be sure, but my volatility traditionally manifests itself through sarcastic quips, obscene rants, self-loathing and screaming tantrums, not physical violence. But something inside me is hankering for a fight, it seems, and I'm going to have to show some uncharacteristically strong self-control if I want to keep from knocking a bitch out, or more likely getting my own punk-ass knocked out, or stabbed or hauled to jail or whatever the hell would happen if I actually gave in to my impulses. Which I won't, I'm pretty sure, so don't worry or call me or recommend yoga or anything. That would just piss me off more, anyway,  thereby quickening my descent into barbarism. And you don't want that kind of blood on your hands.

The first near-fight was last Thursday on the trolley, of all places. I don't take the trolley, normally, so I don't know what line to catch from the train station to my office, and the only reason I wasn't walking the fairly short 10 minute walk to my office is a recent flare-up of what I have google-diagnosed as metatarsalgia, a fairly common runner's injury that is in effect a bruising of the ball of the foot and middle toes that comes from overuse or ill-fitting shoes. (I don't run unless someone is chasing me, but I do go for a rigorous walk most days at lunch). So I wanted to take the trolley, but I either got on the wrong one or missed my stop and somehow ended up at the trolley transfer station, which is twice as far as the train station from my office, in the other direction.

I was about to take my earbuds out and investigate the situation when a trolley-worker (porter? conductor? troll?) burst into the car (empty except for me) and loudly, rudely, informed me that the train was out of service and I needed to exit immediately. I got up and tried to leave but...let's just say that I tend to, as the Robert Downey Jr. character in "Tropic Thunder" put it, "go full retard" (no offense intended) in certain stressful situations. My brain just shuts down and my motor skills (admittedly limited to begin with) completely abandon me. And I just could not figure out how the fuck to open the godamn trolley door, no matter how long I stared at it. So, in desperation, I called out to to the trolley-worker seeking assistance. He was displeased, to say the least. Dude was clearly having a bad morning, and he yelled back something like "push the fucking button!!" The only button I saw was a big red one above the door, so I pushed it. It was the wrong button, turns out, as the attending alarm made clear, and this is where it starts to get interesting.

The guy came barreling out of whatever little trolley closet he was working in and loudly said "Not that fucking button!!" before shutting off the alarm and hitting the proper button, the one just to the left of the door. "How did you get on in the first place?," he said, and that's when, for some reason, I finally lost it. Lost it, completely. "I walked through an opening fucking door, that's how I got on, you fucking asshole!!!", or words to that effect. He told me to "pull the fucking headphones out of my ears and pay attention" and I got right up in his face and yelled, creatively, "FUCK YOU! You're an asshole!!!" I was ready to punch the dude, I swear to God, I was gone, and looking back I think his response is the only thing that stopped me. "So are you!!!" So are you. He didn't deny he was an asshole, he didn't question my parentage or threaten me, he just told me I was an asshole too. And he was right. And the door opened and I walked off the trolley, just in time to see three transit cops drinking coffee and eyeballing me suspiciously. And I just hobbled off on my fucked-up foot, stewing in anger, shame and aggression all the (needlessly long) way to work.

And then on Saturday, at a pool with my kids, I noticed a group of teenage boys, the kind of whitebread, date-rapey, football team, privileged fucking shitheads that nearly ruined my own high school years, chilling out in a private cabana paid for by one of their plastic cougar moms. On our way out of the pool, my two young sons and wife right me, I was carrying a load of wet towels, my whale-like flesh unmercifully exposed far more than usual, and I turned and saw one of the kids look at me, then say something to his friend, who then looked at me, and then they both burst into laughter. I've been a fat kid my whole life, and I damn well fucking know when people are laughing at me, and that was this, for sure. And I stopped, and fixed my gaze at shithead #1, and when his eye caught mine again I held the gaze and said, loudly: "Is there a problem?" And, like the little bitch he was, he said "no" and looked down quickly. And then and only then did I keep walking. I would have jumped into that cabana like the fucking Hulk, I swear to god, and pretty quickly gotten my ass kicked by the La Costa Canyon varsity offensive line no doubt, if I hadn't gotten the response I wanted.

