What's New
Check out my new chapbook Men of Letters co-authored with Nathan Graziano!
Introducing The Flask: A monthly broadside featuring brief reviews of new books and literary magazines, calls for work, and featured writings. The idea is to provide the reading audience with small sips of recently published collections of poetry and fiction. And it will be free sent free to anyone who wishes to receive it! Visit us at www.theflask.freeservers.com for more details.
So what's up with Fat Pants? Not a lot. I have a new gig writing columns for worldwrestlinginsanity.com Wow, you ask "How much does that pay?" It doesn't pay anything. Its for the prestige, fool. Now, I want to talk a minute about friends. We all have them. At least, most of us have them. If we're lucky, we have a couple that we can share the goriest details of our lives with. I'd like to salute one of those friends, right now, in his time of need. Nathan Graziano. If you're a fan of Nate's you'll know that he's an obsessive Red Sox fan and that this is a tough time of year for him. October determines Nate's state of well being until next summer. If the Red Sox win, Nate is a happy man. He loses weight. He shaves. He even showers occasionally. If the Red Sox lose, well, he goes soft in the middle. His writing loses it's punch. His hair starts to fall out. If the Red Sox lose to the Yankees well, you don't want to know. It's awful. So, let's all send our thoughts and prayers out to Nate Graziano. You can also help the cause by picking up a copy of his fan-fuckin-tastic new book, Honey I'm Home. Let me relate to you a story about Natty.
Scientifically speaking, I'm a chickenshit. You all know the flight and fight routine they give you in Psych 101, right? Well I have no fight. I'm all flight. I don't mind. I come from a long line of chickenshits. In fact, the Crocker lineage has made its way from the Neanderthal to modern times because we are chickens. We had the god-given smarts to run like hell from Tyrannosaurus rex.
Well, not long ago I was sitting in my office at work. I had to shit something awful. I put it off and put it off, sitting in front of my computer, hoping, praying that someone, anyone, might send me an email and make my life worth living. Well, eventually, I couldn't take it anymore. I went to the men's room, looked around to make sure the coast was clear, and I jumped into a stall. Oh, let me tell you, readers it was like heaven. It was relief hence forth unknown to man. I was half-way through this pleasurerama when I heard the bathroom door open. Someone else now occupied my space!
Normally, I'd clench my ass cheeks so tight that they'd nearly weld shut. But I couldn't. There was just too much in there trying to get out. It wasn't pretty either. My ass was making noises like a bulldog choking on it's own slobber. I, myself, was moaning in pleasure and pounding the side of the stall with my hand.
Finally, I finished, ten pounds lighter. But, I still wasn't alone. In fact, the bathroom door opened again, and again. The men's room was like grand central station. So, did I proudly wipe my ass, stand up like a man, pull my pants up with authority and walk out with a look of satisfaction smeared like jam across my face? No, I sat frozen. I wouldn't even wipe for fear of bringing even more unwanted attention onto myself. I sat in that stall for a good forty-five minutes before the place cleared out and I could clean myself up and get back to work.
Check out my new column, soon to be up at:
www.worldwrestlinginsanity.com
Fat Pants. Fat Pants. Fat Pants. What can you say? I got an email from my long lost friend, and fine poet, Joe Rochette. Joe reminded me, quite philosophically, that everyone gets fat sometimes. I guess he's right. And it's not only our bodies that get fat; it's also our souls. It's also our egos, wives, animals, sleepless nights, and if we're very lucky, our wallets. It's rough.
My Dad was recently diagnosed with lung cancer. So, I'm trying to quit smoking. It's rough. No smoking means no drinking and no drinking means something along the lines of getting my head put on right. I'm doing ok. I'll go five, six, seven days without smoking then eventually I'll want a beer. When I have a few beers under my belt, I have some smokes. I guess it could be worse. At least I'm spending most of my days not smoking.
