Free Leith, William by The Hungry Years Page B

effect, and make the right connection. Rather, they like to keep 'em guessing.
    Yeah, right.
    But those clothes they've made me think. When you're fat, clothes lose their meaning. The messages they were designed to send become warped and twisted. Take jeans. When you wear jeans, you're saying something about being rugged and outdoorsy and fit. When you see a fat person in jeans, your eye computes that image as something different. It doesn't fit. It doesn't work. It looks a bit ridiculous. This is true of other items of clothing, too. I know, for instance, that, above a certain weight (200 lbs) I can't wear a leather jacket. It really does not work. Somebody recently asked me why I always dress so negatively, why always in black, why always so scruffy. And, in a moment of honesty, a brief meltdown, I said that, well, this was all I had left. Brightly coloured, I look like a fool. Smart, I look like a dweeb. I look like a nerd. A fat nerd. When you get fat, your fat drives you away from the image you'd like to have of yourself. Sartorially, it blots out large areas of possible self-expression, until you're left with virtually nothing, and then, eventually, nothing at all. These scruffy black clothes I'm wearing they're all I have. I am, just, clinging on to an outfit that is the real me. But it's not much. It feels like a life-raft. I am bobbing on the waves, clutching my raft, scanning the horizon for a possible means of rescue.
    But this woman she's drowning. Those grim tweeds wrapped around her, around the bulk that she has become, those granny shoes they're not her. She has lost the her she might have had, the her I imagine she must yearn for. She's lost it. It's gone.
    How long before I lose me?
    I'm wearing: a tight black stretch T-shirt by Paul Smith, a tight black short-sleeved sport shirt by Gap, a black corduroy jacket, almost a coat, by Emile Lafaurie, black jeans which say Tommy Hilfiger but I don't believe they really are Tommy Hilfiger, and black suede shoes by Journey. My hair is a tousled mess. I am, of course, still unshaven.
    Ten more pounds. Ten more pounds and I'm finished.
    What It Means to Be a Fat Guy
    Years ago, when I met my friend Michael VerMeulen, future editor of British GQ, we talked about men and weight. Michael was a magazine editor. I was 28 years old, living with Anna, getting fatter. Michael was slim. At 5 foot 8, he was 170 lbs. 'Yes, but I'm a former fatboy,' he said. He told me that he'd been a compulsive eater, and that, at his worst, he'd weighed over 200 lbs.
    `Wow,' I said, 'I can't imagine that.'
    We talked about the possibility of my writing something about what it means to be a fat guy. I wanted to write the article. But I didn't want to write the article. I didn't want to write it until I wasn't a fat guy any more. Fat guys terrified me. I began to think about them. Orson Weller had had a strange, difficult childhood, and later tried to blot out his self-doubt with alcohol and food and periods of promiscuity. Marlon Brando had had a strange, difficult childhood, and later ... exactly the same thing. Ditto Fatty Arbuckle, John Belushi, John Candy. Robbie Coltrane I wondered about. And the same thing seemed to be happening to Chris Farley, a
    promising young comedian from Chicago, who was filling out at an alarming rate, hitting the bottle, being spotted around town with escort girls and hookers, dabbling in cocaine. These guys had all fallen into the same hole, the fat guy's hell you lack some essential thing, some specific, elusive quality, and so you strive and strive, trying to replace the thing you lack with your achievements. You try to be funnier and smarter than the other guys. You succeed. But somehow, the very effort makes you unravel. And then: the food, the booze, the promiscuity, the drugs.
    And what about the fat guys who weren't famous? Did they suffer in the same way? Often, they did. They were the guys who laughed the most, sometimes with a kind of forced laughter.