Brian with an I

(Editor’s–err, Blogger’s–Note: This is part one in a series of interconnected stories about fatness, which will be posted over the next three days in three parts. Enjoy!)

I.

I will eat your face!

I don’t remember the first person that called me fat, but I do remember the first adult–it was Halloween, and I was almost 13 years-old, dressed as a devil, but a last minute one–maybe just recently fallen and didn’t quite have the look down yet–a red t-shirt and sweatpants, not even the same shade of red, the shirt of the firetruck variety and the pants more a maroon, with two horns traced on and cut from construction paper taped to my head and a tail, also construction paper, stapled to the ass of my pants.

The previous Halloween, I had sworn, would be my last as a trick-or-treater. I was a year from high school and should have graduated from part-time treater and part-time ghoulish hooligan to full-time egg bomber, toilet paper thrower and shaving cream shooter before my tour of duty in middle school had ended. But that morning when I woke up and saw the bowl of candy in the foyer set out by Norma, our landlord, who lived in the apartment below ours (By this point, we had fled the basement from my last post for higher ground, a turn-of-the-century Victorian converted into a split-level, only two blocks north, but practically a new continent without the growl of the J rattling our only window.), I knew I’d be back at it, the outlier of trick-or-treaters, parting the younger Ninja Turtles and princesses with my changing voice and odd facial hair.

Of course, I headed north, where the apartment buildings became split-levels which became actual houses, single-family homes, where the mailboxes bore last names in an elegant script, doorbells chimed instead of buzzing and the cars, not a crack in the windshield or a dent in the fender, came to rest in garages. Now I wouldn’t call these people rich, but then, compared to how my mother, whom whenever I asked for something would say, “Who do you think I am? Rockefeller?”, and I lived, they might as well have founded Standard Oil.

The first few houses were lucrative–Snickers, Crunch, Three Muskateers, one place even had full candy bars, not the snack-sized minis normally handed out on Halloween. Droves of kids, all younger and in far better costumes, trolled the sidewalks, moms and dads in tow calling after them by their real names, not the Michelangelos (the turtle, not the artist) and Princess Jasmines they were that night. Alone, I rung the doorbell of a house I’d passed before on my way to and from the park where I played basketball and three years later would smoke pot for the second time. I didn’t know who lived there, but figured, based on the size and location of the place, a big brick house off Park Lane South, that whomever answered would have good candy, none of the knock-off stuff my mother bought at one of the 99-cent stores on Jamaica Ave.

“Trick or treat?” I screamed at the woman who answered the door, laying it on thick since I believed I had reached the age cut-off for trick-or-treating already.

The woman, holding a plastic Jack-o-lantern of candy, looked startled. Maybe it was my costume, obviously a hastily thrown together get-up, one I had been using for a few years, ever since I lost whatever cuteness that caused mothers to make sure their child looked like the best Ninja Turtle or princess a costume shop and sewing machine could muster. For me that day, it was either a devil or Jason, from the “Friday the 13th” franchise, and I assumed my construction paper tail was more adorable than a blood-smeared hockey mask that probably still had yolk from last year crusted on it.

“Trick-or-treat,” I said again, almost an ask this time.

“Aren’t you a little too fat to be trick-or-treating?” the woman asked, refusing to give me any candy.

I was stunned and unsure of what to say. Did this woman, older than my mother, wearing what I would come to know as “mom jeans” and a Halloween sweater embroidered with pumpkins, witches or ghosts really just say I was fat? Too fat for candy? I had comebacks for when kids at the park or school called me names, but nothing for this woman, an adult. The silence only ended when a group of children came up behind me, trick-or-treaters she would not deny.

“Now move along,” she told me.

I didn’t keep trick-or-treating; instead, I went home, feasted on my small bounty of candy alone in my bedroom, feeling sad for myself, yet finding comfort in what caused my sadness, the cheap, sugary chocolate, a delicious, little shoulder to cry on. By nightfall, I’d eaten everything–my own candy, all the good stuff in the bowl downstairs and had started in on the knock-offs my mother bought–and was properly fueled with refined sugars to begin the second half of Halloween night, the hooliganism.

I wish I could say I bombed this woman’s house, eggs, fresh from my pants’ pockets, the shells warm to the touch by the residual heat of my doughy white thighs, cracking against her window panes and brick siding, my mother’s scented shaving cream spelling words she’d hate me for using on the woman’s garage, toilet paper dripping with yolk from the trees in her front yard. I thought about doing all of it, but didn’t because, even though I was angry, I knew the woman was right. I egged another home, someone’s car, and left hers untouched.

