The notion that she was "hiding behind her fat" was simply ludicrous. It
implied that she could hide. Hiding, she knew from hard experience on a
daily basis, was never an option. The opposite of hiding was being on
display. Not being seen, that's something categorically different, but
being watched, measured, compared to, "thank god I don't look like
that"ed.
She got used to it at an early age. The three bean diet salad that
stunk of warm and pungent vinegar which caused the other little girls to
scream and laugh as they scurried to another table and left her alone
without anything decent to eat. The kids and their parents and teens in
the mall who all turned around, as if on cue, to stare at her and her
friends as they came from the scorching dry heat into the cold stares of
the indoor shopping entertainment complex.
When she walked by groups of guys in school her butt seemed to move
too much. She tried her hardest to keep it still, but nothing could stop
them from guffawing and saying in too loud voices, "Shake it, don't
break it, Strauss!"
As a young woman recently out, she went to a dyke bar with her mom.
Naturally she was approached by a handsome woman who wanted to get "her
sister's" phone number. And then there was Lisa with the big bleached
hair, fuck me pink pumps and tight jeans that looked like they'd been
poured on. As soon as she left to freshen up, the men swarmed her. "Can I
have your friend's number?" "What does she like?" "Is she single?"
In that sense, she supposed she was invisible, a foil, a friend, an offset to the extreme beauty of her thin family and friends.
The
truth was, she had always wondered what it would be like to be fucked
hard by a man, but this simply wasn't an option. When she was younger
she was too scared. The men that found her were skanky, crumbling,
rugged and rotten. The guy in his 30s with shrapnel sticking out of his
skin, metal shavings barely held in by the top epidural layer. The man
who had already been convicted of rape, inviting her in to stay the
night and hide from her mother. The twerp who taunted her by pulling her
hair and ripping her shirt, only to kick her by the tree and run away
screaming with laughter about how ugly she was.
No, she recollected, she wasn't invisible. She was a target. And,
like the best of her species, she learned to adapt to the reality. If
she was going to be noticed for how little she fit into the mold,
objectified really, in a reverse of the overtly sexualized response to
attractive women, then she would learn to love the outrageous in
herself. She would punish the viewers with their petty responses and
guttural excuses for instinct. She would be the biggest goddamned woman
they ever encountered, in every way. She would make them suffer for
wanting her, hiding inside themselves for fear of their lust being
discovered. She would turn into a lesbian and make all the men dream of
her all the time. She would be in their faces and on their minds.
She was not about to hide. Not that it was a choice.
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