I’m 15 minutes early, on purpose, because I have to find a safe place to sit. I’m meeting a friend near Central Park, at a place called the Brooklyn Diner. I climb the stairs to the street and step to the side to catch my breath. I peel my hands from the pole and get off.
He catches me in the groin and it hurts, but not as much as the shame when the other kids laugh and the bus driver gets up and storms toward me-Īnd the train stops and jolts me back into now. He reaches back and starts clubbing me with it, below the waist, out of the driver’s line of sight. An older kid sitting in front of me-a redhead, freckles, I’ll never forget his face-has a cast on his right arm. The driver glares at me in the rearview mirror. Nobody wants the fat boy mashed in next to them. Every time I spot an open space, somebody slides to the edge of the seat and covers it up. He can’t take us home until everybody sits down. My palms start to sweat, and all of a sudden I flash back to elementary school in Georgia, standing in the aisle on the school bus. Some of them stare at me, and I figure they’re thinking the same thing. But what really scares me is the chance that I might land on somebody. When a fat guy falls, it’s hard to get up. I’m praying this one doesn’t lurch around a corner or slam to a stop, because I’m terrified of falling. I live in Charlotte, North Carolina, and don’t visit New York much, so I don’t have a feel for how subway cars move. I’m on the subway in New York City, standing in the aisle, clinging to the pole. My shirts are size XXXXXXL, which the big-and-tall stores shorten to 6X. The government definition of obesity is a body mass index of 30 or more.
I’m the biggest human being most people who know me have ever met, or ever will. The average American male weighs about 195 pounds I’m two of those guys, with a 10-year-old left over. Nobody knows that number-not my wife, not my doctor, not my closest friends. Those are the hardest words I’ve ever had to write.