Look at that smile!

I was never much of a smiler after the summer I cracked my front teeth. I was nine or ten years-old, playing a rough game of tag outside the apartment building in the shadow of the el tracks where we lived in the basement when Julio, my nemesis, the other fat kid on my block who lived right upstairs from me and always seemed to have what the rest of us saw on TV but couldn’t afford, pushed me down the cement front steps where I landed mouth-first on the last one, revenge for beating his ass in our almost daily boxing matches, egged on by our friends.

My teeth, of course, were fucked. My front two cracked into jagged halves, blood trickling out where the broken pieces had punctured the skin of my gums. I blacked out, came to in a fit of tears, one of those deep, undulating child cries that seem to last eternally, with everyone on my block standing over me. Then my mother ushered my shaken body to a mirror to see the carnage, insisting it could be fixed in that anxious tone mothers have when trying to soothe even when they know otherwise.

But my teeth were never fixed. I refused, at first, because I was afraid of the dentist, having been in for two fillings a couple of summers before with a regular Dr. Giggles. My earliest memories of dental work were blacking out (again) and waking up with blood all over me in an empty room of some back alley dentistry, all my mother could afford without insurance. I wouldn’t go to the dentist next until my freshman year of college.

Once in my teen years, my teeth became a badge of honor, yet one I rarely showed off because, by then, I had stopped flashing my big cheesy smile altogether and practiced a more subtle one, standing in front of the bathroom mirror holding my upper lip down over my broken teeth. I wanted to smile without letting the world see my damaged pearly whites. I didn’t want everyone to think we were really poor. Eventually, I developed a half-smile where I barely opened my mouth at all, just a little crook of the lip, a flash of dimple. My teeth were a secret I wanted kept, something I hoped girls wouldn’t notice and boys wouldn’t tease me about, though, as fat as I was, there were other options.

There he goes again...

It had been years since I thought about my smile, no longer awash in that teenage self-consciousness overselling every imperfection on the psyche, until recently when I was shaking this dumbbell rattle over Sonny’s head, and his little lips perked into a huge smile that made me cheese out the way I did before my teeth were broken. Then, the funny faces began, opening my mouth real wide, wrinkling my nose, doing crazy shit with my eyebrows and tongue (See Exhibit A.; Exhibit B.; and Exhibit C.), hoping to earn the precious reward of another Sonny smile. The boy relented, cooing and giggling, swinging his sausage-like arms around in excitement.

That night, after Sonny was asleep, I was brushing my teeth and began making funny faces in the mirror, toothpaste foaming from my jowls. Quickly, I understood what made Sonny smile: my face did look kind of funny. Fifteen years ago, what would have embarrassed me so much is now a source of happiness for my son, something I’d do again and again just to see that little smile of his, toothless and perfect, his chubby cheeks like two mounds of rosy gold surrounding a treasure worth letting go of all that childhood shame.

I still won’t have my teeth fixed. They remind me of where I came from, that basement apartment in Queens where the roaches squatted in the cupboards and the roar of the J above made the ground quake beneath us, and where I am now in a house with a clean, well-lit living room where Sonny has space to stretch out on a shiny purple toy mat while his dad shakes a rattle and works on new funny faces for him, ones only Sonny sees because his smiles deserve the best.

This is not the kind of blowout I'm talking about.

1) I can’t believe someone used to wipe my ass. Each diaper I change–not so hard once you develop a technique that allows you to avoid getting pissed on–I think, “Someone once did this for me.” Someone once willingly whisked their hand over my baby butt folds with extra attention paid to the junk area because no one wants shitty balls (kind of like schweddy balls, only without Alec Baldwin’s wry peddling). At least, I hope they did.

Of all the elements of fatherhood, diaper changing is the most intimate (It would be different if I could breastfeed, but that’s not biologically possible and would be pretty weird (See #3).), though I prefer to think about wiping Sonny’s butt as paying it forward rather than some kind of father-son moment. Someday, when I’m grey, crotchety and senile, he may have to wipe mine, and I hope I have enough of my wits still to say, “Gotcha,” when he’s wrist deep in my wrinkly, old man nethers.

2) Not all diapers are made equally. I learned this when I felt something wet on my hands and realized Sonny not only pooped through his diaper (In the baby-raising biz, we call this “a blowout,” which has absolutely nothing to do with the guido hairstyle of the same name, other than the fact that both look like shit.), but through his onesie, too, the one with the football embroidered on the bottom, and onto my clothes and hands. We will buy different diapers next time.

