Saturday's Storyteller: "Honestly, I liked him better before the surgery."

by Belinda Roddie

Honestly, I liked him better before the surgery. He was softer before the surgery - cuddlier, more human. I liked his folds and rolls and lumps, the way his belly sagged over the denim lip of his jeans. I liked his double chin beneath that magnificent red beard. I liked his arms, his legs, his backside. He had been my giant teddy bear. My adorable lumberjack.

He said he had gotten the operation for health reasons, and I figured that was fair. His weight was definitely an issue, and he wanted to be able to walk at least one block without getting winded. Now, however, he looked almost emaciated. Sure, he still had the impressive facial hair and the mischievous glint in his brown eyes that was always familiar to me. Every time he came home after work, however, I wanted to have two steaks prepared for him and him alone, so he could feast after a long year in the wild. Because that's what it seemed like - Vincent was so thin that he looked like a gaunt survivor. I half-expected him to start telling stories about how he lived off creek water and dead birds in the mountains after he had shot them with his handcrafted bow and arrows.

I knew that Vincent had not been happy with his weight. He had grown tired of a lot of things regarding it, besides the physical exhaustion - again, a reasonable excuse to shed pounds. He didn't like having to have pants altered for him when he went to the store. He didn't like the fact that he couldn't look down and see his feet when he was taking a shower. He especially didn't like being asked, every year, if he could be Santa Claus in the local Christmas parade. If getting the extra fat off him meant being healthier and getting a confidence boost, then I couldn't argue with that.

But it was more than that. Besides looking like he had shaken off his mortal coil, Vincent had become extremely cocky and arrogant. He thought he looked fantastic. He went off to buy expensive designer clothes, hang out in bars and drink gluten-free beer, and tone himself up at the gym twice a day - not once a day, twice. He began to replace all the food in the house with bags of leafy greens, boxes of quinoa, and hemp sack after hemp sack of kale chips, which I tried to enjoy but grew to despise. He even started applying for modeling gigs, actually snagging one at a mountaineering retail store that I decided never to go back to for fear of being assaulted by the image of his overly scrawny figure in flannel and khaki pants, posed on the edge of a fake cliff.

Worst of all, he was dragging me into his new lifestyle. It would have been okay if he had changed his habits but let me keep mine - after all, if he didn't want what I cooked, he could easily prepare his own meals and leave me and my macaroni and cheese in peace. Three months after the surgery, however, he began what I decided to call, "the daily pep talk." When he went out for his morning jog, and I refused to accompany him, he'd pout a bit before launching into his awkward spiel.

"You know, hon," he'd say, "you can do it. I know you can. You've got the energy. You've got the power. Run with me, and we can conquer the world."

Yes - it was that awkward. And he only got more aggressive from there. Soon, whenever Vincent caught me eating something he didn't approve of - a fried chicken sandwich, a deviled egg, a bowl of baked potato soup - he'd roll his eyes and click his tongue. That was bad enough, but then he started requesting that I not eat that kind of stuff while he was around. He claimed that not only was it bad for me, but it also tempted him, and he was trying very hard to keep on the steady diet as encouraged by his doctor. I was not amused.

"What do you want me to do?" I demanded. "Build a fort in the middle of the room and eat my dinners there?"

"I'd still smell it."

"Then I'll coat the goddamn fort with Axe Body spray. Would that make you feel better?"

He didn't speak to me after that, deciding to go back to the gym for the third time that evening, while I happily munched on my chips and zesty salsa.

It wasn't like I needed an operation like he had. I was curvy, sure, but not anywhere near the weight Vincent had once been at. I wore a size 14 for most of my clothes, got on the treadmill every afternoon, and lifted weights every other night. I had good upper body strength, a kickass pair of legs, and yes, quite the cozy bosom and potbelly. That was fine. I loved my body, and while most of the time I stuck to better food, I loved to eat and indulge. If I wanted to have a plate of duck at a restaurant dripping with grease and sweet 'n sour sauce, then by God, I was going to devour it with a festering grin on my face. I did not limit myself in variety, even though I did practice portion control and consumed very little candy and drank no soda, juice or alcohol. That was good enough for me, as I could maintain my weight and still be happy.

One night, I was sitting in front of the TV, basking in the rare moment that I got to have fettuccine alfredo, when Vincent came back from a late work shift. He had taken up a job at a vitamin shop downtown, yet he looked sweaty and red. Another brief jaunt at the gym after work, I imagined. He started walking toward me, and I expected the usual quick peck on the cheek, when he stopped and stared.

"What is that?" he asked.

