Taking a shower sucks when you’re fat. I mean, a good hot shower—especially after weeks on the road and that four car pile-up of a shit I just took—still does a body good, but there’s something humbling about getting to the point where you can’t see your own flaccid cock for all the lard in the way and it’s a chore to reach your own asshole, which is in dire need of a scrubbing at present.

Doing anything and everything sucks when you’re fat. Anything but eating, that is—and even that comes with a near instant tsunami of self-loathing. And lemme tell you, out of all the drugs I done and done time on—which is damn near all of ‘em—not one can hold the jock of the curse that is fuckin’ food addiction. Cigs, booze, H, coke, caffeine, quaaludes, ketamine, acid, shrooms, MDMA, 2CB, salvia, mescaline, benzos... all the shit I either dabbled in or hit hardcore, none of that shit can fuck with food. Nada. I mean, think about it: everyone’s gotta eat. It’s like if you could abuse fucking air, or water. There’s goddamn plastered billboards and endless commercials of torpedo-titted supermodels chowin’ down on greasy double chili cheeseburgers out there, everywhere. All-day all-night, twenty-four seven, haunting and taunting the fat and the food-obsessed. Look at it this way... dopers and cokeheads don’t gotta contend with seeing billboards of Kate Upton tyin’ one off and launchin’ a needle fulla black tar into her vein or cutting up lines with her Black Card while they’re trying to exercise a little discipline and go clean, am I right? But those of us with the food thing, man… we’re fucking hexed. Doomed. Every step out the door, every time you turn on the TV it’s a walk to the goddamn gallows. It’s like the world is your dealer, and you never even have to track him down. He’s ever-present. The food court’s a public shooting gallery, and the eating our secret shame. We start to do it in hiding, like junkies, alone in our rooms late at night after clandestine midnight runs to the drive-thru… but there’s no hiding it. Just like you can tell a doper junkie by the dead eyes and standing nod-off and unwashed hair and skin you can tell a secret shame-eater by his massive fucking gut and ass and chins and heavy breathing over the phone when he rushes to answer your call, no matter how many salads he orders and picks at when you meet him for lunch. Newsflash, Stay-Pufts: Just go ahead and order the cheesesteak that’s got your mouth all Pavlovian and shit, we ain’t foolin’ anyone with the salads and the low-carb menu picks. Unless you’re sick enough to put your finger down your throat and purge, but even I ain’t that fucked in the head. Who wants to go around fucking puking all the time. Jesus. Talk about “issues. I got issues, but man—if I got “issues” them fuckin’ throat-ticklers got goddamn subscriptions.

Another nightmare when you’re fat is clothes shopping. Talk about a self-imposed siege on your self-esteem. Christ almighty. Back when I was doing Carson and Letterman and headlining shows and gaining enough fame and notoriety on the yuck-yuck circuit to get my cock suckled by some butterfly-brained bimbo in my car outside a club once in awhile I kept it together a bit, bought new Filas and the random mall kiosk herringbone or authentic Yankees knit or pair of Guess jeans or whatever the fuck else the stupid mid-90’s comedy sluts took the bait on at the time. I used to actually enjoy that shit, shopping. Can you believe it? Now? Christ. Now I’d rather fluff a fucking horse before some fag dies by making it fuck him in the ass—And before you start in with that shit: “no,” dipshit, I ain’t a homophobe and I got nothin’ against fags. Same goes for blacks or Asians or anyone else I make a jab at the expense of moving forward. It’s called jokes, assholes. Some land, some don’t, and while you might get your panties in a wad over a word choice here or there, remember: you ain’t living in a free society if no one’s free to offend you. So lighten the fuck up and take the sticks out of your collective asses. How else are you gonna accommodate Seabiscuit’s massive, throbbing cock over here?

