You Hide Your Fat Well

“You hide your fat well,” he said, as I stood before him naked.

“You flaunt your stupidity,” I wish I would have replied.

But instead I was quiet. I wasn’t 40 - ahem - 41, yet.

If someone said that to me now, they would have to be airlifted out of my home.

Why are we so awful to each other?

Imagine if our bodies could just be our bodies, with no fixing or tweaking or surgical enhancements. If we could be fat, thin, in between, and everyone just minded their own goddamn business. How much peace we could all feel.

I love seeing other fat people, especially fat people who dare to show off their bodies, like “Hey, I belong here, too.”

Here is my tummy, motherfucker. What are you doing to do about it?

I wish I could be free like that.

I recently saw a video of a woman who told a story of going on a date, and the date greeting her, then immediately asking her to step outside. As she walked away, he shouted at her, “It’s your weight.”

A grown man shouted at a grown woman in a parking lot about her weight.

It’s a miracle women even continuing putting ourselves out there.

I recently joined an app again, but not with any level of excitement. Zero, actually.

I matched with a chef (ok, exciting) but when I asked him what his speciality was, he replied, “Well, I just read a book called, “She Comes First.” ) Ew. Get out of here.

Maybe you could follow that with “Tact 101,” Sir.

The last date I went on revealed to me he was still married, separated, but married.

That’s not something you wait to tell someone until you’re sitting across from them.

It takes a lot of guts to date. You have to be vulnerable and open and reveal yourself to another human. Another human who could one day look at your naked body and offer, “You hide your fat well.”

In talking to friends who find dating to be just as much of a let down as I do, we usually come to the same conclusion, “Maybe it’s not worth it.”

But then I remember laying in his bed on a rainy day and being told, “I love you.”

And jumping naked on the trampoline while he looked on with glee.

And sitting on the beach as the sun set, our skin turning red, and the way he stopped me on the staircase and said, “Can I kiss you?” and the moment he did, feeling like little birds were circling my head, like in a cartoon.

All different men, different moments in my life of feeling that “wee!!!” of love. Or dopamine, or whatever it is that keeps us coming back, but definitely - definitely - not first.