Fat Max
Eating outdoors definitely made lunch more tolerable. But it wasn’t always like that. Max’s current employer, a very noteworthy museum in New York City, decided about four years ago to create a staff lounge. When Max first saw the space, a windowless room wedged between the janitor’s supply closet and a bathroom, not only was the lounge dark and dreary, but he found it depressing.
Max remembered trying to convince his union rep that the museum obviously didn’t even value its employees if this was their idea of an okay place to take a break. But the union rep didn’t agree with him. He just looked him up and down, gave him a sarcastic smile, and said, “You can go outside to have lunch, you know. It’s not like you have to eat there.”
Max began to realize that whenever he was talking, people would inevitably focus on the size of his body and not what he was actually saying. He wasn’t a complainer and because of his weight, didn’t like to draw unnecessary attention to himself. After what the union rep said to him though, he decided that if the weather was nice, he would just eat outside.
He preferred to eat on a cast iron table in the courtyard of a nearby office building. He always had to look for a table that wasn’t too gooey if someone decided to eat something sweet for lunch. He liked sugary things too, so this wasn’t a deal-breaker for him. He just didn’t want someone else’s sticky stuff all over his hands. There was another cast iron table that he sometimes ate at, but one of the legs was broken, so it had a tendency to tilt if he laid out even a simple sandwich - usually tuna on rye bread with a single leaf of lettuce.
Max always felt self-conscious about eating in public because he was fat. There, he said it. He knew that a lot of people liked to say nasty things about people who were overweight. He had heard the comments and didn’t disagree.
“Why is he eating that?” he’d often hear. And since they weren’t whispering when they said it, it often caused him to look at what he was eating
“That’s gross. Doesn’t he know how he looks?” Followed by, “I bet if he’d lose some weight, he’d be a good-looking guy.”
He often thought that the sandwich he was eating was so small, he was amazed that people saw it at all. But the comment that hurt him the most was this one - “But he has such pretty eyes!”
Max decided that since his eyes seemed to be his only redeeming feature these days, if he was outside, he wouldn’t make a pig of himself in public. He’d just eat his sandwich very, very slowly. Sometimes the sandwich was so boring and tasteless though, he could barely get through it. The only thing that made the sandwich and the 30-minute lunch break palatable was that he knew once he was back in his cubicle, he could dip into his secret stash of chocolate bars.
Later in the day, he’d pretend that he was falling asleep and make a big deal to his colleagues about his need to go out and get some caffeine. He even offered to bring coffee back, but no one ever took him up on the offer. What he was really going out to get though was a milk shake or even a double scoop of ice cream. He did find it odd that no one noticed that he never returned with a coffee cup. But maybe that’s because no one paid much attention to him at all. He didn’t think that any of his colleagues called him “Fat Max,” but perhaps they did. In any case, that’s what he started calling himself.
Lately, going outside to eat was only a weather-contingent option. When Max looked at the calendar, he realized that it had been raining for the last 21 days. How did he know this? Well, the calendar in question was right next to the fridge in the rental apartment in Queens that he shared with his sister, Madison. Each day he had woken up to rain, he had drawn a little umbrella on the calendar with a Sharpie. His sister loved Sharpie’s and had them in most primary colors. She used them to label all the food she’d put either in the fridge or the freezer. When Max had first moved in with her, he thought maybe it was to deter him from eating the food she had cooked for herself. But it wasn’t. She had explained to him that it was the only way she could try to eat healthy, especially when she was working nights as a proofreader for a legal firm.
“I try not to eat junk food,” she had told him. Followed by, “I could easily just reach for something sugary or loaded with carbs, especially if I’m tired.”
He remembered she stopped talking and looked at him when she said that. He knew she was staring really intently at his body, and he remembers just nodding and walking away. After that incident, if they saw each other, even briefly, it was to mutter hello or goodbye or give each other chore reminders. The trash needs to be taken out, or we need toilet paper or eggs or peanut butter.
Growing up, he had been the thin one and Madison had been a bit overweight. But somehow that changed when Max broke up with his last girlfriend. He started overeating because he was angry and then sad that the girlfriend told him that he wasn’t the guy she wanted to be with. All this eating left him short on cash, too, so he had to ask Madison whether he could live with her temporarily. Except Max needed to redefine “temporarily,” since he had been staying with her for nearly the entire four years he had been working at the museum. Luckily, she hadn’t asked him to leave yet, but he knew that day would eventually come and then what would he do? Would he move someplace else? And if he did, where would he move to? He thought about moving near the beach, but he knew he’d never be able to afford to live near the ocean. Besides, Madison was paying 100% of the rent and he’d usually chip in another $750 a month hoping it covered at least some of the expenses he knew she was carrying.
The problem was that Max was always thinking about food. Those milk shakes or double scoops of ice cream he had nearly every day were setting him back at least $50/week. On Friday’s, he’d always get a pizza and bring it home for dinner. And on Saturday’s, if he was asked to work at the museum because of a special event or an exhibition opening, he’d always get Chinese. Egg rolls, shrimp fried rice, and beef and broccoli were his usual orders. But sometimes he’d get a couple containers of wonton soup, thinking Madison might like soup when she came home from work, except he’d usually devour both containers himself. And then afterwards he would feel sorry and slightly ill.
Max knew he needed to lose weight, but he just couldn’t find the energy to even think about exercising. He also knew he should at least try to regain the body he thought was lurking beneath all the fat he was carrying around. He took the subway to work and when Madison suggested that maybe he walk home, which would have easily been a 4.5-mile hike over the 59th Street bridge, he remembers staring at her like that was just a crazy idea.
“I mean, when the weather is nice,” she said.