3) Before the baby was born, the idea of breastfeeding irked me. My only encounter with it had been at Ikea, in one of the showrooms, a living room that had a couch I wanted to sit on, where I found a woman, boob completely out, feeding her baby on said couch. We made eye contact, not me and the woman, but me and the baby, and then I saw her nipple, felt my deeply engrained Catholicism bubble within me like acid reflux, and decided the couch wasn’t worth my modesty.

I wasn’t disgusted–just uncomfortable with the thought of breasts being used for something other than sex (Who knew?). Not being breastfed as a baby meant I only knew boobs as fun and not food, though now that I see the pure satisfaction on Sonny’s face when he pops off the nipple, full and happy, I get it. I still don’t think anyone should openly breastfeed in an Ikea showroom though. Save it for the food court.

Sorry, Sonny.

“I’m just trying to save you $18,000!” was what I first heard after gathering a package of ground coffee and heading back to base camp, our shopping cart, with the baby stuffed in the car seat and a moat of groceries piled around him, parked at the head of the aisle.

It came from an older woman, a mom, possibly a grandma, I could tell by the tone of her voice, pleasant enough but authoritative, and the twinkle in her eye looking at Sonny, one of a woman who knew what it really took to bring something this precious into the world. She was pointing at the pacifier in his mouth, the baby, quiet and content, who no one would notice if not for the Death Star-looking car seat rocking in the shopping cart. She went on about her son, or her grandson, someone’s son, snaggletoothed and lock-jawed, a bizillion surgeries, mouth gear that looked like torture devices, all of it caused by suckling on the plastic teat.

Then, she said it again, “I’m just trying to save you $18,000.”

Part of me wanted to give this woman the back story. We hadn’t originally planned to give Sonny a pacifier. My mother, probably from the same generation as this woman, swore I owed her thanks for the straightness of my teeth because she never shoved what she called a “noonie” (Maybe you call it a “binky” or a “ninny.”) in my mouth. Jaime had one, but didn’t remember it at all, so we were in agreement when we first had “the pacifier talk” (Parenthood is essentially one “talk” after the other, starting with the birth plan, circumcision (Well, hopefully, not if you’re having a girl!), breastfeeding and pacifiers and graduating up to whether or not Santa is real, cursing, and ultimately, sex.). We’d see if we could do without one. But being a good parent means you need to be flexible (Five weeks in, I can say that with confidence.), and after a visit with a lactation consultation, we learned that Sonny was nursing so much he’d be a shoo-in for the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest for newborns.

Joey Chestnut, my kid is coming for you.

“I don’t normally recommend pacifiers,” prefaced the consultant before suggesting we look into one. Apparently, the little man really likes the boob (And who could blame him?) and will work it until he pukes (Like father, like…), gets gassier than baked beans and beer night at the frat house and becomes extra fussy. When all you want is to put a baby down so you can eat your first meal before dinnertime, a pacifier is basically a napkin soaked in chloroform, minus a Casey Anthony-stye murder trial, for Sonny. He’s full, content, and, most importantly, quiet, except for the rhythmic sucking and adorable baby coos. Not even the chitter-chatter of shoppers, like our friend, the Pacifier Hater, and blinding fluorescent lights at the grocery store can harsh Sonny’s mellow.

Another part of me wanted to tell this woman the truth–shit changes. When she was a new mom, the pacifier propaganda would have you believe that your child would be some buck-toothed horse after one suckle on the fake nip, but in 2012, pacifiers are designed differently–and some are orthodontist-approved–and have been found to reduce the risk of SIDS, not to mention the sometimes unexplainable fussiness that can leave many parents nonplussed, or worse, up all night and exhausted all day. What our parents and our parents’ parents did, like only letting babies sleep on their stomachs or putting whiskey on teething gums, is sometimes inadvisable, or possibly deadly, today, which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take any advice (My mother-in-law wouldn’t have that!), just maybe not unwanted advice from random people at the grocery store.

Then, another part of me wanted to say, “Just because you raised a kid doesn’t mean you can tell me how to raise mine.” And, maybe also, “Mind your business, lady” but I’m trying not to be an asshole–at least, not around the baby!–so instead, I began pushing the grocery cart along, though I did offer my own back-handed “advice”–”Maybe you can save us $18,000, but you won’t save us a lecture from a nosy person at the grocery store.”

