Free The Fugitive by Massimo Carlotto, Anthony Shugaar

jail already.
    I had been born into a culture of fine wine, so it wasn’t much of a leap for me to begin exploring the magical enological realm of France. Every meal was unfailingly irrigated with excellent wines; I never drank to excess, always limiting myself to a reasonable proportion with the quantity of food. Sufficient wine for six guests, never more. And to top it off, I never denied myself a good cognac or a calvados.
    My digestion was a thorny problem at first. The tension of living in hiding was constantly giving me heartburn and bloating. But I soon figured out a remedy. The ideal way to ensure a healthy digestion is to go to the movies. The movie house is a place of truce, a non-combat area where, once the lights are dimmed and the film is running, the only reality is the movie itself. All the little realities of the individuals in the audience are canceled.
    Choosing what movie to see wasn’t much of an issue; I would just go to the nearest theater. I watched a freakish number of unbelievably bad movies; some of the really bad ones I would sit through more than once. I watched a Norwegian horror-crime flick three times. (The
elevator
did it.)
    When I stayed home, I would make myself comfortable in front of the television set, a bottle of hard liquor and a pack of cigarettes within easy reach. And to top things off, in the complicated equilibrium of my bulimia, smoking soon took on a crucial role: it filled in the intervals between one feeding and the next.
    A fugitive, a bulimic, and a nicotine addict.
    The most painful period in terms of the quality of the cuisine was certainly the time I spent as José. Confined to that horrible neighborhood by security concerns, my bulimia was obliged to settle for a sharp step down from the customary refined flavors and ingredients. It had to make do with couscous, merguez, and cheap Algerian wine.
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    Nowadays bulimia is fashionable. The mass media feature it frequently, and theories swarm like flies. I’m not trying to boast, here, but ten years ago I had already reached the conclusion that the overweight sector of the population is oppressed and under attack. The skinnier segment of the population cannot tolerate the diversity of their heftier fellow-humans, and live for nothing so much as to force the chunky among us to slim down.
    Thin people are crafty and relentless. First of all, not only do thin people have all the diets known to man at their fingertips, but they have always developed a diet of their own, which they try to foist off on every fatty they meet. And if a thin person encounters an unreceptive fat person, he is capable of anything. The thin know how to shift at lightning speed from the soft-sell to outright threats.
    In desperate cases, thin-man dietologists turn into shrinks. With the same professional tone they use to recommend breakfasts of coffee with Nutrasweet, Bulgarian yogurt, and whole-wheat zwieback toast (never more than two pieces), they start accusing the unfortunate fatty of having “problems.” Unresolved relationships with his elementary school teacher or with the milkman, anxieties, insecurities, complexes—anything can be used as a weapon, a tool in the campaign to demonize the extra layer of adipose tissue of the unfortunate target of their diatribe. (All this in the distant hope that the fatty will remember their words just as he’s biting into a fragrant cream-filled puff pastry, and that he’ll choke on it as he is furrowing his brow in the effort to unearth, once and for all, every last issue left unresolved in connection with the milkman).
    Now, if even this last-ditch effort fails, matters become still more dire. It will be necessary to dig deeper, until we identify the roots of that unholy appetite. Inevitably, the skinny guy will manage to discover, buried deep in all the fat, a death wish. This marks the beginning of the “you’re trying to hurt yourself” and “this is