Oh Wait, Was She a Great Big Fat Person?

Fat - The Violent Femmes (mp3)
Wait - White Lion (mp3)

Sometimes honesty is nothing but a dangerous weapon. Maybe we don't mean to hurt people with it, but sometimes we do damage with our honesty that can't be easily mended.

One of the most personally agonizing moments in The Breakfast Club occurs when rich girl Claire (Molly Ringwald) spouts too much honesty for anyone. My alter-ego, the nerdy Brian (Anthony Michael Hall), suddenly realizes he potentially has four new friends from all walks of school life, and the ramifications of that possibility excites him.

BRIAN
So, so on Monday...what happens?

CLAIRE
Are we still friends, you mean? If we're friends now, that is?

BRIAN
Yeah...

CLAIRE
Do you want the truth?

BRIAN
Yeah, I want the truth...

CLAIRE
I don't think so...

ALLISON
Well, do you mean all of us or just John?

CLAIRE
With all of you...

ANDREW
That's a real nice attitude, Claire!

CLAIRE
Oh, be honest, Andy...if Brian came walking up to you in the hall on Monday, what would you do? I mean picture this, you're there with all the sports. I know exactly what you'd do, you'd say hi to him and when he left you'd cut him all up so your friends wouldn't think you really liked him!

ANDREW
No way!

ALLISON
'Kay, what if I came up to you?

CLAIRE
Same exact thing!

BENDER
(furious and screaming at Claire)
You are a bitch!

CLAIRE
Why? 'Cause I'm telling the truth, that makes me a bitch?

BENDER
No! 'Cause you know how shitty that is to do to someone! And you don't got the balls to stand up to your friends and tell 'em that you're gonna like who you wanna like!

CLAIRE
Okay, what about you, you hypocrite! Why don't you take Allison to one of your heavy metal vomit parties? Or take Brian out to the parking lot at lunch to get high? What about Andy for that matter, what about me? What would your friends say if we were walking down the hall together. They'd laugh their asses off and you'd probably tell them you were doing it with me so they'd forgive you for being seen with me.

BENDER
(furious once again)
Don't you ever talk about my friends! You don't know any of my friends, you don't look at any of my friends and you certainly wouldn't condescend to speak to any of my friends so you just stick to the things you know, shopping, nail polish, your father's BMW and your poor--rich--drunk mother in the Carribean!

Because I've always identified (begrudgingly) with Brian, Claire's words wound me every time I hear them. They are painful because they are true and honest, and Claire says them with a begrudging regret for and resignation to the way the world works.

Rebel flunkie John Bender (Judd Nelson) goes all great vengeance and furious anger on her, and his rhetorical skills overwhelm the argument, but they never can take away from the scathing truth of her honesty. Bender only wins because he plays dirty and can redirect the subject. When Brian returns to prodding Claire about her response, she again gives a painfully honest answer, making everyone angrier at her still.

Their anger does not change the validity of her claim. Sometimes it's easier to pass judgment on the one cruel enough to say it than it is to acknowledge that we'd be equally guilty... but denying it the whole time.

The only one who stood firm that her friends would accept Brian into the fold was Allison (Ally Sheedy), and that was only because Allison was friendless and could thus offer a lame "the kind of friends I'd have wouldn't mind" response. Which is much like me claiming that none of my pit bulls would ever bite anyone... if I ever bought any pit bulls.

At one point, Bender tells Claire that her name is "a fat girl's name." Which is the best way I can lead into my point...

What makes a fat person fat?

I know I'm burying the lead here, but when having to answer this question, I find myself in a horrible place. Rather than being Brian, the Club's naive victim, I'm suddenly Claire, the honest asshole who says stuff even though it's cruel to say. Obviously, I try keeping these thoughts to myself unless I'm writing a blog or dragged into a friendly debate.

Do fat people eat too much? Is it the curse of genetic inheritance? Do their grandparents spoil them? Are they a lazy at a different level? Can we blame it all on William Howard Taft or the gravitational pull of the moon or cauliflower? Our beliefs here sway us in stories about Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines, or about health insurance costs, or about the decade of network television sitcoms ruined by the glut of snarky and annoying fat guys with hot wives.

A series of Slate articles wrestles with the science debate on weight and how much is linked to the curse of genetics. Although I can't rightly read these articles without acknowledging that I hit some version of the genetic lotto in being skinny, I also can't get past my own anecdotal experiences that most overweight people I know got that way because they eat too much, eat too unhealthily, and are far too inactive.

Overweight people should have to buy two plane tickets when necessary. I wince thinking that my insurance rates are governed by smokers and unhealthy eaters rather than my own moderately irresponsible lifestyle. That Leah Remini would fall in love with Kevin James makes me throw up in my mouth.

