When your looks fade

This fat bastard going to tell me unsolicited that I don’t look as good as I looked a few years ago. I laughed and replied, “lucky for me I have a job that doesn’t require me to be good looking.”

At first I wanted to be offended. I mean nobody asked him for his opinion on anything. We were just standing in the grocery line and I hadn’t seen him in years. I was just catching up.

As I walked home from the grocery store I knew I had stopped going to the gym. My social life consisted of me and a bag of Doritos sitting in front of the television. I wasn’t interested in impressing people anymore. I just cared about hiding my hangovers at work.

Honestly, I never wanted to be good-looking. I considered it too much work and having others so invested in my attractiveness. I’ve seen the shows on TV where people got so obsessed with a beautiful person they ended up killing them. As a kid I just wanted to be naked and eat as many oreo cookies I could fit into my mouth. I had desires to become so fat they’d have to bury me in a mobile home. I guess because I was a poor black kid who was often starving I thought really fat people were the idea, that it meant prosperity. I thought the really fat people lived the best lives just eating and farting. All that changed when I became a teenager and wanted to have sex.

When I got home after being insulted I went straight to a mirror. I didn’t think I looked so bad. At least I wasn’t fat.