Anyway, while this shower comes with a heavy sheen of shame on account of my ever-increasing obesity, it’s still nice to wash the nasty film and grime and desperation of the road off of me. I steam the shit out of the bathroom, let my cigarette and weed-scorched lungs take in heavy loads of the dense, humid air and for a second I actually get light-headed and think I’m gonna pass the fuck out and fall and crack my stupid head open on the porcelain ledge of the tub and bleed out and die. Who am I kidding? I should be so lucky to get off the hook like that—instead of facing down the prospect of having to talk to Ma about her only son being sick and dying I just up and do it. Escape the whole dramatic scene. Sorry DeMille, but I still ain’t quite ready for my close up. That’s one thing I’ll say about being a lard ass, one positive: despite my galactically multitudinous shame at how disgusting I let myself become—remember, I was a jock. All-city, motherfuckers, and I played Legion ball too—I still try to be naked as much as possible these days. Not with broads, fuck no… I haven’t fucked with my shirt off and the lights on since 9/11—but as soon as I hit the hotel room and hear the click of the door behind me it’s clothes on the floor in a heap until I gotta go out again. I even tell room service to just leave it by the door, or slide money under it for the pizza delivery boy, then I peek out and snatch the grub when they’re gone. Why all the antics, you ask? Because I cannot for the life of me think of anything better than croaking fat and buck-fucking-naked. A fat, dead naked guy all splayed out on the floor is bar-none the greatest joke of all time. Seriously, the man upstairs really outdid hisself with the fat dead naked guy. Comedy gold, and you don’t even gotta utter a goddamned word. It’s fucking pure. Just imagine you’re some poor Mexican broad in housekeeping, feet and back aching as you slave away for your seven bucks an hour to feed your brood and you walk into room 237 and there’s my fat, dead, bloated naked ass there on the bathroom floor. Buckets of chicken bones and grease-stained pizza boxes and empty two liters surrounding my body like evidence at a fucking crime scene—just the thought of my gargantuan deadweight corpse ruining some poor maid or schmuck cop’s day is enough to brighten mine.

So I’m an asshole, fuckin’ sue me. Wouldn’t be the first time.

I climb out of the shower and dry my fat fucking disgusting body, careful to get the damp little hideaways between my belly folds and the space between my dimpled cottage cheese thunder thighs and loose dangling skin-tagged ball bag and between my toes—had a sonofabitch case of athlete’s foot I just can’t fucking shake the last few weeks living in the Camry, since we’re here takin’ stock and inventory of all of the putridity that is my “earthly vessel.” They say “treat your body like a temple,” and I agree… so now you know what I think of fuckin’ religion. In those three or so weeks of being officially homeless on the road I probably done laundry twice. Jesus, I must look like hammered shit. Lord knows I smelled like the goddamn end of the world when I peeled off my clothes and made my way into the shower on my grindin’ snap-crackle-pop knees. Christ’s cunt, I let myself go worse than Stallone let Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer’s girl go in the cold open to Cliffhanger. I can’t even bring myself to look in the goddamn mirror. I’m afraid that the slob morosely eyeing me back will be in even sadder shape than I see myself in my own head—and that’s no flattering fucking imagine, believe you me. My self-loathing “mind’s eye” makes Simon Cowell look like Mother Teresa. Then again, I heard she was a shriveled little old glory-grabbing cunt behind it all, jetsetting all over the globe in fucking private planes to pick at gourmet meals and accept awards while condemning the miserable, sick poor folks back in Calcutta to fuckin[ “pray away the pain” and die in fucking agony and destitution—let alone her idiotic shortsighted Catholic party-line bullshit when it comes to rubbers or a broad scrambling her own eggs. Do nothing to help the poor, to alleviate their fucking pain, to let their last few moments be ones of merciful opiated bliss before they leave this stinking, disgusting shitstream of reality for good—no, you’d rather they die suffering because to you suffering is divine. Well, the suffering of others that is. What a fucking cunt. Fuck Mother Teresa.

Fuck.

I look up, and there it is: the steam covered mirror, mocking me. Daring me to wipe away the condensation and gaze upon that which I am, and you know what? I say fuck the world and wipe it away and take in everything wrong with this shithole of existence encapsulated in my fat, sickly, sickeningly unhealthy ten-gallons-of-beef-stroganoff-crammed-into-a-five-gallon-bag of a body. All of man’s weakness and self-hatred embroiled in five feet-ten inches of half-Italian, half-who-give-a-shit scumbag burger slaying, muff-eating, thick-wristed, yellow-livered asshole washed-up has-been homeless shithead fuckface loser.

Me.

But not for long, at least. Not at this rate. Like the Lizard King said: Death makes angels of us all, gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as raven’s claws.

