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I check my packing again and eat breakfast; hot sweet tea with oat milk and four sugars and six rounds of toast, margarine and jam. After breakfast, I reflexively open my last pack of bourbons and slowly feed them into my mouth until they are all gone. I assure myself that this isn’t compulsive eating, the deadline of when I have to stop eating and drinking before the surgery is looming and I want to make sure I’m not going to go hungry. Plus, I’ve done well on my diet recently, so I’ve earned a bit of a treat to calm my nerves.
In this part of North Manchester, a crowd would gather just to marvel at a crane, so the idea of seeing some fat, shut-in weirdo suspended from a crane will probably close schools and factories for miles around. I’m bracing for a commemorative issue of the local paper.
“So who’s coming back to unwrap the diabetic fajita then? There’s no way we can do it on our own. None of this is in the movement plan, so we need to know what you want us to do.”
“Can you believe this? Central say we’ve got to stay here with this turd.”
“You should know. Not only should you know, if it was up to me you’d have to fucking pay for it, you heffalump.
As the hours pass and the sun warms the South-facing room, it has slowly baked me. Karl said I was a fajita, in my delirium I shout that he is wrong, I am a quesadilla! Or maybe a chimichanga! “You don’t bake a fajita Karl!” I cry. There are long periods of odd and convincing waking dreams, sudden bursts of happiness and hours of frustration. Through it all there is a constant, boring pain.
Then I can see the redness of her eyes, which makes it look as though she’s been crying for days. I notice that across the black apron is the drying crust of a yellow stain. She looks deranged. I’ve never seen someone so disconnected from her humanity.
Ok so this is "the sadness" in book form
It’s one thing to fake a smile for Brown, but she’s a dog and it’s pretty apparent that everything is not OK. It’s really very evident that everything is fucked. I’ve been processing what’s happened and discounted an array of theories that runs roughly from zombies to Godzilla. My working theory is that there is some sort of illness or virus at large. The evidence for this is that Mr Ethiss, the lady from the lift and Karl all appear to have been ill – their skin has a grey tint - and they have those red, strained eyes that look as if they’ve been swimming in a heavily chlorinated pool, or
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I can see at least twenty who also have vomit stains similar to Karl’s.
Exactly like the sadness
Someone screams something improbable about Greta Thunberg.
“But I left school because everyone hated me.” “Listen, we’ve had enough of this downer talk. Remember what we said: “Life isn’t about waiting for a sunny day, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.”” “Dance…in…the…rain, got it,” said Ben pretending to take a note in his booklet.
I hate that bitch
He would skip the cooking demonstration. He wasn’t sure he could stomach the idea of enduring another 45 minutes of Karen demonstrating how to make a baked potato – after all, the name of the dish also contained the recipe.
Often all that’s produced is a thumb-sized stool, which has a slightly greener shade than normal. There’s no real smell to them but maybe they’re just too small. I push myself to stand and fling the turdlets into the air outside the flat. No one has complained yet. The loo roll is long gone, and so I use an old sock which I rinse and leave to hang on the balcony.
Oh god...
God, me and Ben have a difference of opinion. I believe you created all living things and that you walk with us on this earth whether we accept that or not. Ben believes in biscuits and fear. Please Lord, can you show us which one is right, because if it’s the biscuits then I need to get some in. Bless this dog, Lord. Make her a mighty dog. Make her a powerful dog. Make her a dog that when Ben looks at her, he sees your face and your love. We thank you for the woman who brought Brown into Ben’s life and we ask that you make her plan come to fruition with your wonderful blessing Lord. Amen.”
Moaning to myself I let the knife guide my hand towards the softer tissues – a light yellow substance spills out and I have a sense of recognition that this is my fat, agent of so many of my problems. The knife snags on the white stringy elastic tendons and I resist the urge to cry out as I snip through them with the tip of the shears. I continue to cut away at the back of my leg and more tissue and gore piles up. This
She only went out to get a Lemsip. She was fine, just a bit of a cold. The second round of radiotherapy was done and it had been a success. She was nipping to the chemist before it shut, did I want anything? She had some Lemsip blackcurrant in, but she preferred the lemon flavour. She tripped on the step outside the shop and skinned her knee. She went back in and asked for a plaster from the pharmacist, who maybe sensed a claim on the horizon, so he insisted on getting an ambulance to check her over. Ludicrous. She had a graze!
What the fuck is this british bufoonary
“You probably don’t recognise me because I’ve been working out, thanks for noticing.” By way of reply, she farts quietly, and the scent of digesting rat fills the flat and makes my eyes water.
Lol
Let’s address the elephant in the room: me. A BMI shouldn’t be three digits. But there are positives about dating a fat guy: there’s always leftover takeaway. I will *never* suggest we go jogging. Anything I sit on is instantly ironed. Even linens. HMU and let’s talk Pringles. I have a really cute dog. I realise that this last USP sounds like I’m trying to entice you into a van. I’m not, it just happens to be true, I have a cute dog. You’re free to leave at any time.
Actually a really good dating profile
Wraths uncoil from their dormant positions across the estate and I hear Karl shout that he is going to kick my fat arsehole inside out. I tell him to shut up, or I’ll cut him down and see how big and hard he is when his legs are poking through his shoulders. I start to throw the biscuits out of the flat. Fuck that slug! Fuck Karl! Fuck this fucked up world! Fuck biscuits!
Tragically, I suppose it is also because I want some form of human contact. Even if that human contact is spewing murderous rage at me, would it really be massively different from when my dad’s cousin Arthur turned up one New Year’s Eve with a gift of three McEwans Lagers and proceeded to bray about how he felt immigrants were ruining the country.
The “hipster shite” thing is fair comment. To dress up for the occasion, I’ve parted my long hair and looped it into two pigtails that are then looped into my parted beard. With my face in the middle it makes a nice pattern of ‘O’ shapes. Karl is right, it is pure hipster shite, but in my defence, experimental grooming passes the time.
“Hi again, Karl.” “You sweaty fat fuck, kill yourself. Do everyone a favour and stick your head in a noose. Or just take a few steps and give the pavement a big fat kiss.” “Thanks for the suggestion Karl, but I’m exercising. I’ll leave the curtains open and let’s see if there’s a limit to how long you can bang on for.” There isn’t.
As the sun goes down, I wash in the bathroom, lifting the various flaps of my loose skin to carefully wipe around with a wet cloth. I still haven't got over the novelty that I can now hold the skin of my stomach back and wash my penis. Truly, this is a day of celebration.
my back and look semi-normal – even healthy from the front. Alternatively, I can use one of her scrunchies to bunch up enough of the skin in the centre of my chest, so that it looks like a really fucked-up ponytail.
So, I’d massed bunches of hair into two rough ponytails and then scrolled them round and tucked them in a sort of thick knot that sat on either side of my head. I’m not saying it is a good look, but as far as shock absorbers go, it is the best hairstyle you could hope for. When Karl smacked me in the head, the hair had soaked up enough of the blow to simply render me momentarily senseless rather than knock me out cold.
