Category Archives: it’s fun to be fat

What Other People’s Lives Must Be Like Every Weekend

Posted by plumpdumpling on October 18, 2010 – 6:00 pm
Filed under creepy boyfriend obsession, it's fun to be fat, living in new york is neat
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It’s been two weeks since it happened, but it lives in my mind as if it was yesterday: the weekend Kamran decided he didn’t care about law school (his last semester!) and let me make a brunch reservation for us.

We dined in front of Lincoln Center at Bar Boulud, which was so completely boring as to render the name of this blog un-ironic, despite its cheese pastries that sparkle in the sun:

We made our way through Central Park to avoid 59th Street and the horse-drawn carriages that line it, but of course those itch-inducing allergybuckets follow us everywhere:

Walking down 5th Avenue, we passed by the all-glass Apple store and saw this man “coincidentally” standing outside:

And then stopped by FAO Schwarz, which oddly, neither of us had been to in our 5+ years here to:

1) take multiple pictures of ourselves with the LEGO Chewbacca while small children anxiously tried to crowd us out:


(that’s me and my cleavage between his legs!)

2) test our strength on a foam puzzle that’s the size of Kamran’s entire apartment:

3) and learn the true meaning of factory farming:

We talked about stopping by a Duane Reade to grab some candy to get our blood sugars primed for Halloween, but then we realized we were too close to Dylan’s Candy Bar to pass it up. What you have to understand about Dylan’s is that it’s a microcosm of New York City itself: it’s the most wonderful place on Earth and has everything you’d ever want in life, but you can’t even begin to afford it, and it’s full of all of the worst people imaginable. Dylan’s has every kind of candy ever made, but it costs $13.99 per pound. It has clear staircases filled with your favourite childhood treats, but they’re constantly crowded with dumb tourists. It’s wonderful. And awful.

So Kamran and I decided to get a single pound of candy to split, which we deemed a “reasonable” pre-Halloween snack. Then we got into the checkout line, which stretched literally to the door. As we stood there, a kind-of-friendly-but-kind-of-surly dad started talking to us out of nowhere about how he’s lived in NYC for 30 years and had never heard of Dylan’s up until then, and we just looked at him like, “Sucker.” Then he turned to his kid and said, “Should we try to make this last until Monday, or should we eat it all today?”, and I felt such love for humanity at that moment.

But then Kamran whispered, “There’s a lady over here on a Rascal who keeps eating the candy, and it’s really depressing me.” And indeed, this superfat middle-aged blobby thing came speeding over to our area a second later, gnawing on whatever she’d picked out of the bins with the “no sampling” signs on them and just smiling to beat the band. She couldn’t fit her scooter through the racks of candy blood we were standing near, so the guy and his son behind us offered to let her in front of them in line.

Outside, we passed a homeless person propped up against the side of a building, and not two feet in front of . . . it . . . I spotted an abandoned gummy bear that would’ve been soooooo perfect for Lost and Lonely Leftovers, so I stopped and took a step backward but then reconsidered and kept walking. Kamran asked what I was doing, and when I told him, he seemed to think this made me a bad person! But clearly this homeless person wasn’t hungry if it was letting a perfectly good gummy bear just sit there.

Moments later, the lady on the Rascal went speeding past us on the sidewalk, honking her horn and digging into her bag of candy as we went on to curse at old ladies.

Well, not “we”. Me.

These Boots Were Made for Walkin’

Posted by plumpdumpling on July 20, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Filed under funner times on the bus, it's fun to be fat, why i'm better than everyone else
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I do not run for things. Like, physically. This is perhaps the reason why the gym doesn’t work out for me. I would much, much rather be late to something than to hurry myself, to rush across the street on a flashing Don’t Walk sign to catch a fleeting bus or to plow down some station stairs to catch a train sitting with its doors open for an extra second. I think people who run for things look stupid. I hate people who are too eager. I hate people who care about things too much when they’re things I don’t care about.

