Call of the Wild

In the beginning, there were no dates. In my teens, I was a hungry, hungry hippo and it showed. Every day in school involved some fat reference from various films. However, I wasn’t one of those morose fatties, cowering from torment. I tended to outwardly embrace the humiliation and make a joke out of it. I was an Orca amongst whales. Sure, I was part of the largest mammals category, but I had killer style—a Ferrari amongst fatties, so I never gave up on my potential. Regardless of my inflated—yep, it’s a fat joke—sense of self, it’s probably not hard to guess that my dating life was an absolute nightmare.

Then came the long string of horror dates. That string continued until I finally gave up on the process and succumbed to marriage. It is my firm belief that women don’t actually long deep in their hearts for marriage—they simply give up the good fight. For me personally, I had an image of myself as a wildebeest, (yes, there’s a fat joke there as well), fighting through packs of predators. Eventually, the trauma of a hundred hungry lions biting at my throat, a.k.a “the bad date,” forced me to lay down and die, a.k.a “get married.” All joking aside, after about five years of truly horrific experiences, I began to marvel at the quality of lunatics I seemed to attract.

First, there was “Vlad.” In less polite company I like to add the tag “the impaler” after his name—and we’re talking swords of a different kind. He was my first date. I was a junior, seventeen years old, and about 230 pounds. He was a college baseball player and simply divine, or at least divine compared to never having a date … ever. Things didn’t go as planned. I thought we were heading to a movie. Vlad thought otherwise. Five beers and six inches of his tongue later, I thought maybe it was time to call it a night. So, I left … or I tried. He wouldn’t let me. It literally became a physical struggle. At one point, he threw me over his shoulder—truly magnificent strength for a baseball player I might add—and pulled me into his dorm. I clutched at the doorframe and didn’t let go. The bugger actually pulled my shoulder out of whack, but eventually—probably due to his sheer exhaustion at trying to heft my enormous bulk—I won the tug of war. That was one day that I truly felt glad for being fat.

Then there was Drake Skye, male model. He actually asked me out by handing me a card with his picture that stated just that: “Drake Skye-male model.” You may wonder why a nice girl like me would say yes to some putz with that card.