Chapter 3 - ch3 finding a new path

I'd missed Gord yet again--U of M took a longer Christmas break than did Dalhousie. But it was still good to see Mrs. Bunton. She welcomed me back with beef stroganoff on egg noodles, a perfect comfort food. I served myself a huge plate, but as I sat down I felt how tight my jeans were, even just held together with an elastic. Mrs. Bunton picked up that something was wrong, and asked me about it. I admitted that my jeans had gotten a 'little' too tight. She looked at my plate, filled with rich food, and hesitantly offered to cook lighter.

I smiled and said I'd just been thinking that I really needed to go clothes shopping. Her smile in return could have lit up a large room, and she immediately offered to drive me Polo Park mall the next day. I countered that really, I'd not be shopping at any of the fancier stores there, that I should be able to get something in my size at Mark's Work Wearhouse, and if anything she looked even happier, then she suggested that if I'd be more comfortable I could change into pajamas and my house coat.

I took her up on her suggestion, and then really did justice to her cooking, polishing off my plate and going back for seconds. While I ate she caught me up on Gord's news and what the two of them had done over the holidays. Eventually she asked how my holidays had gone. In her warm, inviting, kitchen, filled with her good cooking and comforting chatter, I wasn't able to hold back the brutal truth. I felt a bit ashamed that I just couldn't man up and keep my feelings about it to myself, but it felt so good to let it out.

When I was finished, I surprised myself by adding "But the good thing is that I know I don't really care what they think anymore." I hadn't put it into words before, but I realized it was true. It was what I'd been saying with the hidden cookie binges, with the visit to the buffet restaurant, with not even trying to button my jeans by the end. I just wasn't interested in trying to please them anymore. Both my parents had lost the right to set moral tone for me, between their words and their actions. It wasn't that I didn't have feelings about it anymore--I most certainly did--but that I knew I was going to worry about pleasing myself, not them.

The next day I replaced my size 38 jeans with size 42s. I wasn't really surprised that I'd jumped over 40 altogether, with how tight everything had gotten. I bought a larger size in most everything else too. I left the store in new jeans, t-shirt, and sweatshirt, feeling comfortable for the first time in months. Mrs. Bunton had driven me there, and asked if I minded if we also stopped by a store where she needed to pick some things up. Of course I said that would be fine, after all, she'd driven me where I needed to go.

To my surprise, we didn't go to a mall or a department store, but to a strip mall where there was a store called Pennington's, that I'd never heard of before. Looking at the sign as we went in, I realized that it sold larger sized of women's clothes. The staff were all fat women, as were the customers. Some were smaller than Mrs. Bunton, some larger, and one of the staff members was quite a bit larger--although not nearly as large as Mrs. Bunton had once been. Overall, Mrs. Bunton seemed to be sort of in the middle for that store. I looked at the racks while she was doing her shopping; pants seemed to go from size 14 to 28, whatever those numbers meant. I knew I'd heard talk of skinny women being like a size two, but a size fourteen was obviously not seven times bigger! Still, it did seem something like 'normal' went up to 14, then 'fat' went from 14 to 28. When Mrs. Bunton was paying for her purchases, I saw that the size tag on one pair of pants said size 22. When I thought back to how much fatter she had used to be, I had to think that she must have been bigger than a size 28.

In the car afterwards I gave into my curiosity, and asked if there were stores for bigger sizes of men's clothes too? She explained that a number of stores carried pretty big sizes in men's clothes, but that yes, she had mostly bought Mr. Bunton's clothes from specialty stores that carried bigger than normal sizes.

I knew it was rude, but I couldn't help asking her if, back when Gord and I had been kids, she'd shopped at Pennington's too. She laughed and admitted that no, she'd been too big even for them. I asked if there were stores that went to even larger sizes, and she said no, that she'd shopped through catalogues or sewn her own clothes. I commented that sounded inconvenient, but she replied that she really hadn't minded. After she said that, there was a sort of smug smile on her face.

I barely managed to not blurt anything out, as things suddenly connected for me. I found myself sure that she hadn't just 'not minded,' but that she'd been entirely willing to go through that inconvenience! After Mr. Bunton had died, she'd lost weight so she could better do household chores, she'd said, never mentioning any other reason. She'd never seemed shy or embarrassed about her weight, and neither had her husband. I was willing to bet that she'd liked being fat, and he'd liked it too! I was so excited that I was sure it was written on my face, so I was glad she was busy driving, and I could look out my side window, safe from her gaze.

It was all I could think about that evening. She liked being fat. She'd been married to someone who liked being fat. I wasn't alone, I wasn't some total freak--someone else liked being fat. And if I did, and she did, out of the small circle of people I knew, then surely there were lots of other people who did too? In that fat women's store, how many of them might have liked being fat? That really large sales clerk, did any of the thinner shoppers look at her and wish they were as fat as her?

I kept chasing these thoughts as I headed back to classes the next day, and all that week. Looking around campus, were any of the other chubbier students happy with their size? Did anyone want to be fat who wasn't? Did some of them like fat people? Aside from keeping my thoughts busy, it made me feel more connected with the campus, being sure that somewhere there were others who shared these feelings. And I guess I had my head up more, and was looking at people more, perhaps with a more curious look on my face, because I had more people say hello to me, some people I'd had classes with in the fall welcome me back, and generally interact with me more.

By the end of the week I just felt like I was going to boil over from all these thoughts and feelings. I really wanted to talk to Mrs. Bunton about them, but I couldn't quite make myself just bluntly say "You like being fat, don't you?" Somewhere during the course of the week I'd accepted that I was going to keep getting fatter for a good long time still, and that I needed to start planning for that.

* * * * * * * *

Friday night I didn't give Mrs. Bunton or the meal she'd prepared the attention they deserved; my thoughts were full and I was afraid that if I got talking much all my thoughts would start gushing off my tongue. Instead I hurried through the meal, then took the bus down town. I bought myself a bathing suit that fit--at least for now--then ended up in a donut shop, doing my best to ensure that it would not fit for long.

Saturday I headed out pretty early to the Pan-Am pool, and wallowed around in the water for a long time. I'd loved swimming as a kid, but in Edmonton I'd avoided it. It wasn't exactly that I'd been embarrassed by being chubby, more like I'd not been ready to deal with the conflicting feelings that being that exposing my chub would bring. Now the conflict was almost gone, I knew I wanted to be fat, and I barely cared what others thought, other than hoping that someone would secretly like what they saw.

If anyone did like what they saw, they did indeed do it secretly. Between lack of practice and quite a bit more fat on me, I felt really awkward in the water at first, but gradually it came back to me. I realized how out of shape I'd gotten, as I could barely do two lengths of crawl at a time before I needed to take a break to catch my breath, but that seemed all the more reason to keep at it. I knew I was going to get fatter, but I wanted to still be able to get out and do things, so that meant getting back into some sort of shape.

After swimming for quite a while I soaked in the hot tub, then swam some more. By the time I'd showered off and bundled up to deal with the winter weather it was almost lunch time, and I was ravenous. Naturally I'd just missed the bus and had to wait twenty minutes, so that by the time I got back to the Bunton's I felt almost shaky from hunger.

I guess my body was a lot more used to heavy consumption of calories than heavy expenditure of them, and it was a bit shocked by the surprise switch. It kind of drove home how far I'd drifted from Dad's macho, muscular, ideals of manliness. But as I walked from the bus stop to the door, I felt good. I looked forward to a solid lunch, I kind of liked that my body needed a lot of fuel and that relatively ordinary activity took a lot of energy. It didn't make me feel like a child or a woman, so by default I was a man, even if I wasn't my Dad's sort of man.