Weight

(over the years I've amassed all sorts of odds and ends of text that I don't really have the faintest ideas what to do with, so they might as well go here: this is one of them)


It was the sunny, cold morning of his forty-third birthday when Vincent Kepple’s self-loathing finally overcame his greed, and he decided he was going to lose weight.

“I’ve decided to lose weight” he called back through the open bathroom door.

“Fine” replied Talullah. “You do that.”

The sun was intensely bright, and as Vincent stepped off the scales and surveyed himself in the mirror the strength of its rays served only to highlight the state he’d let himself get into. His rolls of fat simply had no place in a world where the sun was so strong. The disappearance of his penis, long since accepted, suddenly struck him with a sharp pang of loss, like finding an old love letter. He lifted his, there was no other word for it, breasts and examined them, one at a time.

“I’m obese” he called “it’s bad for your health.” He attempted to touch his toes, and pain spread through his lower back, he straightened, gasping.

“I can’t touch my toes.”

“You can’t see your toes.”

He stared at his face, the features that up until a few moments ago he'd managed to kid himself were strong and masculine were clearly adrift in a sea of jowls.

“I look porcine.”

“What?”

“I look porcine. Like a pig”

“A wild boar, maybe” Tallulah padded gently through from the bedroom. “I like your body, it's comfy, and it's yours.” Next to his naked bulk she looked more fragile than ever. Small boned, poised. She stroked the lower foothills of his stomach. “It’s your birthday, Vincent, come back to bed.”

It was, after all, his birthday. He went back to bed. Tallulah did what Tallulah did. Vincent tried his best to do what he did. It ended indeterminately.

“I’m sorry” he said “I feel concerned. I can't quite get into it.”

“You should be concerned” said Tallulah. “I did what I do, yet the outcome was indeterminate. I’m not an indeterminate kind of girl.” He checked, she didn’t look it, the set of her jaw was far from indeterminate. It was the other thing, determinate. He got up, a manoeuvre which now seemed incredibly complex, and looked out of the window, its deep blonde wood sill was full of clutter. A small enamel plate detailing the health benefits of Guinness, a tooled wooden box full of keys, some shells, a steel plate with their house number on it that Vincent hadn’t quite gotten around to putting up. A drift of items, light stumbling over them on its way in from the garden.

“I’m not myself.”

“Of course you’re yourself. There’s no-one else for you to be.”

“There could be.”

“I’d rather there wasn’t,” Tallulah eased herself from the depths of the bed and moved noiselessly over to Vincent, sliding an arm part-way around his waist “possibly you’ve not noticed, but I’m rather a fan of you”. Vincent stared out of the window, his gaze clipped the rhubarb patch, skimmed the gooseberry bush and came to rest on the peeling felt of the shed roof.

“I’m sorry.” He flipped the little enamel advert for Guinness over in his fingers a couple of times “I don’t feel right”, he stroked the right side of his body, grabbed a handful of fat “This doesn’t feel like me, to me. I mean it is me, clearly it’s me, all me, a lot of me. But I don’t feel like me’s me, you see.”

“I don’t, but that’s possibly more my problem than yours” she was grinning, shouldering the burden clearly wasn’t proving a burden. She turned abruptly, on one round, smooth heel and strolled back into the bedroom. Vincent stared at the mirror some more, he liked it less and less.

“I’m going to lose weight” he called “I’ve decided.”

“I gathered” her voice was indistinct.

“No really, I mean it, can we go for a walk?”

ii

“Fine” said Tallulah, peering carefully in each direction down the road “we’ll walk, though I have absolutely no idea where to”.

“Well, we have a choice of two directions, pick one.”

Tallulah looked left, to a,looming gasometer, and then right to a flat and joyless park, “Neither appeals”.

“Toss a coin”

“I don’t have a coin.”

“You don’t have a coin? Who doesn’t have coins?”

“Currently? Me.”

Vincent peered in each direction carefully, before opting for “the park, such as it is”.

“Fine” said Tallulah “the park it is, we can walk to the park, and then we’ll see some swings, and a few empty beer cans, maybe a cider bottle or two. Possibly the children will have vandalised the swings, what a lovely talking point that would be Then we’ll come back. And then maybe we can start to enjoy your birthday".

“You sound unconvinced”.

“I am unconvinced, I have several plans for today, and not one of them involves going to the park. I haven’t been to a park for fifteen years. And for not one moment of those fifteen years have I missed the park”.

“The gasometer it is then”.

“Fuck you”.

And so the went to the park, and with each step there Vincent felt slightly better. Each stride told him he was doing something, he was taking control, of his life, with each, steady swing of the leg he became a beter person. He saw I a pgeon. “Look” he said “a pigeon”.

“I” said Talllulah, who was using that pronoun far more than she usually did “fucking hate pigeons”. Vincent regarded the pigeon with a kindly and benign eye.


"She doesn't mean it" he said, "it's me she's annoyed with, not you". The pigeon eyed them briefly before flying off.

Despite this he still felt the walk doing him good, he looked fondly upon the well-ordered municipal planting, inhaled deeply of the fresh-ish air. Observing a well-built husbandly sort larking in a carefree manner with his child on the roundabout he felt nothing but love for his fellow man, despite the horrendous creaking noise it made. “I feel love for my fellow man” he said
.
“Your fellow man is a twat. And I’m cold”.

"I can feel this walk doing me good".

"I'm very, very happy for you. I also have lunch booked at Bistrot Jean-Jacques at twelve, happy birthday". Vincent stopped, mid stride, Tallulah was three paces beyond him before she realised. Bistrot Jean-Jacques, where the chipped pots of rillettes practically fell onto the toast to be sprinkled with gros sel, where the confit de canard, crisp in its skin, stood against a rusting pile of endive and pommes lyonnaise, where the choucroute garnie seemed to fill the heart as effectively as it did the stomach. Bistrot Jean-Jacques, where each dish sang with the soul of centuries of cooking tradition. She'd booked it for lunch, for him, for his birthday. he was moved to tears.

"You are an astonishing woman".

"And you are an overweight man who I love very much. Now lets go, those crème caramels aren't going to eat themselves".

It was, Vincent reflected, an excellent point. The park would still be there tomorrow, and at least they could walk to the restaurant, all in all, it was an excellent first step.