So the question remains: what the fuck is wrong with me? I don't know, exactly, but I have a few ideas. The reason I was on the train on Thursday to begin with, the reason I didn't drive to work like usual, is because it was the second anniversary of my father's death, and my wife and mother and kids were picking me up later in the day to visit my father's grave site. So yeah, that might have something to do with my pent up rage, I suppose. Or maybe, as my wife suggested, on some level I'm too comfortable and feel the need to shake things up. Or maybe I'm just turning into a fucking idiot as I get older. I don't know. But I do know this--if you see me coming your way anytime soon, it's probably best not to piss me off. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

Righteous/Melancholy

May 11--

"She says the joke is on me, I say the joke is on her.
I said: Well, I have no opinion about that.
We'll just have to wait and confer."
--Paul Simon

When I was seventeen (it was a very good year), I fashioned myself a bit of a crack investigative reporter, a four-time San Diego County High School Journalism Write-off Champion, Runner-up, or Award Recipient, depending on the category. I took that responsibility seriously, unlike pretty much every other responsibility I rubbed up against at that age, and I embraced it. Through my leadership capacity on the school paper, I volunteered  to write a "candidate round-up" article about the upcoming school board election. I arranged phone interviews with all the candidates, among them a kind of proto-Sarah-Palin Fundamentalist Christian Soccer Mom who had made "family values" a cornerstone of her campaign. I prepared a list of tough but fair questions and sprung them upon her one day from the journalism room phone. Somehow, I believe at her prompting, the discussion of abortion came up. I told her my opinion, she told me hers,we finished the interview. A few days later I received a letter from the candidate, addressed to me C/O the school paper, thanking me for being a student journalist who cared about the future of my school and then reminding me that murder was a sin in the Eyes of God, and that Abortion Was Murder, and just in case I didn't fully understand that she had included a series of photos of dead fetuses to illustrate to me the consequences of LEGAL MURDER. 

That was over twenty years ago, and it still freaks me out. Soon enough I got the fuck out of Vista, and then over time Came the Fuck Back, and now I am who I am, a guy with a family and a life who has chosen to live here, to raise my family in the place I was raised. And last last night, for the first time since I was an intrepid high school Woodward and/or Bernstein looking for The Story, I found myself deep in the thick of local educational politics. And it was UGLY. 


May 16

I wrote that five days ago. I nodded off before I could finish it, then never came back to it. So it exists now as a record of my general disposition the night after the school board voted to cut all arts funding to my son's performing arts school. There was going to be more, it was going to be epic, with lots of comparisons to Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin and what have you, but I fell asleep. And my blood still boils about it but it is not what I am thinking about tonight.

Tonight I am thinking about another night, exactly two years ago, when I stood a lonely vigil on the wall. And then the night finally surrendered and soonafter so did my father, and then everything changed. If you're looking for the "Before" chronicles, you're in the wrong spot. Click the fuck back in my "Older Posts" section. Because you're smack dab in the The After Diaries.

Tonight i feel mournful. I feel old. I feel sore. I feel blessed and battered. I feel loved. I feel tired.

I feel sad.

(Wo)Man at Work, or: Thank God I'm a Country Bear!!

My wife is home. The children are alive. Cue applause. No autographs, please, I just need some "me" time. I don't want to stain your program with the tears of a clown.

And she is already, again, still--back to work. Almost 11:00 on a school night and she is sawing away, in the garage, (on one of those kinds of saws that have to be plugged in and have different kinds of blades and are really dangerous and stuff), while I struggle through a very challenging bout of Games With Friends with this guy who went to fucking Yale Law School, for fuck's sake! And beneath her safety goggles there is a gleam in her eye. If she could hear herself think over the hum of the electric saw, she would whistle whilst she worked. "I almost feel like Gepetto," she said to me tonight, which immediately qualifies as One of the Best Things She's Ever Said and she's said a lot of great shit.

And then eventually I thought, as I always do, "How exactly in what specific way does that pertain to me?" And then I thought: Who do I almost feel like? Just think something and then say it right away. And I said: "I almost feel like Bartleby!! I almost feel like Gregor Samsa!!"

And then I thought: Oh, shut the fuck up. Don't be such a douchebag. I like to get up in the morning. I like to go to work. I like to build and create and convince and cajole and coast-when-I-need-to and, when all is said and done, cross the finish line or break my back or die trying. I feel like fucking Gepetto too godamnit.We're a couple of Gepettos here, and Fuck You if you can't handle a little gay marriage all up in your shit. Wrong century, bro.