I try to wrap the towel around my waist and tuck it in but I’m too fucking rotund. There’s not enough slack, so I just have to hold the ends of it together in my balled fist as I leave the dissipating steam of the bathroom and waddle down the hall to my old room, careful to put on blinders to the awkward, gap-toothed shame train of Olan Mills stills wood-framed on the walls. Both me and my sister Rebecca. Full of at least the promise of mediocrity if not greatness. But I couldn’t even achieve lasting mediocrity. Becca did, to her “credit”… she’s spent the last twenty years wasting away in a loveless, lifeless molted husk of a marriage and a dead end job in one of those roach motel mazes of cubicles, or as I like to call ‘em, human stables. She’s told me what exactly it is she does a hundred times, and I tuned her out just as many.

Who. Fucking. Cares. About any of it, really.

Soon I’m in my old room, and I gotta say to her credit as well: Ma might be a fuckin’ sixth-degree black belt hoarder, but at least she didn’t keep my room preserved the way it was when I first moved out like so many weirdo aging empty nesters do. No Yanks pennants on the wall, no faded Cindy Crawford in cut-offs to cover the holes I punched when I was furious at my old man for leaving us unannounced, forever, with no goodbye or even the decency of a parting “fuck you” and a flip of the bird to Ma, whose nagging surely drove him fuckin’ bananas at times. At least he left behind a Hall of Fame Penthouse and Hustler collection hidden under the steps of the basement, I’ll give him that. Eternally grateful on that end, Pop. I mean, I coulda been stuck with some pansy ass Playboy subscriber of a dad, but you were the real deal. Spread eagle beaver and bush, as it should be. God damn you. You were great, man. Coulda been an all-timer, one of Vonnegut’s “holy clowns,” right up there with Abbie Hoffman and Kevorkian—if you didn’t blow your goddamn brains out in that very same basement, that is. Oh well. Win some, lose some I guess.

My mind goes back to the call I made from the gas station, the one that brought me here. How am I gonna say these words to her again, to her face? I mean, I’m already here. Can I just not say ‘em? She gave me a pass at the door. Didn’t she? “You don’t have to say anything, son. It’s okay.” Maybe she won’t even wanna talk about it. Maybe she’ll just let me stay, and it’ll be what it’ll be and I’ll either leave here on my own two feet to forge ahead upstream when I’m good and ready, towards whatever’s in store... or I’ll go out in a body bag like Pop did. Fuck it. Six a’one, half-dozen of the other am I right? I wonder how big they come, body bags. I’m over three bills, and wide as a fuckin’ VW Bus. I mean, what do they do when they show up and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or the fuckin’ Undertaker or that big mongoloid Mexican motherfucker from Sandler’s version of The Longest Yard kicks the fuckin’ bucket? Is there some seven-and-a-half foot long, twenty cubic-foot body bag they bust out? Do they just slide one over each end of him like goddamn Chinese finger cuffs and call it a day?

Fuck. I get dressed in some old mothballed Giants-blue sweatsuit that’s been hanging in my closet for the better part of a decade and I can barely sardine my way into the fucking thing and I find I’m out of breath from the simple act of  getting dressed. Comes with the territory, I guess. Man, this is gonna be a long haul to the end.

Sorry. I guess there ain’t much in the way of plot here so far, huh? I tend to ramble, but that’s what you signed up for whether you knew it or not. This is a door into my head, a window into my “soul”—if you don’t like it, go read Game of Boners with its fuckin’ queer dragons and swords and incest midgets or whatever the fuck—or maybe a little Dickens or Robert Louis Stevenson or David Faggot Wallace or whatever literary horseshit snoozefest you pretentious Oprah’s Book Club fucks read. Or mayhaps a good Harlequin Romance curls your toes, some two-bit twat-rubber called ‘The Tender Barbarian’ or some shit, fuckin’ Fabio’s rippling greased man-tits and big stupid goose destroying grin plastered all over the cover. Bon Voyage, assholes.

I could care less. Why the fuck am I even apologizing to you?

Fuck you. Go away.

