Physically incapable

From Pathetic Life #1
Monday, June 13, 1994

Maggie arrives, but all is not bliss. All things considered, our first night back together could not have been much worse.

As we had planned, I picked her up at the airport, but when she first saw me her instant reaction was to shriek and turn her back on me. She said almost nothing for the first half hour, as if we were strangers. I kept saying things — nice things I think — asking her questions, pointing out sights from the window of the bus on our ride back to town, but she mostly just sat there silent. She told me later that she was speechless at the sight of how huge I've become.

I was not exactly slim when we were last together, and I'd told her to expect fifty pounds more of me. And she's not at her ideal chart weight, either, but — OK, I'll chalk it up to nerves. It was the first time we'd seen each other in several years, and she was understandably nervous, and so was I, so the silence and shyness was understandable.

Then we arrived at the cheap residential hotel that I call home, and we were finally talking like two people with a romantic past together, and maybe a future. We kissed, and that was nice. Kissing led to more kissing, which led to squeezing this and rubbing that, and eventually we were in the mood for something special. I rolled the two beds together, and the catastrophe was complete:

To her disappointment and mine, I am now physically incapable of good old fashioned face-to-face sex with a woman — I'm just too damned fat. My belly is so large that it prevents my manhood from reaching her womanhood. It's basic geometry: the magnitude of my girth means that our special happy places cannot be closer than about seven inches apart.

We attempted several different positions, but with each subsequent failure my erection waned, until finally it all seemed futile, and I was unable to continue trying. My dear Margaret seemed eventually satisfied with my two-finger method, and she was able to do wonders with her hand and a little margarine, but it wasn't what either of us had anticipated.

With continued effort and experimentation and patience, we could probably, eventually, find a way to make whoopie like we'd like to, but we don't have much time. It's only two weeks until she'll be on an airplane out of here — and she won't be spending most of that time with me. Her sister lives a few counties away, and for reasons too complicated to explain, her sister is raising Maggie's young daughter. So, understandably, much or most of Maggie's two weeks in California will be spent with her sister and daughter, not with me.

We might have two or three nights together, depending on how things go, and things certainly didn't go as well as I'd hoped tonight. Something was accomplished this evening, though: If I physically can't fuck a woman, I am now resolved to lose some weight.

See, I've been a big man and getting bigger since my mid-20s. Over the years my mother has nagged me, friends and co-workers have advised me, and doctors have harangued me — "You have a weight problem, Doug." From these well-meaning people I've heard of a dozen different schemes, exercise programs, support groups, and unappetizing diets, but my response has always been, "I don't have a weight problem. I'm fat, sure, but it's not a problem, so kindly shut up about it please."

As of this evening, guess what? I have a weight problem.

This is an entry retyped from an on-paper zine I wrote many years ago, called Pathetic Life. The opinions stated were my opinions then, but might not be my opinions now. Also, I said and did some disgusting things, so parental guidance is advised.

Pathetic Life
← PREVIOUS           NEXT →

itsdougholland.com

← PREVIOUS          NEXT →