Yet last Friday morning, I found myself turning the corner onto 42nd Street, seeing the bus waiting at the stop, noticing there was still a long line of people waiting to get on, and actually breaking out in a run. I have no idea why. I was running late, but why would I care about running late? Maybe it’s that I knew I would be getting to the stop just as the bus was pulling away and that everyone on the bus would know I had meant to get on it and that that would be more embarrassing that bothering myself to run for it. I’m irrational like that.

So I took off in the fastest jog I could in a pair of really rubbery flip-flops, and things were going pretty well. I probably could’ve walked just as fast if I really wanted to put in the effort of swinging my arms and rolling my hips and all, so I figured I was still looking fairly nonchalant to anyone who might be judging my eagerness, yet I hopefully looked like I cared enough about making it onto the bus that the driver would take pity and wait on me if everyone else loaded quickly.

But then, halfway down the block, the toe part of one of my flip-flops suddenly somehow doubled under itself and messed up my rhythm, and I had to stop to straighten things out. Just then, this beautiful brown-skinned woman went gliding past me in a summery black dress, her natural hair highlighted with a white faux flower. Her long, slender legs, fitted with soft black ballerina flats, flitted in front of her one at a time like those of a more-graceful gazelle. I somehow expected that she’d stop, that we’d laugh about me trying to run in my stupid shoes, and that we’d walk arm in arm to the bus. Instead, she probably laughed as my shorter, stouter legs, bound in too-tight, too-hot jeans pounded the pavement in comparison, and while she boarded the bus nimbly with a bounce, I hoisted myself up, out of breath and windblown with the entire bus glowering at me for making them wait.

That’ll teach me to try.

Although I Don’t Necessarily Want Them Touching a Seat I May Someday Sit on, Either

Posted by plumpdumpling on March 30, 2010 – 8:45 am
Filed under fun times on the subway, it's fun to be fat
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The other day, I saw a man on the train so fat that his testicles bulged between his legs like a cantaloupe in the crotch of his navy blue sweatpants. I wondered how you get to a point where you’d rather sit and let everyone see your melon-shaped balls than stand and conceal them between your tree trunk thighs.

You Don’t Freakin’ Know Me, Wii Fit

Posted by plumpdumpling on November 16, 2009 – 12:00 pm
Filed under it's fun to be fat
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Yesterday, as Kamran was doing his Body Test on our Wii Fit, the little Wii Fit Board icon thing with the unexplainable baby voice decided to take a detour and asked him how I was doing. Then, it asked him to select whether I looked lighter, heavier, or the same after my recent sessions of hardcore Wii hula-hooping and Wii bowling.

Kamran looked at me as I sat eating chocolate fudge brownie Ben & Jerry’s and politely chose “the same”. The Wii Fit told him that perhaps he should pay more attention to me. We laughed, since I’m always doing dances around his apartment on the weekends to get him to pay attention to me instead of his law school books.

The Wii Fit then told him that in studies, dogs that are paid more attention by their owners are more motivated. Hmph.

If the World was Fair, Candy Pumpkins Would Be Available All Year

Posted by plumpdumpling on November 2, 2009 – 1:52 pm
Filed under holidays don't suck for me, it's fun to be fat, par-tay
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This is all that’s left of Halloween, but it sure was good while it lasted. Kamran and I spent Friday night watching horror movies instead of, you know, piecing together a simple costume so as to not disrespect our friend Anthony’s party the next night.

To make us feel extra bad, Anthony seriously went all-out for this thing. As if we weren’t impressed enough to actually know someone who owns a house and can therefore have a legitimate house party (even if it was out on Long Island), he had the place covered in cobwebs and bathed in creepy lighting with awesome additions like strings of razorblades hanging in the doorway to the dining room. His friends all had elaborate costumes, and he went around the party in an H1N1 emergency response team uniform, drinking what he said was germ-ridden waste.

I ended up wearing a pink tank top with a black shirt covered in stars over it and said I was aurora borealis, while Kamran wore a striped sweater and said he was Freddie Kreuger had he gone straight, stopped murdering kids, and gotten his PhD. No one was impressed, but we brought a box of thirty assorted candy bars with us, so we didn’t get egged.

Of course, we ended up eating at least half of those thirty candy bars ourselves and stuffing more in our pockets for the long ride home on the Long Island Railroad, but no one was sober enough to notice.