                                                                     * * *

She’s a pain in the fuckin’ ass but Ma can sling some goddamn hash, I’ll give ‘er that. Earned her home cooking merit badge ten times over, for sure. I’m balls deep in a Colosseum-sized bowl of reheated mostaccioli and she’s sitting across the table from me with interlaced fingers and a sad, drawn mouth and even though I can tell she wants to talk about it and she’s upset and on the verge of tears, there’s a twinge of contentment there as well. She made me my favorite: baked mostaccioli with roasted reds and portabellas and spicy Italian sausage medallions with melted provolone and parmesan all over her special secret sauce. Seriously, nobody can make a fuckin’ sauce like my Ma. I know, I know—everybody says that, but I been the world over and scarfed probably a couple thousand down, and not a one can hold a candle to my Ma’s. And I’m not just sayin’ that ‘cause she’s the woman who birthed me. Shit, I don’t even like her, really. But this shit is the jam, for real. I tried to get her to give up her secret recipe years back so I could get Rocky cookin’ it for me, and Angela before her, but Ma wouldn’t budge. Not an inch. She guards that recipe like the goddamn Hope Diamond. Shit, the old bag even kicks everyone out of the kitchen when she’s in the process, for the duration (and takes out the garbage right after so no one can know what’s in there short of dumpster diving) and won’t let a soul so much as pop in and out for a glass of water from the tap for fear they’ll lift her mojo.

But that was earlier today she made the fresh batch of marinara, before I rolled into the driveway and sloshed my way to the front door and brought in the storm clouds that are still hovering over us now, here at the old stalwart yellow linoleum kitchen table. Soon as she got off the horn with me when I first broke it to her, she dashed off to the grocer all full of bad news, her heart probably breaking in two for the tragedy that is life on Earth. Probably had trouble seein’ the road for the tears in her eyes. It’s one thing to lose a husband, but who wants to outlive a kid—even a shithead loudmouth no-show deadbeat like me? Said she wanted to have my favorite dish waitin’ on me when I got back home, bless her heart. She deserves better, she really does. Seven, eight long years without seein’ your only son is a goddamn haul for a woman. Six without so much as a fuckin’ peep, and not even a falling out to kick it off. Just a kid who goes ghost on you. Hey—I’m a fuckin’ scumbag. What do you want from me? Cut a fella a little slack, wouldja? I make mistakes, I admit it. Fuck, you could say my entire life since I was twelve years old was an endless series of ‘em, and I own every one. So back the fuck off. Maybe that’s why I’m back here, in the end: not just to ride it out but to make up for lost time and injuries inflicted. Gotta admit, reparations is where I always crapped out in the twelve steps. I don’t even like to look at people when I talk to ‘em, let alone have the kinda conversation that demands legit sincere, submissive and honest eye contact. PASS.

“Mmm. Ma, I gotta say: you ain’t missed a beat with the marinara. God damn divine.”

“Nhn,” she replies (if that’s how you’d spell it). I was never good with the onomatopoeia (if that’s how you spell it). We sit for a few minutes, only the sound of me chewing like a cow at the goddamn cud until she finally takes a sip of her gone-cold coffee and then a deep breath and says:

“Son, you know I love you and I would never turn one of my children away, especially in the case of, you know, your… your current—circumstances. But if you’re gonna come back here we need to lay down some ground rules. No more taking the Lord’s name in vain, for starters.”

I fight like hell to not roll my eyes. “Sure Ma. Least I could do, been meaning to do better about that anyway. You know,” I look up. “Just in case.”

I shovel another load of mostaccioli into my mawing trap and she smiles, spoons another heaping mound of the pasta onto my plate. The lady loves to watch me eat. And lemme tell you, watching me eat could be a fuckin’ spectator sport. I should call up my old agent (if he’d even take my call at this point) and pitch him a new reality show: It’s just me, fucking eating. That’s it. Alone. One camera, low budget, achievable production value. Sponsored by fuckin’ Oscar Meyer and the Lapband Surgical Associates of Hoboken or some shit. Sounds dynamite, huh? It could be almost as disgusting as Orange Housewives of the Kardashians or whatever the fuck it is you mouthbreathers are wasting your time on these days. But anyway, yeah... it’s probably Ma’s fault I became such a fat fucking slob of a junk food junkie in the first place. Lord knows she placated me with enough ice cream and milkshakes and burgers and Cokes and Now and Laters and fuckin’ untold other indulgences and confectionaries to try to cheer me up after Pop died. And who can blame her? Food brings pleasure, it’s fuckin’ fundamental to our well being and any mother who isn’t a complete cunt knuckle wants to see her kids happy and content—and like the Babe with his called shot up into the left-center bleachers, food always hit my sweet spot, even before Pop was gone. She was trying to assuage the grief of her one and only son, a sad little boy who lost his old man, his best friend, forever; never again would the two enjoy the simple pleasures of a game of catch out in the yard, or watchin’ the Yanks beat on the Sox from the cheap seats, or going fishin’ off the pier or camping out in the backyard or rebuilding the transmission of the crummy old family Buick or any of it. Pop was dead and gone, and no amount of comfort grub was gonna bring him back, no matter how delicious the sauce.