I am built for the thing which I am supposed to fit into. I am built for the thing I find and fit into. I am made to be the man I am, or the man I will be; either way I Am Becoming. And that takes work. And us Huntingtons were born with orange vests and heavy beards and arms of steel.

Life Without You, Day 7

And we call this next piece: "I Miss Mommy: A Study of the Maternal Archetype in Wood, Paper and Ink." But we'll come back to that. First, I will give you something my wife is an artist at creating, like many other things, and something I am weirdly unable to figure out to how use and instead simply mangle and make fun of and co-opt in a kind of robot-trying-to-play-human way, like many other things: a list.

Since You've Been Gone I Can Do:

1. Whatever I want.
2. Virtually nothing right, it seems, about half the time.
3. Some things kind of adequately, some of the time.
4. Some things heartbreakingly, heroically, Rocky-Balboa-Vs.-Clubber-Lang kind of INCREDIBLY WELL FOR AN UNDERDOG, pretty much all the time in my own head including the time I remembered where the hand soap refill was, a heroic act! but in reality absolutely none of the time.
5. Any kind of dance you'd like, any kind of tune you want to hear, any kind of treat you'd like to eat, anything you want me to do if you will JUST. FUCKING. LISTEN. TO. ME. To my children, I mean. I am the dancing monkey, and I've got mantits.

Since You've Been Gone I Can See:

1. Whomever I Choose
2. Messes. Everywhere. Every minute there's another godamned mess! And nobody else sees it! Nobody else sees it but me! Come on!!!!!!
3. Why so many parents fuck up so many kids because they just can't keep on a lid on their own crazy.
4. The following scene (dig, if you will, the picture, to do a paisley mash-up): 5 year old Finnegan Joseph Huntington, sitting snuggled up against his brother, cloaked in a mosaic knit blanket his Grandma Bibi made for him (special ingredient: LOVE), sniffling and wiping away tears as I stumble out of the shower first thing in the morning. "What's wrong, Finny?" "Well, two things are wrong. I can't find my gorilla, and I had him when I woke up and I had him when I walked in here!!! And, usually, when I wake up and I'm alone in bed in the morning and Mommy is awake I walk into the kitchen and she hugs me!!!" Sweet Jesus, the hug I gave that kid then. The hug of all hugs, the primal, rocking, goes-from-standing-to-sitting-and-snuggling whole body kind of hug. The kind of hug that defines what the word "hug" means in your mind. And he perked up. And I did too.

Since You've Been Gone I Can Eat My Dinner:
1. (On the couch, in the kitchen, outside, in the dining room, in my car, at Chuck. E. Cheese, but definitely not in a...) Fancy Restaraunt.
2. With the constant perfume of cat piss in the air about my head. After finally dealing with the litterbox today and then immediately changing my clothes, washing my face, washing my hands, washing my hands, washing all the towels and rugs and clothes, washing my hands; I have come to the following conclusion: the catpiss lives forever inside my nostrils. It's just a thing that happened, and it can't un-happen, ever.

And that picture, up at the top there, that. Finny was working away with blocks in the living room while I worked on the laptop, then scurrying to get paper and a pen, then getting his child scissors, then returning to the blocks. Finally he called me over to show me what he had made: "A picture of mommy. I couldn't use wood, you know, for the face, so I had to draw it on paper."

My Bathroom...Smells...Kind of...Funky...

Blunt force. That's kind of how it goes, whether you want to believe it or not. Maybe it's a timeline like this: Innocence....Fear...Anxiety...Anger...Defeat...Sorrow...BLUNT FORCE!!! Still, the last one leaves the biggest impression, you gotta admit.

I have been taught some lessons in honesty, in authenticity, in love and in loyalty this week. I have been taught those lessons by a five year old child. MY five year old child, to be exact. The fruit of my loins, as it were (...if there were some expression like that except way less creepy and oily and "ok, thanks, nice meeting you, gotta go..."than that). And the kid has got a point.

He can't do anything except tell me the truth. He loves me too much to lie to me. He has been dealt with fairly, and he will deal with others fairly in return. He will take part in their joy, he will acknowledge their sorrow, and when their eyes meet his he will tell them the truth. He is the boy this slouchy half-man wishes he could be. He tells the truth.