Maybe I'm an awful person for admitting this. Maybe it's such an aggravating topic because the whole truth is much more complicated than mere DNA structure or the number of Whoppers consumed. But I doubt I'll ever be capable of viewing one's weight on the same scale of "just born with it" as one's skin color, height, or even sexual preference. One day, if science can prove me wrong, I will do my best to change, but I will mostly pray that I won't pass along my own prejudices to my children.

To those loyal readers who are overweight or agitated by my stance, I shrug a Molly Ringwald shrug and regret to inform you that I can't even play "Heart + Soul" with my toes or apply lipstick using my cleavage instead of my hands.

I've loved the Violent Femmes song since I bought that album back in the '80s. I just added the White Lion song for the pun fun of it. And because it's probably White Lion's best or second-best song.

Suckers

I'm Coming Home - Wild Sweet Orange (mp3)
Bleed Like Me - Garbage (mp3)

As my wife and I were enjoying a nice, just-the-two-of-us restaurant dinner over the weekend, she told me a strange little tale.

Seems my oldest daughter came home from school on Friday with some strange-looking marks in the crook of her arm. J asked her, "What happened to your arm?" and Carolyn sorta did the guilty, oh crap I did something I shouldn't have thing. So J said, "It's OK, you can tell me."

And Carolyn said, "I was sucking on my arm."

"Um, why?" J was a little flabbergasted.

"I dunno."

"You don't know?"

"Hmm-mm."

"How bored do you have to be to suck on your arm for so long that you give yourself hic... marks??"

At this point in her story, I had one of those classic '60s movie moments where my body is sprawling around on its back with a little vertigo-spiral thingy spinning behind me, and there's that flashback music playing, and I'm being flung back into my childhood.

"Jesus," I said.

"What's wrong?" J (my wife, not Our Lord and Savior) asked, as I had probably turned green, and it wasn't from the scallops.

"I totally did that when I was a kid."

J laughed. She thought -- with good reason, having been married to me for a baker's dozen of years -- I was kidding. But I was all too serious. I can remember, quite clearly, sitting in class, or at recess, or at home, and participating in this strange little habit.

I would place the inside of my elbow in my mouth. Usually a few centimeters up on the forearm section. I'm pretty sure I had to use my left hand to grab the elbow and keep the arm securely in place. Once my lips were securely around the flesh, I would engage in this little waltz of gentle biting and sucking. The spongy reaction of the flesh to my biting it was a slightly hypnotic and surprisingly soothing. It didn't hurt. It was like the difference between combing your own hair and letting someone else. When someone else bites you, the pain tends to be more noticeable (yes, even when it's the good adult kind of pleasure/pain), but biting yourself isn't nearly like that. We seem to have an almost surgical accuracy of knowing how much we can tolerate when we're doing shit like this to ourselves.

Unknown quantities of time would pass, and I would eventually remove my mouth to see a huge... well, dammit, there's no other real word for it, but I didn't know the word at the time... HICKEY. At one point in this little habit, I even started working up my forearm. I'd have two or three hickeys in the crook of my elbow and have one or two more on the inside bone of my wrist.

Four or five hickeys at a time. On one arm. And no one ever said anything to me about it. Which is kinda weird, now that I look back on it.

Don't know why I did this. It probably wasn't too far removed from the reasons kids suck their thumb or do anything that's repetitive and soothing (insert your own thoughts or lurid jokes here). But seeing J's concern about Carolyn, who was doing the same damn thing at the same damn point in her life made me both defensive and... well, guilty.

I didn't teach my daughter this particular quirk. She never came downstairs in the middle of the night only to discover me, sitting in the dark of our living room, guiltily sucking away on the crook of my elbow, the lifelong addiciton I could never kick. The self-hickey act hasn't even crossed my mind in close to three frakkin' decades.

Yet there it is. A sin of the father embedded, osmosis-like, into the brachioradialis of his daughter. Same place on the same arm. That's just weird, dude.

How about I up the freakazoid level one more?

When we went to pick up our son from my babysitting mother, I told her about Carolyn and the fact that I had somehow passed along some genetic coding from my system to hers that compelled her to give herself hickeys. Know what Mom said?

"You know, now that you mention it, I'm pretty sure I used to do that, too. In fact, I'm almost positive I did that. Isn't that strange?"

I've always believed nurture trumped nature in that classic duel, but now I'm all confused. Which kinda sucks. Suddenly, I'm inclined to blame so many more of my shortcomings on simple genetic fate...

This post was written prior to my attending the national championship game between UNC and Michigan State. Should I be capable of operating slightly heavy machinery upon my return home, and should my Heels prove victorious, I will post the songs prior to collapsing on the softest surface available.

Wanderlustless

Southern Girls - Cheap Trick (mp3)
This Is My Home - The New Frontiers (mp3)

The more scientists dig into the fabric of our humanity, pulling apart our DNA like strings of Black Cat firecrackers, the more our raging individuality seems up for debate. Are we inclined to be fat? Are we fated to be left-handed? Are we born gay? Was my IQ severely limited before I even emerged from the womb? Do I love Cheap Trick because of the way my DNA forced my brain into shape, so that something in the sounds of Rick Nielson's guitars and Robin Zander's screechy vocals fits perfectly into this little craving in my ventral tegmental area like those little shapes in Perfection?