Don’t get me wrong: it ain’t all her fault I’m this dumpy, frumpy lard ass. I bear some responsibility of course, but a lot of it is a straight up fuckin’ curse from birth. I was never satiated, no matter how much food my folks put on the plate. I remember once, even before Pop died, I can remember polishin’ off an entire man-sized ribeye, marbled fat and all, and bellyaching ‘cause I couldn’t have another one till he whacked me on the knuckles with the handle of the flathead screwdriver he carried everywhere in his pocket and warned me that I was gonna grow up to be a “fat fuck slob like your Uncle Joey.” Lo and behold, Pop was on the fuckin’ money with that one. I passed Joey a good forty pounds ago, but that was the early eighties and obese was a different kinda fat then. I always had a voracious appetite though, whattaya gonna do? Appetites, I should say. Food, drugs, booze, cooze—you name it, I’ve taken that shit to the hilt. If he could see me nowadays though, shit… Pop would probably excommunicate my fat ass from the family. He was always a man’s man, with knotted shoulders and pronounced veins down his forearms and on the backs of his hands and a strong jaw that could laugh off a fuckin’ haymaker from anyone but the heaviest of heavyweights.. Probably where I got my natural athleticism from, even if I squander it on endless cheesesteaks and slices down at Mateo’s, the local mom’n’pop pizzeria on the corner.

“Hey, Ma. Mateo’s still around? They gotta be, right? That place is a godda—” I stop short on “Vaining” the Lord’s name on account of Ma’s evil eye “—place is an institution.”

“Gone. Everything’s gone. Everything that was named after somebody, anyhow. Now it’s all these chains. Dollar stores and Cash’n’Gos. No respect for their product, no customer service. It’s a shame what this neighborhood’s become. Your father, he’d roll over if he knew. It used to be so nice. ”

“Well, yeah… ain’t that the way.”

“What do you mean?” she says.

“I dunno. I just mean everything always gets worse I guess, don’t it?”

“I don’t know. I suppose. A lot of things, maybe. But not everything, I don’t think.”

“Like what? What’s gotten better as years go by? Name me one thing that’s better now. We lose our looks, our memories. Loved ones. Inflation, taxes. Fuckin’ mainstream media. Our bodies break down. We fuckin’ die.”

She goes quiet off that one. I try to move along:

“Seriously though, fuckin’ Mateo’s is gone? Man, that’s a bummer. I was really lookin’ forward to that slice of home too,” I say as I shovel more of mom’s homecookin’ into my shit-talker. Fantasizing about food as I eat other food. Yeah, like I told you: I got problems.

“I don’t know. My knitting is better than ever. Some of the programs on TV are really good nowadays. Don’t be so negative, Art. Especially now, we need to be looking at the bright side. Did you see Breaking Bad?”

“Some, I guess. Here and there, in hotels on the road. Yeah, it’s pretty good I guess. Can’t believe that’s the fuckin’ guy from Malcom in the Middle. Guess you never know what someone’s capable of,” I say, the irony not lost on me. If only she knew the extent of the depravity her own son is capable of.

I clean my plate but when she reaches for the spoon again I wave her off. Gotta save some for a midnight snack. That’s the fuckin’ zone right there, you ask me. Some Gremlins shit, food after midnight. For my money nothing beats eating alone, middle of the night when everyone else is down for the count and all is still and silent and you tiptoe into the kitchen and hook up a plate, careful to stop the microwave with a couple seconds to spare before it starts blaring fucking Reveille and wakes the whole neighborhood, then eating in shameful solitude before passing the fuck out like it’s goddamn Thanksgiving and the Lions game is on but you forgot to place a bet. Yeah, I know the “studies” say it’s like the worst thing for you, eating right before you go to bed, but fuck it—I live for that shit, even if it means I’m gonna be chowin’ down a handful of Tums for breakfast.

