The divine liberation of calling myself fat.
Years ago, a dear friend made a fat joke about me.
We were incredibly close then, as we are now, and had found ways to joke about our identities that brought us closer together. At that point, I had never described myself as fat: not to friends, family, myself. If the topic came up, my face would flush, I’d stammer out something about being “overweight” or “big” while a hot wave of blood rushed through my full cheeks, coloring my whole face. I would feel searing embarrassment for hours, sometimes days afterward. I’d come out as queer at fifteen — a surprise to friends & family — but still couldn’t muster the language to describe the body that everyone could see.
We were at work on the day my friend made the joke. At the end of a long day, he and I lugged dozens of heavy boxes up and down the stairs. On our last trip, I got impatient and tired, and opted instead for the elevator. “Elevator, huh?” He looked at me, his eyes lit up in the way they do when he’s ready to make a joke. “Is that why you’re… you know.…” He grinned, then stage whispered, “…large?”
There was a moment of silence, his face frozen in a grin, before I broke into a huge, cathartic laugh. It was such an absurd, stupid joke — that taking the elevator once was the difference between being fat and being thin — and it was exactly the kind of joke we’d…
