Richard Glover
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday December 18, 2009
Jocasta is planning a huge meal for Christmas. Doesn't she care that I'm already fat and unattractive? Oh, cruel country Australia that places the Christmas season of over-eating and over-drinking right before the holiday season of sunning yourself on a beach, belly lolling free.I hope there aren't any Greenpeace volunteers at South West Rocks as they may try to push me back out to sea.Back in July, I looked pretty good. If I breathed-in heavily and squared my shoulders, I didn't look a day over five months pregnant. OK, maybe third trimester, but only just. Then I tried to give up drinking and took up ice-cream eating instead. They say you are what you eat, and now I'm the shape of the bowl.Shopping for beach gear at Essential Man this week, I find they supply T-shirts in either "Slim-fit" or "Relaxed" but nowhere is the styling I need, the one called "He's Let Himself Go". I try on a few T-shirts but none are equal to the task. Stretched around my belly, they don't look like leisure wear, as much as a series of tourniquets.I emerge having bought nothing. Memo to Essential Man: if you want people to buy stuff, consider removing the mirror in the changing cubicle. If I wanted to see a horror show I'd go to the movies.Trying to find a solution, I go to the local bookshop and consider buying all 175 of the diet and health guides on offer. I figure I'll take them home, place them in a big stack and use them to leap to my death. Anything rather than trying to control my eating.Mostly, my weight problem is Jocasta's fault, as her food is difficult to resist. Often after eating, I pat my growing stomach and sing her a lyric from Jo-Jo Zep and the Falcons, a band from our youth: "Oh, baby, you got me in the state I'm in".When we first met, this was a reference to my panting, hormonal lust. Now it's a reference to my hypertension, poor circulation and growing waistline. Still, it's a fine song that can encompass so many decades of the same relationship.I also blame my parents. I'm not used to the ready availability of edible food. When I grew up, neither my father nor mother could cook. Mostly they just burnt things. I ended up like Pavlov's dog. Food became associated with the arrival of the local fire brigade. I now salivate whenever I hear a siren. In Sydney, where there are always sirens, I salivate constantly.Having grown up with a famine mentality, I now wander in the land of fruit, honey and marinated chops. It's just so hard to stop eating, especially at the same time as you try to cut down on the drinking.Who could have guessed that an ice-cream and cake addiction lay around the corner? All my life it's been tag-team addictions: I only started drinking to get off the cigarettes and I only took up the cigarettes to get off the Tim Tams. It's past my point of memory but the Tim Tams were presumably a response to having my dummy removed as baby.Now, after five decades of this, I need a new addiction €” one that has better health outcomes."Maybe I could try life as a sex addict", I say to Jocasta, my voice a little muffled by the mouthful of cake I happen to be eating at the time, so that it comes out as "aybe I ould ry ife as a ex ad dict". I spray a light sheen of crumbs over her as I speak.She looks unconvinced. "First you'll have to find someone who wants to get into your pants," she says, "and it looks pretty tight in there already.""Very funny," I mumble before waddling towards the fridge for more ice-cream.It strikes me that I need a 12-step program, and not just the six steps to the freezer followed by the six steps back to the table.They say that inside every fat man there is a thin man fighting to get out €” a thin man who was presumably eaten by the fat man when an all-you-can-eat buffet fell short. All it takes is a few empty bain-maries and a slow-moving waiter and a hungry man can't be responsible for his actions.Still, with a fortnight to go before my first appearance on a beach, I need to take urgent action. I have 14 days to remove the eight kilos piled on since July.I ask a doctor friend for her advice as to how this might be achieved in the time available and she replies: "Amputation".Feeling this a bit extreme, I vow to take over all the family cooking, preparing nothing but my mother's recipes: Firetruck Pork, Lightning-Strike Chicken and Arsonist's Beef.By the new year, the whole family will be thin, miserable and beach-ready. And it will be Jocasta's turn to sing to me the song of our youth: "Oh, baby, you got me in the state I'm in".richard@richardglover.com.au
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald
