Intro: Kaleidoscope Pebble Intro
So this is the deal. My name is Breeze. Right about now there are a few people who know my “government” name and are rolling their eyes and going, “That’s not his real name!”, which of course brings up the question “what is real?” The name the government gave my ancestors for commercial purposes? The name I gave myself for spiritual purposes? The name my mom gave me after she got over the shock of passing something the size of a watermelon through a hole the size of a grape? The name my father wanted to give me but forgot due to the concussion he suffered at the hands of my mom during my birth as she screamed at him that something the size of a watermelon was passing through a hole the size of a grape and to never touch her again? It’s probably all of that.
Real is also that I have been overweight my entire life. Well, I actually did just find a picture of myself when I was in kindergarten and was in shock to realize that there was a time in my life in which my width was smaller than my height.
Fast forward a couple of decades later, past my smelly, chubby teen years and my adorably overweight twenties and you would find yourself smack dab in my obliviously obese thirties. Oblivious because I wasn’t REALLY aware of exactly how big I was. My doctor at one point suggested that I consider surgical options to control my weight. My response, “But doctor, that’s for fat people?”
Fast forward a couple of years later and you’ll catch me shopping around for different weight loss diet plans, much to the dismay of my brother who honestly with the best of intentions decried, “Fuck that man! You don’t need to go to no Jenny Craig man! Just eat rice and vegetables man!” When I asked how long should I eat rice and vegetables to lose in excess of 100 pounds his reply was, “About a month.”
When I explained my dilemma to another friend adding that I do not know how to cook his reply was, “Do you have an oven? Can you get an onion? Get a huge onion, season it, then put it in the oven and bake it for 30 minutes.”
This is when I realized that though I love my friends and family and I honestly feel that they have nothing but the best intentions for my welfare but quite frankly they are all… full of shit. I have come to realize that unless you have been overweight for an extended period of time, grown up with it, been the fattest one in every situation, every party, every gathering, every family reunion, wedding, funeral… orgy, you’ll just never understand. And every time friends and family try to convince me that they know my pain, I liken it to a White person trying to convince a Black person that they truly understand their pain. “I get that you have the best intentions for me and you want to relate to me on a certain level, but, seriously… you’re full of shit.”
Fast forward a couple of years later and you’ll find me at my first Weight Watchers® meeting. One thing that has always turned me off from joining any weight loss program was that they all seem to be geared towards women. And not necessarily just women, but housewives in particular, and my lifestyle couldn’t be the furthest away from that. But I showed up anyway. It was pretty much my worst fears materialized. I was the youngest person in there and most notably, the only guy. In fact, I was in this room full of Church Women and I just couldn’t get that scene in Beloved out of my head where all of the town’s women came upon Sethe’s to pray the spirit out of her house. I looked at all of these women and I kept thinking they were going to turn around and start chanting for the evil fat spirit in me to leave then start screaming to rebuke the evils of the fat devil.
Then I weighed in. 383.2 pounds.
It was like somebody had punched me in the face. I couldn’t believe it. I was just stunned. I was shocked beyond belief. While this was happening, the group leader had already begun the session and I felt as if I had slipped into this worm hole where everything around me was just slipping away, lifting above me, leaving me alone in the dark with fat, shadowy dead things. It took the woman who had weighed me in to snap her fingers for me to come back to reality.
383.2 pounds. Three hundred and eighty three fucking pounds! I honestly think that if I had known that I was this big, I probably would have begun searching for surgical solutions. I never ever wanted to get any of that done, the intestinal bypass whatever, but at three hundred and eighty three fucking pounds… I would have picked up a brochure or two…or three… or three hundred and eighty fucking three!
I sat down amongst those church ladies and the thought of them trying to excorcize the “fat demon” out of me and it suddenly became sobering and terrifying. That first night was not good. I was trying so hard to pay attention to the leader but there was just too many things going on in my head at the time, exorcisms and worm holes and such.
The way Weight Watchers® works is that only people who have been through the program and have lost weight for a “substantial” amount of time are allowed to be leaders… which I think is just awesome. The group leaders “get it”. They are not full of shit. The group leader of my initial meetings was an absolute lovely woman who gave me nothing but kind words and support… but I do have to mention that when we inquired about how much she had lost considering the fact that she appeared so slim and trim and her response was 30 pounds 10 years ago I began screaming in my head, “BEE-YATCH! I’M THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY THREE MOTHER FUCKING POUNDS!! SIT YO SKINNY AS DOWN SOMEPLACE!!”
But I didn’t, and I think that was a step in the right direction. And that incidentally became my excuse for everything from that moment on. After finding out how big I was, the thought consumed me. I didn’t feel as if I should have been doing anything else but concentrating on my weight.
Hey Breeze you going to go to the bar next Wednesday for Big Boy night?
“Bitch! I’m three hundred and eighty three motherfucking pounds!”
Hey Breeze, I was just thinking about you and wondering if you wanted to talk and maybe rekindle our relationship.
“Bitch! I’m three hundred and eighty three motherfucking pounds!”
Mr. Vincinz, your student loan is past due. When can we expect a payment?
“Bitch! I’m three hundred and eighty three motherfucking pounds!”
That first week I lost 5.4 pounds.
Hey Breeze, you finally want to tell me what your real name is?
“Bitch! I’m three hundred and seventy seven motherfucking pounds!”
Fast forward another year and a half filled with intense workouts, disciplined eating habits and regular sleeping patterns and you would have found me in Atlanta, GA.
Hey Breeze, you want to have anonymous sex with that group of people over there?”
“Bitch! I’m two hundred and thirty seven motherfucking pounds… of course I do…”
237. Yeah… I had dropped 146 pounds. [insert audible gasps and applause here]
But (and unfortunately there is always a ‘but’) like Icarus, I flew too close to the sun with my beautiful wings… and plummeted like a rock back to reality. I stopped going to my Weight Watchers® meetings, it really got in the way of my drunken stupors at my local bars and picking up more groups of random people for more anonymous sex. That is until I began to realize that the stylish size 36 inch jeans that I used to wear to the bar, were fitting more and more like bicycle shorts and all of my T-shirts were unintentionally beginning to look like belly shirts.
Fast forward a couple more years and you’ll be here with me right now. Yesterday was the first day that I have been back to Weight Watchers since last July and the first time I have weighed myself in quite some time.
Bitch… two hundred and ninety four motherfucking pounds!”
Yeah… I have gained close 60 pounds since my heyday in Atlanta, GA. [insert audible gasps and heckling here]
So what is real? The overweight teen? The morbidly obese man? The middle aged sexually active pseudo-athlete? It’s probably all of that.
I’m starting to realize that life can sometimes just be one big ass kaleidoscope and it can be incredibly hard to truly see what exactly is going on without the reflection of your own insecurities, history and cynicism mucking everything up.
So with all that said what I can tell you is that at the end of this tube there is a guy named Breeze who weighs 294.6 lbs. There are other factors out there that might reflect that my name is something else or that my appearance is something else or even that my sexuality is something else but as far as what is real… that’s what it is.
And I welcome you to come along with me as I re-enter my weight loss journey. My Weight Watcher’s® meetings happen every Saturday. The plan is to journal about my thoughts on the meeting and to discuss happenings that occurred during the previous week in regards to weight management as well as chart my progress.
I have been journaling for quite some time now and have been remarkably candid about some of the more intimate exploits in my life but I can tell you that THIS is probably going to be the most intimate undertaking I have ever done in a public arena. Telling the public my actual weight and the progress to lose it is really on the same level as doing porn for me. I imagine that the panic attack I would have while spreading myself open for some pornographer’s camera would be the exact same as the panic attack I’m having right now spreading myself open by posting my actual weight of 294.6 lbs., the journey how I got here, and the processes I have to go through to leave. This is going to be more intimate than any romp in the hay that I’ve written about (except for Atlanta… my God… the dudes down there!) And oh yeah, a few housekeeping things of note to keep in mind while keeping up with this journal…
While the main focus will be my experiences with weight management, that will be the colored stones at the bottom of this kaleidoscope, those will be a reflection of a 5'7", 39 year old African American male who grew up in the projects of Chicago, IL who now resides in Hollywood, CA… and is gay. Gay, gay, gay, gay, gay… oh my God he’s really gay. Or as Karen Walker so eloquently noted, “Honey, you’re so gay when you fell outta the gay tree, you hit every gay branch on the way down, then you landed on a gay guy. Then you did him.”
So there you have it, an extended introduction but… I figured it was really necessary to lay down some road map as to how this journey is going to begin. I'm nervous as all hell but really excited as well. There are some other aspects that probably need to be introduced but you know… we’ll just play the rest by ear and see where it goes.
See you next week!
Weight-In: 294.6 lb