New Dad 1; Old Mom 0, although I think I should get bonus points for not cursing her out. Maybe you just had to be there…

Thanks, Al!

“Expect excellence; accept failure.”

This is written across the whiteboard on the door of my office at Hugo House, a quote attributed to Albert Einstein. It’s been on the whiteboard for two months now. Occasionally, someone will leave me a message, draw a picture or write something in a slanted mess of handwriting that I can’t decipher, but no one has yet to write “BULLSHIT,” which is what I had hoped.

Albert Einstein never said, “Expect excellence; accept failure.” I did, but I attributed the quote to him in an effort to fool myself into believing that this simple directive came from someone beyond me, someone with far more knowledge and understanding of how the world works, someone who experimented, who tried and failed and tried and failed until he became, well, Albert Fucking Einstein. (Maybe you’ve heard of him…?)

I first wrote the quote on my whiteboard in early November, the week I turned 30, almost exactly a month before Sonny’s due date and towards the end of a year I can only describe as a wind tunnel, me, the airplane, maintaining as the propulsion of change–a promotion, a pregnancy, buying a house, losing a severe amount of weight, re-building a self, myself–wound around me.

With a month to go, getting below 200 lbs. by Dec. 6 was my goal, but I knew then I wouldn’t reach it. The quote was my way of preparing myself for the inevitable. I’d have to see it everyday, live with it, breathe its clinical scent of marker on whiteboard, the same way I’d have to see my own failure every time I looked in the mirror,  stepped on the scale, every time I ate something, whether it was a protein bar or a bowl of Haagen Dazs. Putting Einstein’s name on the quote made accepting failure realer oddly, turning my words into someone else’s, into bulletin board material, motivation to strive without reaching one’s goals, to succeed in the face of failure, to accept defeat more like Ghandi than Iron Mike.

On the morning of December 6 when I weighed myself, I was 208 lbs., down more than 50 lbs. from where I was a year ago, giving me a total weight loss of 68 lbs., my second go-round at a “Biggest Loser”-level of extreme weight loss.

Eight years ago, I had the same exact goal, getting below 200 lbs., and I didn’t reach it either. I plateaued at 201 for a few months before my weight loss obsession reached bunny-boiling levels and I began doing crazy shit, like not eating anything that makes life worth living and smearing hemorrhoid cream somewhere other than a butthole. Then I hurt my back working-out, “taking it to the next level,” I told myself, and ballooned up 75 lbs, gaining back more than half of what I originally lost. The fear of failure didn’t motivate me; it destroyed me. Then, depression made me hate myself, looking in the mirror and knowing all my hard work had gone to waste. Just another fat fuck…again.

This is what failure looks like.

This time, accepting failure is different. I’m not angry at myself. I haven’t started doing crazy work-outs, shooting coconut water intravenously or sniffing chia seeds. Failure has become sort of like a frenemy, someone I know and don’t like–maybe he’s a douchbag, or a Red Sox fan or a Republican–but we’ve known each other for awhile so it seems like we should be friendly. I still won’t invite failure over for a barbecue and let him berate me with stories of my ineptitude. I’ll say hello before moving on to something better, a welcoming pat on the back, maybe a firm grasp of the shoulder, the way men do, but a hard one, so failure knows I’m stronger than before, that I won’t put up with his bullshit. Not today. Not anymore.

When I saw 208, I didn’t see the 9 pounds I should have lost. I saw the 54 I did lose. I also saw the life ahead of me, Jaime, Sonny, the little world I’ve carved out for myself in Seattle, everything I’m thankful for–success, health and the two fireplaces in the new house. (That’s my “Juicy” moment. Biggie had Moet and Alize; I have two fireplaces.) I’m… happy, content with the man I am, one at peace with his imperfections, which makes failure easier to cope with and finding the motivation to continue on towards excellence easier, too.

Something Albert Einstein did say, “There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.” Sometimes it’s hard to have that kind of faith, especially if, like me, you don’t believe in a higher power (I suppose football doesn’t count.), but now even on my worst days, each morning feels like a small miracle and each night a victory, no matter what the scales reads.