I stared at him. I had never seen him look so affronted. His nose was almost the same color as his beard, which I noticed didn't carry the same sort of luster anymore. I was almost waiting for it to instantly turn gray.

"What?" I asked, before realizing what he was talking about. "Oh! This." I pointed at the bowl with my fork. "It's fettuccine alfredo."

Vincent puffed out his lips and let out a sharp, brusque burst of air. "Could you not eat that around me? I can smell it from from the hallway."

I raised an eyebrow. "The fort proposal still stands. You want I should get the Febreze and the pillows?"

"Kathleen," Vincent said, "I think it's time you reconsidered your diet."

And there it was. The moment I had been painfully waiting for. Vincent had gotten into such a feverish mental state about maintaining his new weight that he was now obsessed with mine. In his eyes, in his house, if he wanted to stay trim and fit, it was his way or the highway with the food we kept in the cupboards. I sat up on the couch and glared at him.

"My diet's just fine," I said.

Vincent wasn't convinced. "Look," he insisted. "I get it. You're beautiful, you love your body. But some of us don't have that privilege. I need to stay healthy. If we're going to live together, you have to support me."

"I do support you."

"Do you?"

I was beginning to get a little frustrated. "I was right by your side when you wanted that surgery," I snapped, "even when for a while I was hesitant. I was worried about it going wrong, or you getting hurt by it. But I knew it was what you wanted, and I even offered to help you pay for it. So don't tell me I don't support you."

"I'm just saying," whined Vincent, "that we need to be on the same page when it comes to the food in this house."

"Vince."

"I want to have the same meals with you," he begged. "I don't want all this fatty stuff around here. I don't care if you keep it away from me with a padlock; it's still there, and I don't like that. What about when we get married? What about our future kids?"

"Our kids will be fine," I replied. "I don't see what this has to do with me eating a bowl of fucking fettuccine."

"It means a lot."

"Well, I'm sorry that I've insulted His Picky Highness," I said, a little more snidely than I intended.

Vincent stood there, frozen. I could tell how much he had been working out. He was getting buff, but the muscles all seemed to be bulging in the wrong places at the wrong angles. He wasn't sexy or lumberjack-like - he looked like he was mutating into the Thing from The Fantastic Four. I almost couldn't look at him.

"If you want this to work," he told me, "we need to change some things. Or we have to reconsider this arrangement."

"Arrangement?" I repeated. "That's what you're calling our relationship?"

"I can't live in a place that encourages bad eating habits. You know that."

I put down my fork. "And that's a threat?"

"No," retorted Vincent. "But it's the truth."

The idea that I had been reduced to an obstacle by Vincent was bad enough. We had been together for four years. I had loved him no matter what his weight was. In fact, I had loved him the most when he was at his heaviest. He was jovial, with a sense of humor. He would make his enormous belly talk to me when I was tired from work or going through another episode of depression. He would pretend to be the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk, thumping around the house going, "Fee, fi, fo, fum!" just to make me giggle. He had been my chubby bunny, my rotund roly poly, my portly noble and my lovable lunk. I was fine with him trying to stay healthy and live a long life, but this had gone far, far beyond that.

When I hadn't responded to his declaration, Vincent went into the kitchen to grab himself a can of some processed health freak nightmare - strawberry-flavored, I imagined. He popped it open and slurped noisily from it, as if to prove a point. It was then that I realized that I could see his ribs from where I sat. They stood out vividly from his caved in chest, his sweaty shirt and his poor excuses for pecs and abs not serving to cover the shape up. I could play xylophone on those fucking things. I twirled a wad of noodles and lifted them to my lips, right in front of him. I sucked the cheesy goodness into my mouth and chewed loudly.

"You know," I murmured in between bites, "I liked you better when you could have played Santa Claus."

Vincent's red face now lightened, more pink and white than anything else. He had not expected his girlfriend to say that. Perhaps he had done this more for me than anyone else, and now he was realizing that maybe I was not enthused by any of this. Then a thought seemed to cross his mind - a terrible thought, I was sure - and he set his now empty can on the dining room table.

"Maybe I can hook you up with the same doctor," he said. "See if he can do anything for you."

I responded to that silently, by standing up, walking over to the man who was once fat and endearing, turning my half-empty bowl over his head, and covering him with lukewarm pasta. I left him standing there as I went outside for a walk, his shoulders catching the drips of alfredo sauce that escaped from his now damp hair. I realized, as I stepped out into the open air with a small smile on my face, that dumping my dinner on him was the most beautifully symbolic gesture I had made in my life.

I moved out the following week.

This week's prompt was provided by Arden Kilzer.