At various times during the past three matriarch-less days, the Truth has been: "I love you daddy. But I REALLY love Mommy." "I ate all my chicken! I'm a good eater. But I don't want to get fat! Just a good eater, not fat!" "You should be Jabba the Hut or maybe Hagrid for Halloween" and the following exchange: ME: "I miss Mommy too, and I'm doing the best I can. We're having lots of fun! Aren't you having fun hanging out with Daddy?" HIM: "Um...sort of."

And he's right, every time. And he loves me, like a rock. Like I love him. And it doesn't occur to him to not tell the truth. It just doesn't occur to him. And godamnit I fucking hope it never does. Tell the truth, Finnegan!! Always and with pride, tell the truth! You are loved! Tell the truth!

So for my part, The Truth, tonight: I am lonely. I am anxious. I miss my wife. I worry, you know, about what's going to happen...to everyone, everywhere. I am afraid that if I lived alone I would very quickly qualify for a Very Special Episode of Hoarders. I feel like I've spent a fair amount of my life pretending I was toughening up, only to discover that I had really just been getting more fragile. That my shoulders cannot bear the weight of the villages I have constructed atop them. That I don't know anything and everyone else knows even less. That maybe there is something I'm missing about the band Rush, or L. Ron Hubbard, or that show about that vampire who was sarcastic but still totally had lots of wounded feelings. That there is no comfort but false comfort, and my greatest aspiration is just to weave fantasies out of pixie dust.

And that my bathroom...smells...kind of...funky. After only three fucking days. Come on!!!

Why You So Fat?

I hear voices, in my head...like everyone does, right? And one of those voices is the "why you so fat?" lady. I've talked to my wife and a few other friends about her before, but basically the "why you so fat?" lady is a short, middle-aged woman wearing polyester and bi-focals who, upon first meeting me, sizes me up right away, looks me up and down quickly, and says the first thing that comes to her mind. Which is, of course: Why you so fat?

I've actually kind of really had that happen before, but the story would sound so self-pitying and racist if I told it that it wouldn't get the point across, which is probably why I created this fictional version in my head. She greets me primarily in moments of self-sabotage. Moments when, say--and this is purely hypothetical, mind you--I might be sitting at Chuck E. Cheese, 62 pounds down since last July, having walked the wall in Carlsbad this morning even with the kid scootering at my heels, having kept under WW points all day, eating a salad from the World's Saddest Salad Bar(TM)...and I reach over and inhale half a piece of picked-apart pepperoni pizza off my son's plate in less than a second flat. She appears, then, across the booth and says, simply, plainitively...Why you so fat?

There are a lot of reasons why I'm so fat. Since you asked. I have a PhD in Advanced Studies of Phenomenogical Theory on Why Tom Is So Fat. A partial list:

1. Because I'm not you.
2. Because I'm me.
3. Because I'm fat.
4. Because I don't really give a shit about all the things that most people give a shit about, all right? I can't make myself care about it, I'm sorry. I can't make myself like "Glee." I can't make myself drink Vodka. I can't make myself want what I do not want, no matter how much I'm supposed to want it. I don't care about it the way you care about it. I want to look the way I feel. I am large. I contain multitudes.
5. Cheetos
6. Genetics.
7. Because you're all so fucking skinny. Why are you all so fucking skinny? Why are you all so plastic and skinny? The runner-up to the salad bar at Chuck E. Cheese as the The Saddest Place on Earth (TM) is the pool at the La Costa Hotel Resort and Spa. You can bounce a quarter off of everyone's "skin." Bronzed plastic Oakley tight. Why are you all so skinny?????? Is this an alternate universe where bacon was never invented? Get your dirty paws off me, you damn dirty ape!!!!
8. Because I Hate Myself (TM)
9. Butter. Pecan. Ice Cream.
10. I am in a constant struggle not to lose my shit. Every waking moment is a battle, another signpost in the war. I am a valiant warrior, a leader even, and I spare no mercy for the enemy. But late at night in the foxhole I crave some sustenance. I seek relief. There are times, as the man said, when I am so lonesome that I take some comfort there. By "there" I mean "double-double."
11. I may be way fatter than you but I just know you've eaten one of those Doritos (TM) tacos from Taco Bell (TM). And I would never do that.
12. Nobody pays attention to normal people unless they used to be abnormal. I am the "Before." Watch the fuck out for the "After." Cuz he will fuck you up.