Fat Sex in the City

chapter 1 a romantic city

It was Lit Crawl and the city had called me. If you refer to ‘the city’ in the Bay Area, people know you’re talking about San Francisco. If you’ve never been, San Francisco is a steep place — if you walk from one part of town to another, you’re going to climb hills. This is why the women who live there tend to have good legs. And that’s another big part of San Francisco. It is a beautiful city filled with women whose beauty has been a matter of historical and international comment. This is one of the reasons San Francisco is a romantic city, it really is. And romance is based on illusions and wishful thinking. But that romance comes at a cost — there is no place where the difference between rich and poor can be seen more clearly. This is not hyperbole. My iconic image of San Francisco is of an exquisite woman dressed revealingly, picking her way on high heels through an alley strewn with discarded hypodermic needles and human excrement while a filthy ragged man crouching in a cardboard box cries out, “Hey, don’t look at me! I’m pointing over here!” It is an excellent city in which to get your heart broken.

Lit Crawl is a perfectly San Franciscan event. It’s a series of literary readings held over a weekend at a series of bars and other small venues. People get a chance to feel intellectual while they drink and hit on each other so it’s regarded as a good time. I usually got asked to read so that wasn’t a surprise. What was different was that for the first time in more than thirty years, I was going to be in the city and off the leash at the same time.

My partner and I hadn’t had sex in more than ten years, mostly due to health issues on her part, and one night a little while back, we had a long, serious talk and officially retired our sex life. Her position was that she was relieved not to be responsible for the situation but I shouldn’t expect her to be thrilled if I had sex with someone else; my position was that the idea of having sex with someone else made me feel as if I was being forced to kill a baby chick with my hands but the idea that I’d never have sex again made me want to lay in the yard until weeds grew through me. We both agreed that it was ridiculous for me to go out into the world as a Serious Talent with a Growing Reputation (TM) with the assumption that I was going to be celibate.

And now here I was, heading into the city with a folded manuscript tucked into the inner pocket of my coat. I’d dressed like a grownup for the event, dark pleated pants, a button-down shirt, and a decent sports coat. I was at the MacArthur BART station in Oakland and when I went to the end of the platform to go over my story again, it started. Here’s what I mean by ‘it.’ During Lit Crawl, someone holding a manuscript gets treated like a blond with cleavage or a guy with tattoos and an instrument case. And I’d sworn I wasn’t going to flee the reading like it was a crime scene. I was going to socialize. I was even going to go to the goddamned afterparty even if I only stayed ten minutes and left with an anxiety attack. This was the real challenge of the evening.

When I opened the manuscript and started to read, I started to pace without thinking and before I knew it, I almost walked into an adorable chubby Latina whose shirt was riding up just a little and that band of warm brown flesh squeezing out of her pants caught my eye. (You know why they’re called muffin tops? Because they’re good to nibble.) When I looked down and smiled apologetically, she looked up and beamed as if she was glad to see me. I started reading and pacing again and it happened all over in a different spot.

Then it happened a third time and I realized that she was doing it deliberately, cutting me as a cowboy would cut a calf. I was still baffled — she seemed much too young for me and didn’t look specifically like a literary type, maybe she liked the big bad wolf type — when the train pulled up. I was able to find a seat and kept reading when a slender blonde dressed for a night out passed me with a sway of her hips and took the seat in front of me, holding a copy of the Lit Crawl schedule up too high, as if she was trying to make it clear to me what she was planning to do that night. For someone who’s felt invisible to women most of his life, this kind of thing is intoxicating. If the blonde had been my type, I might have been drunk enough on ego to have asked her if she was going to Lit Crawl and then say, why yes, I AM going to read.

Pretty as she was, she was too slim to goad me into revealing my slavering, bestial nature. And I find the San Francisco look a little intimidating. The women in that city are not so much clothed as packaged — they know what they look like and they know how to show it off. And anyone capable of walking on those hills in those heels is capable of anything. So I just took it as a good omen and went over my piece another half dozen times. It was a reading so I was going to have to hold a manuscript in front of my face but I’ll tell you a dirty little secret — I’m not a writer, I’m a performer who writes and that is why I’m regarded as kind of a powerhouse in certain circles. Hey, if I have to be honest about being lame, I’m allowed to be honest about being cool. Fair is fair.

I was going to read a nature-influenced piece from the point of view of a scorpion being preyed on by a grasshopper mouse. (Yes, there are mice that hunt. And grasshopper mice are ambush hunters, just like cats.) I like to reach out and grab an audience, really get their attention, and I’ve found the best way to do that is to scare the crap out of them and the act of predation is terrific for that. My relationship with an audience is essentially antagonistic. Actually, sadistic might be a better word — I think of it as a fight but it’s really me just beating on them while they say, “Harder! More!” If I was going to be reading at a crowded, noisy bar, I may as well bring material that responds well to an enthusiastic delivery.

It turned out the venue wasn’t too noisy after all; we were reading upstairs from the bar and there was a decent PA system for a change. The guy who’d invited me to read had gotten my name from a mutual friend. He was small and dark and his awkwardness seemed likely based in some kind of neuroatypicality which is a nice way of saying he seemed a little nuts so I was going to fit right in. He had me read second. That always makes people mad but if you make me go last I seem like the star and my material’s too weird for that.

There’s something I do instinctively when I read and I bet it’s taught somewhere. I locate two types of people in the audience and then play to those specific people, actively try to get their attention and approval. Those two types of people are those who look as if they don’t like me and those I find attractive. And as I started my piece, there was someone dead center in the front row who was in both categories. I was immediately attracted to her. And as I read, she got angrier and angrier no matter how much I wanted her to look at me and think, “Gosh, he’s neat. What poise and grooming!” (Or whatever, I’m better off not knowing.)

She had wavy red-brown hair and a generous décolletage I was positioned to see with uncomfortable clarity and her attitude was cold enough to frost her glittering spectacles. She was dressed in that San Fransisco style I mentioned earlier. It’s unusual to see a fat woman dressed so elaborately — she must have had her clothes cut to fit. Behind the lenses, her eyes were big and green and her lips were glossy but uncolored and the prettiness of their natural pale pink hit me, as did the way her belly sat in her lap and her breasts sat on top of her belly and the thick, soft whiteness of her calves showed between the top of her boots and the hem of her skirt and well shit. She didn’t throw my game off but it was close and it hurt my feelings to see her getting angrier and angrier as I was working harder and harder. Maybe she didn’t appreciate the male gaze; not everyone does. But I couldn’t help looking. She was right there.