Kudzu Queen

By Tamara Ducote

I generally don’t get upset when slurs are directed at me. When somebody terms me a “lazy slob” or a “vindictive bitch,” I just figure they are being as descriptive as their limited vocabulary allows. But there is one word that will raise my hackles every time. The dreaded “F” word. You got it: Fat.

Let me clue all you men into something. Women hate this word. If you use it towards a woman, you are asking for trouble.

And why is it always that men who are more overweight than you are the ones telling you this? I mean, if John Basedow knocked on my door one morning to tell me he really thought I could drop a few pounds, that’d be different. I’d figure that in terms of fitness, he at least knew what he was talking about. I’d thank him kindly for the advice, right before I kicked his skinny ass.

But when somebody that could stand to drop 30 pounds is preaching to me about needing to lose 20…Houston, we have a problem.

This has happened to me twice in this lifetime.

My third marriage was absolutely horrible. And I can trace all the problems, from vicious sarcasm and rampant infidelities (mine), to bad-check-writing, pill-popping, crying, nagging, and whining (his) to one seminal moment. We were chilled-out in the living room and he remarked, casually, “You know, you’d be real pretty if you lost 10-15 pounds.”

He took another swig of beer and then balanced the can on his shelf-like pot belly, right alongside the ashtray, the TV remote, and the lamp. There was still room for a smallish family of immigrants upon that pot belly.

All bad events during the next two years, including me chasing his chickenshit ass down the back hallway with a golf club and beating impressive divots in the back bedroom door as he cowered on the other side, sprang from that one moment. That’s where the seeds of ill will were first sown.

I had this boyfriend who had stopped lavishing the proper amount of adoring attention on me. I cornered him on the couch one afternoon and asked, “Why? Is it because I’m too fat?”

And remarkably, because I had never before thought of him as being dumber than a box of rocks, he said, “Yes.”

I told my daughter Veronica about the horrible conversation. I felt I owed her an explanation for why she came home that evening to find me sobbing in the driveway, furiously pounding bricks into shrapnel with my 3 lb. sledgehammer.

“Oh, Mom,” V. said. “Don’t take that junk seriously. You’re not fat. Your hair is a wreck and you totally dress funny, but I promise you, you are NOT fat.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I think.”

When I told my friend Cynthia about Boyfriend’s remark, she asked, “How many stitches did that porcine little troll require?” And then she added, “However many it was, it wasn’t enough.”

When I told my friend Edith about it, she replied with an even better question: “What graveyard is he buried in?”

I knew I packed a few extra pounds. But what completely befuddled me was that I was the same weight I had been when I had first taken up with that boyfriend. Back when we, uhm, expressed physical affection like rabbits. So my weight was not the real issue. There were obviously issues he did not care to discuss (most probably my nasty, self-centered personality), and my weight was a convenient red herring.

Or was it? I wondered. Rather than go on a diet and exercise program, which requires initiative and self-discipline, I opted for just freaking-out, which requires neither.

On the one hand, knowing that I was completely, irrevocably, obviously FAT brought some freedom with it. I no longer had to worry about which outfits made me look fat. I just WAS fat, and it seemed like the wisest thing to do about it was to accept it. I no longer had to feel guilty for consuming Mayfield’s chocolate chip ice cream at the rate of 1.75 quarts a day. I was not committing gluttony; I was EMBRACING MY DESTINY of fatness. But with this new knowledge came a painful self-consciousness. I dreaded going outside.

“The mailman just came, Mom,” Veronica said one morning. “Aren’t you waiting on a big, juicy check from Lagniappe, so we can get the electricity turned back on?”

“I’ll get the mail after dark, when nobody can see me.”

Every time the phone rang, I half expected it to be a headhunter for a circus, searching for a new fat lady because their old one died of congestive heart failure or some other obesity-related problem.

I yearned to go visit relatives up north, but cringed at the thought of booking an airline ticket. Surely the airline would charge me for two seats, due to my enormous 5’6”, 140-lb. bulk, and that would be a blow my shattered self-esteem simply could not endure.

To feel better about myself, I decided to only hang out with people who were fatter than me. I thought I might have to troll outside Weight Watchers with a tub of Mayfield’s chocolate chip ice cream as bait, in order to get some friends who were hefty enough. But once I really looked around, I realized that I already had an adequate number of chubby acquaintances. Remember, this is America: almost everybody is fat.

I culled the few folks who were a size 8 or less from my inner circle. Harsh measures, sure, but my self-image was at stake here.

“Great-grandma wants to know why you keep hanging up on her,” my sister said to me.

“I’m not speaking to thin people,” I answered. “Tell that skinny old lady to pack on about 30 pounds before she bothers me again.”

Dieting is not on my radar. I’ve already given up drinking, drugs and bad men (Sayonara, Boyfriend), and this seems to me to be plenty of self-improvement for one lifetime. I am not about to give up profanity, nicotine or chocolate chip ice cream. You can have my tub of Mayfield’s when you pry it from my cold, dead, fat fingers.

Contact Tamara Ducote at TDDucote6@aol.com.

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