© Catherine Weingarten 2010

(We are in an office building. It is midday. Fattina is seated. She is a glamorous thirty-something curvaceous woman.)

FATTINA (eating donuts)

Ok George, this is going to be ok. This is all going to be just fine. You’re going to tell me you were lying and take it all back. I forgive you George I do. I forgive you with all my heart. I know you were just being mean and trying to make me cry, which I know you love, but I’m going to ask you to stop. Please stop George. Let’s go to your bedroom and have some herbal tea. It’s supposed to be soothing. And I got a lot of sugar packets. It’ll be fun. We can gossip and drink tea and eat cake. And then maybe I’ll file your taxes…I’m sure I could pick that up. Or make you a soufflé… that sounds nice. And I can wear my prettiest dress, the one with the pink butterflies around the chest. Come on George, please. Please take it all back and everything will be wonderful and you will feel so happy you’ll add at least three and a half years to your life.

GEORGE! FINE GEORGE! George! I cannot believe what you are doing! I don’t even know what to say. George! George. I have worked here for twenty years! It is everything that I know. This is my life George! Everything that I am! Everything that I will ever be or wish for or crave. I love it here! I love the cheap sparkly circus tent and the bored preteens on first dates that throw popcorn down my shirt. I love Sally and the fact that she has four breasts and they are all beautifully proportionate. I love Larrina the two foot giraffe and Caffy her porcupine lover. I love Marsha and Marsha the tightroping twins who always rap and have no back-story. I love Big Bob the real life Dracula and the way he looks at my neck. But really…I’M THE STAR GEORGE. You know that. Do you know what it’s like for people to look at you and want to wrap you in tin foil and take you home and just stare at you!? I’m magnificent.I’m supernatural. I don’t want to just be normal. George do you know what it’s like to be a fat woman in the real world!? I am not fucking doing that! I’d rather make out with a million bees. Here I’m a novelty, I’m the Aphrodite of fatness, I’m the banana split. I mean something, people take pictures of me with their poodles! It’s adorable! It’s amazing! It’s all I EVER NEEDED GEORGE. I eat so I burst. I eat powdered donuts with chocolate fudge and caramel peanut butter French fries.

You used to bake me things, YOU USED TO FUCKING CARE THAT MUCH. You would supply every craving I ever had. Even if it was in the middle of the night. Even if I wanted chocolate fish. You were always there. Remember that night when you sang me to sleep cause a little boy thought I was a balloon bounce and jumped on my head? I had bruises on my body for a week and you gave me band aids. You massaged my feet with tomato sauce. No one will ever love me again like that. Now what do I fucking do George? OH god what if people hate me! What if they throw shoes at me and don’t want to talk to me. I don’t want that. I don’t want to be on some dumb crap TV show about losing weight and be horrible and fail and then just be fat and have no friends or money or slight happiness for the rest of my life.

Remember when I was thirteen years old and you saw me in the Fat Fannies donut shop? You knew I could do this even though I looked like a razor blade, I was so thin. You saw I was starting to get round cheeks. You knew the signs. You knew my potential George, you really did. You knew I could be somebody. You could see me like no one else. My parents didn’t care about me. They would call me plump and give me ugly bowls of green leafy stuff and tell me to enjoy it. They wanted me to be a debutante. Oh god, do you remember those nights when I was training? Those were the best of my life. You would get coffee and fries and I would order an entire chicken with icing or fried marshmallows. God I was so happy. Oh god George, I remember the first time someone stared at me and called me fat I started to cry with glee. I was so happy, they had to take me to the hospital because my euphoria attack was so intense. Just the feeling that you didn’t make a mistake. I really can be fat; not just curvy or chubby. I am a goddess. I am larger than life. I am it. I am worth it. People don’t just run off to look at the green elephant; they take time to look at me. And I talk to people and make friends. We talk about the weather or chocolate or how difficult dating is in America nowadays. Sometimes people even come back to talk to me. Like I am worth five fifty for a bus pass to get to our circus. Oh god and…and when you started to call me Fattina. Ohhhhh god I love that name. Just the way it sounds in the air; the way it feels in my mouth. It tastes like butter or something. It oozes. The weird thing is…I don’t even remember my real name. I guess it doesn’t even matter. It was never who I really was.

Ok George let’s face the facts. No one else will have my sass or people skills. No one else can do a cartwheel or an elaborate strip tease with her eyes closed. You’re screwing yourself over George. You really are. I hope you’re highly intoxicated or this is a dare or a bad joke or…or…

I love you. I always have. I’ve been in love with you since I was thirteen. You are my Prince Charming. But you never look at me in that way. I want you to take my face and kiss me so hard my tonsils come out. I want you to take me George. I want you to take my virginity and make me a real woman. I want to use my body for love. You are the only one I want to do it with George. I want you to lick me like dutch ice cream. I haven’t touched anyone else but you George. And I swear I won’t. The way you look at me makes me want to melt. I live in it. I live in your big green eyes. The small magenta specks that only appear on Tuesdays, the red specks when you’re angry. The purple ones when you’re in a flirty mood. I sometimes ask you questions about where the bathroom is just so you can look at me and tell me how I’ve been working here twenty years and should know already. I love asking you where the bathroom is.

Remember that time George? That hot hot night in July when my blind stripping act made ten whole dollars and you told me I was the best. Even better than the Siamese gangsters. And then we went to get ice cream at the Dairy Freeze and I ate so much the ice cream employee gave me a free tub of pistachio strawberry. We laughed because I got it all over my face and my blouse. And then…you felt me up behind the Dairy Freeze. It was the single best moment of my life George. I wanted to stay there forever. God George how could you fire someone you felt up behind a Dairy Freeze?

Fine. Ruin my life. Take a stake and stab it in my heart and kill me like a vampire. Treat me like I’m nothing. Like we never met. Act like you don’t want to go bikini shopping with me for extra extra extra extra extra large swimsuits, act like you don’t want to meet my second cousins and go to tea with them, act like you don’t want to have children named Plumpina and Chubalina. Act like you don’t want to watch me undress in my little changing room, act like you don’t want us to have grandchildren that are skinny tightrope walkers (maybe Chinese), act like you don’t want to kill yourself and have me see you dead and kill myself. WE COULD HAVE BEEN ROMEO AND JULIET of the circus George. Don’t you want that?! I know you do George. It’s all fake George. Pretending you want me to leave. You know that. You can’t fool me. I know you better than I know crème brulee with potato chip flavored marzipan on top. I know you don’t want this. SO SAY SOMETHING! PLEASE GEORGE, ANYTHING! Nothing? Well maybe on the crap losing weight show I will meet a man and you’ll be madly jealous or maybe I’ll go to the real world and be…fat.