Max decided maybe if he started smoking, he’d get slimmer. There were a couple of people who he worked with who took extended breaks outside each day, smoking and vaping, and they were all thin people. In fairness, he never saw any of them eat anything at all, although once he did see a colleague, a woman, eat the smallest bag of potato chips he had ever seen. He watched her chew each chip so slowly, he wondered if that bag was her meal for the entire day. But cigarettes were more expensive than food and he figured his weight was probably giving him health problems, so why exacerbate an already bad situation?
But then he saw Frances. The only reason he knew her name was because she was wearing a name tag. Frances worked in the museum’s gift shop, and he found himself spending more and more time there looking at things he knew he’d never be able to afford just so that he could see her. Frances was nearly his height and had short blond hair that was a bit curly. He noticed that her eyebrows were very dark, almost black, which made him wonder whether she had dyed her hair. She seemed to always wear dark clothes, too. Usually, a black skirt with a black sweater, black tights and sensible black shoes. She wasn’t really thin but not heavy either. She was just kind of in-between which made Max feel that he might have a chance.
Max gravitated towards the umbrellas in the gift shop. He thought maybe he’d buy an umbrella, perhaps even the one with Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” printed on the inside. That way he could have lunch outside regardless of the weather. He began to wonder how he’d manage to hold the umbrella with one hand and his sandwich in the other and decided he probably couldn’t do it without dropping one or the other.
“Do you have a membership?” she asked him one day when he finally broke down and bought the cheapest thing the gift shop was selling – a colored pencil set for $8.
“Um, I work here,” Max said.
He remembered that France’s eyebrows went up a bit. “Oh, I’ve never seen you,” she said.
“I’m upstairs.”
He remembered Frances nodding and Max decided he wasn’t going to waste any time. So, he asked her if she wanted to have lunch with him.
“I usually just bring a sandwich and sit outside,” he said. “If you want to join me,” he added.
Frances looked at him and Max wondered whether maybe she had a boyfriend. Or maybe she was married. Maybe she even had kids.
“My lunch hour isn’t until 3:30,” she said. “I work the late shift.”
Max didn’t care what time her lunch break was, he just wanted to get to know her better. He wondered whether he could even bring her a sandwich. Did she like tuna? Or should he bring her something else? He just decided to ask.
“I usually just bring a tuna sandwich on rye. But maybe you’d like something else?” he asked, trying not to sound meek or self-conscious or both.
Frances actually smiled at him. “I love tuna, but you don’t have to bring a sandwich for me. I usually just bring something small.”
Max knew what that meant. She didn’t have money for lunch or any meal probably because the museum salaries were really low. Small usually meant a yogurt or just a piece of fruit.
They agreed to meet the next day. When he woke up that morning, it was pouring rain. Now he regretted not buying “The Starry Night” umbrella even though he knew he couldn’t really afford it. Max hoped that by the afternoon it would stop raining and it did. He went into the gift shop shortly before 3:30 but he didn’t see Frances. He looked around and even asked a staff member if she was in today.
“Think she went outside,” he said.
Max went outside and headed over to his usual table when he saw her. She was sitting down but waved to him when she saw him.
“It stopped raining,” Frances said to him when he got to her.
Max looked up at the sky. “It did!”
“Where’s your lunch?” he asked.
Frances shrugged. And then Max had an idea.
“Want to go get an ice cream?” he asked.
Frances smiled at him. He realized she was looking right at him and not his big fat body, and guess what she said?
“Sure.”
Max learned that afternoon that Frances was named after the Fraunces Tavern that was downtown because her parents used to go drinking there before they grabbed the Staten Island Ferry to head home. Frances grew up on Staten Island, the one borough that Max knew almost nothing about other than at one point it had one of the largest landfills in the world. Max sometimes equated himself to feeling like a garbage dump most mornings especially after a night of heavy eating. He didn’t want to feel like that now especially after meeting Frances.
“Do you still live there?” he asked.
“No, I live in Queens,” Frances said.
Max mentioned that he lived in Queens, too, but failed to mention that he lived with his sister.
Max suddenly hoped that he and Frances wouldn’t go back to the museum after grabbing some ice cream. Maybe they could take the subway downtown, or hell, maybe he’d even suggest walking downtown. Even though it was probably too far for both of them. Max thought about asking if she felt like taking a boat ride with him. Maybe they could hop on the Staten Island Ferry and wave to the Statue of Liberty. Isn’t that what some tourists do if they wanted to see Lady Liberty and not spend the money?
“The ferry is free, you know,” she said, as if she knew exactly what he had been thinking. “Which helps because everything in New York is so expensive.”
Max nodded and didn’t want to divulge how much he spent on ice cream every week until they reached his usual ice cream place and Frances looked at the prices.
“Think they’ll let me order a kid-size without a kid?” she asked.
Max looked up at the price list and felt embarrassed that he had taken her there. Even the smallest cone was $7.
“Chocolate?” he asked her instead.
But Frances shook her head. “Vanilla. In a cup. Want to split it?”
“I got this,” Max said. He took out a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and ordered a scoop of chocolate and vanilla in a cup with two spoons.
“That’ll be $12,” the young woman behind the ice cream counter told him.
And when Frances looked at him, she rolled her eyes, but then she started laughing.
“This better be really, really good,” she said.
Max let her have the first bite and she dug into the vanilla. He saw her mouth pucker a bit.
“Cold,” she said.
Max nodded.
“I love ice cream,” Frances said.
Max noticed that she was looking right into his eyes when she said this. His supposedly very pretty eyes and not once did he see her look down at his body. He knew that he was still “Fat Max” to a lot of folks, even to himself.
But Max just nodded again. “So do I.”
This is such a lovely story! 😍