When reading about my partner's exploits in Korea, I wonder if I have a DNA malfunction. When I ventured out for the annual In-Law Family Beach Trip -- my 12th such experience to the same beach, in the same house -- I realized I might have a genetically inherited traveling disability.

Last summer I enjoyed what will likely be the Trip of My Lifetime when I visited Kenya (pre-presidential election chaos), and the entire experience was amazing. I got the good luck of going thanks to a coworker and lucky happenstance, so the entire trip was covered by my school. The people, the culture, the environment, the wildlife. Because I'd never been outside the U.S. except for Gulf Coast exotic locales like the Bahamas and Cancun, I felt like an infant. Every single minute of my day was something new, information to be absorbed and digested. It was exhausting and exhilerating to feel like every moment was a new learning opportunity. I took over 1,000 pictures. I learned some 40 words in Swahili. I admired and pitied and adored the Kenyan people I met, smiling through struggles with poverty that only the poorest of our American poor could even comprehend.

Upon returning, I had that Trip-of-a-Lifetime afterglow, something slightly comparable to the glow that covers a virgin college student after getting laid that first time. I basked in that glow. I loved talking about my trip with people who were truly curious and fascinated about it.

But now? A year after the experience? Mostly I just think, Thank God I didn't have to pay for that. That trip was f*#kin' expensive.

How screwed up is that? It was the Trip of My Lifetime, fer Chrissakes. I must suffer from a wanderlust deficiency, the inability to truly appreciate escaping my humble surroundings and experiencing new places, new people, new worlds. That's the only explanation.

Dollar for dollar, I have more fun sleeping two to a bed with three other guys every year in New Orleans than I did blitzkrieging London and covering huge swaths of Kenya. Dollar for dollar, I enjoy my trips to Tunica, where I sit in one or two large rooms and play 12-14 hours of nonstop poker. Dollar for dollar, I enjoy the annual beach trip with my in-laws in the same exact house, on the same exact beach, with the same exact people year in and year out.

This isn't intended to sound ungrateful for my Kenya experience. I truly appreciate, on the philosophical level, what a true gift and privilege it was. But in my gut? If I even had to cover half my expenses? I wouldn't go again.

WTF? What is wrong with me? Please tell me it's in my DNA.

Part of this must be some aversion to spending large sums of money on experiences rather than items, because I throw enough cash into stupid DVDs and music files to finance at least one international trip every year.

Just how fucked up is this glitch in my DNA code? Two years ago, due to the conspiratorial planning of some dormitory boys whom I oversee, I won a coveted school award. The award pays several thousand dollars to cover travel expenses however we see fit. We're not talking $10k or anything, but plenty enough to enjoy a fantabulous stateside trip, or enough to provide the backbone for a fancy overseas excursion. The only requirement is that I must use every penny for travel. You can't, like, do some Price is Right thing where you just take the post-tax cash instead of the Chevy.

I won this award in April 2006. We still haven't used it. Two other teachers have since won the award. Both had a trip planned and executed within three months of receiving it. August will be the 28th month we've had this award money and not used it. Our school's financial controller said she's never heard of anything like it.

Ireland. Scotland. Venice. Florence. Australia. The California Coast. Hawaii. Vancouver. Prague. We researched all of them. None of them compelled us more convincingly than the others. Instead of exotic locales, we almost spent the money to rent a beach house and invite any and all of our friends to come down free of charge... but we worried we wouldn't find a week when many of our friends would care to come down, nor did we know if all our various friends would really enjoy staying in a house with other friends of ours who might not be their friends.

See, when you never ever travel, and this magic Golden Ticket lands in your Wonka Bar, the challenge is that you only get to go one and only one place. And odds are good that it's the only trip of such magnitude we'll take in the next decade.

BOTG Bob (not to be confused with Bob Barker) has visited all 50 states in 51 years. He loves to travel, to make all the preparations. It feeds his soul.

Billy won't visit 50 states. Ever. I'll be lucky to make 25 states. And when I'm on my deathbed, to bastardize a quote from Office Space, I won't say I've been missing those other 25, Bob.

This defect annoys me only in the abstract. In reality, I don't think much about it. Most color blind people don't really miss the color red (the picture at right is what "ROY G BIV" looks like to many with color blindness). They know they can't see it, and sometimes they wonder what red is like, but most days they just go about life not missing red in the least. Likewise, my apathy toward travel only bothers me on a rare occasion, like when I'm reading about Bob's trip to Korea. Or when I'm writing a blog on the subject. But then I stop writing, go buy the new $0.49 Paul Westerberg album 49:00, and completely forget what the big deal was.