Pizza might be the one thing that smells better than baby

Today, Sonny is officially a month old, and while I wouldn’t say I’m an expert on fatherhood, although I am quickly becoming an Iron Chef of getting peed on, I have made several key observations from baby daddy land:

1. Fatherhood has always seemed to be very much a position of pride. Your child says or does something amazing, and dad sits back, arms crossed, beaming, as if to say, “Yeah, that one’s mine. What once started as a twinkle in my vas deferens is now graduating college.” (Or your child does something shitty, and you point at your spouse and say, “He gets that from your side of the family.”) Only one month in, Sonny hasn’t quite discovered the cure for cancer or recorded a hit record, yet I’ve had little trouble finding moments of pride: his first tummy time; the way he wakes up, balls his fists and stretches his neck and arms like he’s warming up for a cage match; and, perhaps best of all, hearing him rip rush-week-worthy farts that cause Jaime and me to say to each other, “That was you, right?”
2. I wish I had as much glee for nipples as babies do. Also, whenever I cried, I wish someone would stick a nipple in my face.
3. Newborns are basically puppies with thumbs.
4. You can not crate a newborn.
5. Whenever Sonny does anything, it immediately becomes the cutest thing in the world. (See 1.) His latest trick is slapboxing, which is how he woke me up this morning, repeatedly tapping my face with his soft, pudgy hand. Yesterday, it was sitting up on the couch and watching the season premiere of “Jersey Shore” while Jaime and I told him, “This is where STDs come from….” In these days of Mary Kay Letourneau, HPV vaccines and pregnancy pacts, it’s never too early for a little sex-ed.
6. Baby should be a kind of incense. When clean, there’s no better smell in the entire world. (Well, maybe pizza?)
7. Can someone please remix “Wheels on the Bus” with a little bit more bass? Maybe get Lil’ Wayne to drop a few, kid-friendly rhymes? That song is wearing on me.

To kick the coke all Paris needs is some nipple

Seeing the sunrise was one of my goals during my seven-week leave from work, though when I originally made that pledge I expected to be holding a Pacifico and a remote–not a pacifier over a crying baby while rocking him to sleep.

Three weeks into fatherhood I can officially confirm the cliche: my life has forever changed, and I notice it most in my perception of time. Morning, which used to begin with a shower, stretching and a cup of coffee around 6 a.m., now starts around 11, only instead of a warm stream of bath water slapping me awake, it’s a body temp blast of baby piss and the ear-stabbing cries of a boy who definitely does not want his junk exposed, or cleaned with a wipe–even if that wipe has been sitting in a warmer. (Yes, we own a baby wipe warmer purchased after I said to Jaime, “If someone held a cold cloth on my dick, I might cry like I was dying, too.”)

The baby-time conundrum was discovered within our first few days of parenthood when we were waiting on line at Starbucks for Jaime’s first and my second cup of the day at 4:30 p.m., just showered and ready to start our afternoon–errr… evening–of running errands and hoping to stop somewhere for lunch, if the baby cooperated.

R. Kelly: Not My Baby Daddy

Unfortunately, babies cooperate like celebutantes–only when there’s something in it for them. In Paris Hilton’s case, it’s expensive purses and cocaine. In my son’s, it’s something just as powerful, at least in his eyes: the nipple. Keep him fed, and he’s happy, yet feeding him is just a part of the guesswork that goes into interpreting what a baby wants, so he’ll stop crying and go the fuck to sleep (Now I understand why that book is so popular!), permitting Jaime and me to do adult things, like showering and eating lunch closer to noon than midnight. Is his diaper dirty? Does he need a burping? What about the pacifier? Maybe he’s cold–where’s his hat? The answers aren’t hard to find–it’s just figuring out which one without upsetting the baby further in the process.

And we still haven’t even strapped him into the car seat! Or changed into clothing not accessorized with spit-up!

After three weeks of infrequent showering, irregular meals and getting pissed on so often I’ve thought this isn’t my son it’s R. Kelly’s, the hardest part about parenthood is adjusting to a new schedule–usually one that begins and ends with a pile of poop–and shifting expectations of myself. Each day bleeds into the next, and priorities are tethered to whether or not a 10 lb. blob of cuteness is relaxed or irritated by sitting in a vibrating seat playing “Wheels on the Bus” for the billionth time. What took five minutes can now take five hours, or five days, (I knew there was a reason why my new bathroom mirror has been leaning against the bathroom wall–instead of  hanging from it–for almost a week now.) and for someone like myself who thrives on structure and results (Or “getting shit done,” as I like to call it), having a baby means I’m no longer in control, a feeling I’ve spent the last ten years of my life trying to shoo. Bloody nipples and Haagen Dazs can’t stop me, but a little baby runs my fucking life right now.

At the very least, I can rely on the sun to rise each day, although I hesitate to call it morning since it might actually be my lunchtime.