I feel the gnaw of a nicotine craving and shake the last pack of smokes out of my pocket.

“You mind?”

She shakes her head, pushes over a glass of water to use as an ashtray but says “Go ahead, have one now. But that’s it. Rule number two, if you’re gonna be staying here: you are going to fight—” her voice cracks, eyes instantly brimming “— this thing tooth and nail. I’m not letting you come home to bury you. You’re coming back to get better, you hear me?”

My eyes well up with saltwater too. She’s an angel, my Ma. Fuckin’ nag and a headcase, and a fullblown fuckin’ hoarder by the looks of the place these days—but a real angel, this woman. Heaven sent. I wonder how I stayed away and never so much as made a call on her birthday or Mother’s Day all those years as I light the smoke and savor it, way a fella might if he’s facing the firing squad.

“So, are you gonna tell me what’s happening?” she asks. “How bad is it? How did you find out?”

“I dunno, really. I just… I’d been feelin’ run down for a few years now, to be honest. Tired, weak, just like always outta steam ya know… falling asleep like, almost like a narcolep or something. Figured it was just my dogshit lifestyle, maybe some unresolved guilt and grief, some depression, you know, over Rocky and how all that went down. And, you know, maybe unresolved shit with dad. The road, the booze. All that shit takes its toll. But then I got this sharp pain in my side. This was late last year. I put it off for a couple weeks, but it wasn’t goin’ away so I bit the bullet and finally went into an ER in Kansas City. They sent me for an abdominal scan and that’s when they saw it.”

“A tumor.”

I nod. "Carpet tumor, they called it."

“My God. Where is it? Your stomach?”

“Poop chute. Large colon.”

“How bad?” Her heart is crumbling. I can feel it, like Indiana Jones just stepped on the mossy tile. I can hear it in her voice.

“Bad. They cut out over a foot of it my poop-tube along with it.” I pull up my shirt and show her my massive stretchmarked belly, to include a couple healed-over scars “But then they did the biopsy, and out of twenty-seven lymph nodes they took it was in seven of ‘em.”

She starts to cry, and I feel like the biggest piece of shit and filth to have ever walked the face of the planet for puttin’ her through this, I mean, especially considering it’s—

“Is it—did it spread anywhere yet? Is it anywhere else?

“They don’t know. I mean, seven lymph nodes, you figure it mighta got somewhere. Doc said it would go to my liver first, probably. Mine’s fatty as fuck, a little damaged from the drinking and everything else—but no ‘demonstrable metastasis’ so far as they can tell. But I gotta do chemo. That’s why I came back, figured I could do it here. Around family. I got the name of a guy on referral, got an appointment on Monday.”

“I’m going with you.”

“Ma. No. You wanna talk ground rules? That’s my one and only. I don’t want an audience for this shit. I’m sick of audiences. I hope I never see another so long as I live. I’m sick of the eyes on me, and I don’t want pity and as much as you know I love you, Ma, you can be a bit over-fuckin-bearing with the bedside manner. I just wanna suffer alone, tough it out, and put it behind me.”

She’s hurt by it, but that’s my rule. My one rule to pull this off. I tap the cherry of my cigarette and hear the smoldering extinguished in the water as I watch her shift uncomfortably in her seat. She’s slighted, hurt—but I stand my ground and finally she says:

“Okay, we’re still talking ground rules—rule number three: no more cursing, period. Not just the Lord’s name. I mean all of it. I can’t handle this vulgarity, you know I never liked a potty mouth. You’d think you were raised in some seaside brothel, the way you carry on with it... I raised a good boy, an altar boy. Not some longshoreman.”

“Fair enough.” Fuck. This is gonna be tough.

I put the hissing cigarette out in the glass of water and already I want another, and another, and another. I reach for the pack but she gets there first, snatches it up and crumples it in her liver spotted fist. God damn it, she means business.

“You had your one. Now come over here... give your mother a hug.”