I reckon this little adventure is good for my ultimate goal as well-getting back into my skinny pants (in all possible meanings). I've even been exercising. I've even been doing yoga. It's rough. There are plenty of Yoga videos geared toward beginners (for example, the one I use is done by this vapid looking, balding man who calls himself David Sunshine. I'm pretty sure that's not his real name). However, no matter how hard you look, you can't find one called "Yoga For Fat People." Not even at Super Wal-Mart, and you can find anything there. For example, I got The Karate Kid part I, II, -and- III at Super Wal-Mart (which just so happens to be very close to a Chinese buffet. Those things are like kryptonite for me). Ole Daniel San himself is a bit on the chunky side by the end of it all. But, nothing beats watching him split in twain three successive fried chickens with one meaty hand in what has to be the most greasy karate chop of all time.
I hear that my new book of poetry, Like a Fish, is still going to come out some day. In the mean time, check out these things.
Honey, I'm Home (Nathan Graziano) -- http://www.sunnyoutside.com/
Poets in Their Thirties -- http://home.earthlink.net/~glafemina/poetry30/
Compared to This (Adrienne Lewis) -- http://www.adriennelewis.freeservers.com/custom3.html
http://home.earthlink.net/~glafemina/poetry30/
Compared to This (Adrienne Lewis) -- http://www.adriennelewis.freeservers.com/custom3.html Joe Rochette's Smoke -- http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1889717002/qid=1127248353/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-6879498-6192965?v=glance&s=books
What are fat pants? Well, they're the pants you wear when you're fat. They're usually old, a few sizes too big, and comfortable. They're the pants you might wear for Thanksgiving dinner, or to a Chinese Buffet. I'm wearing my pair right now - an old pair of blue jeans fit for the waist of a snowman.
I was a fat kid, so weight has always been an issue for me. When I left 11th grade, I was 200 pounds. Then, something odd happened. The town drunk, who had once trained with Leon Spinks, sobered up and started giving free boxing lessons in the shitdunk town of Leadwood, MO. I went & I stuck with it. When I went back for my senior year I was 135 pounds, a bit too thin. I was living on a bowl of cereal in the mornings and a bowl of soup in the evenings and fasting on Sundays.
But, first, let's flash back. I, like most people in their early 30s, learned about love from early John Hughes movies. It was like this - if you were a poor
guy, you fell in love with a rich hot girl, you romanced her with poetry or painting until she fell for you and you somehow got over on her preppy, good-looking boyfriend. Then, you realized the person you really loved was your awkward, Tom Boy best friend all along and you lived happily ever after. If you were a poor girl, you fell in love with the rich, but sensitive, hot guy in school (usually Andrew McCarthy). Then after a few struggles you ran off with the rich guy leaving your eccentric, male best friend, to learn about sex from an older woman.
Well, I tried to follow that formula. I fell for the hottest girl in the trailor park--we'll just call her AP. AP was dating the star center of our school's basketball team. I was just a red neck, fat kid. So, I left poems in her locker, wrote "Dan loves AP" in huge white paint on the baseball field - it was just like a movie. She even embarrassed me in front of her friends once, just like in the movies. She had one of her friends tell me that if I asked her to go out with me face to face she would say yes. So I did - then her boyfriend, star basketball, etc, came from around the corner and everyone started laughing at me.
Now, in my mind I figured this was just about the middle of the movie so it didn't bother me too much. However, no matter what declarations of love and romance I made, it never did me any good. Until, you guessed it, I came back to school the next year, skinny. Then she was asking me out. The moral of this story is, it sucks to be fat. Some people argue that fat people really don't even have feelings and such - at least not like a normal person would. Oh, and the other moral is life really is like a John Hughes movie, but the credits never roll and you find out that girl you were in love with is sort of a dork herself.
So, below find a picture of me shortly before I moved to Michigan. Behold the thinness. Life was good then. I had feelings - just like a real person. But then Michigan hit - see the fat picture above. Can you believe the difference? I can't remember the last time I had a feeling like a real person might have. But never fear, friends. I am now somewhere between these two extremes (I'll get a recent picture for you soon) and I plan to update you here occasionally on my weight loss. Because we all know that when your fat pants become your regular pants and you have to go out and buy more fat pants, it's time for a diet.
