A lifetime ago, in January 1985, I'm standing among a large group of young Cuban students. The woman I was seeing at the time, a Yugoslav translator for Cuban authorities and a student of social revolutions, is running her hand casually through the locks of one particularly handsome boy in a way that seemed timelesss, without a tincture of self-satisfaction on her part, rather that it was the most natural gesture in the world.
It also was a time, the only moment in my life, in that sunny day crowd, when my less than normal North American size, 5’11” and low-150s, is well above the norm. Not just my height but my girth. I’m young myself, 29, but in this company like post-steroid Barry Bonds among his SF Giants teammates. My shoulders, hips and legs much bigger and thicker than the youngsters I see. They are skinny but healthy- and athletic-looking, slender reeds to a Louisville Slugger.
I think of that moment when I’m in the company of folks on the subway in New York. (With the exception of the guy last month [Sept. 29] at the back end of the D Train, scraping away on his beard with a dull knife for, I dunno, about half an hour. Hard to say what to think about him.)
More often, of course, in the Heartland. Last year on the road to the Pittsburgh Marathon, M and I stopped at a highway oasis that billed itself as the first such fuel-feed-and-go destination built in the interstate highway system. It was packed with cars and in the deluxe mall itself, with its myriad fast food outlets, throngs of folks, not a single non-consumer – because, let’s not kid ourselves – no one was visiting, or resting (maybe some just using the bathroom) – but mostly they’re loading up on caloric dishes, even the Starbucks where the choice du jour was large dessert-style drinks, not black coffee. And there were some mighty big folks. M and I left with only coffee, a couple packs of mints and an incredible sinking feeling.
Park Slope, where we live, has become the “butt” of jokes. (In more than a few posts here, color me guilty). Most infamously, The Post’s Andrea Peyser recently lambasted the district as the People’s Republic of Park Slope http://nyp.st/pLHXXe. That may be going a bit too far. But you get the gist.
But it’s also probably vying with Berkeley (I can’t say for sure, but I’d like to see the data) as the community with the least members of the BBC in the nation. That’s the Big Butt Club. Again, perhaps, blame the Food Co-op (see link, above) as Peyser and her minions do, because the co-op famously has no car parking (my favorite co-op feature: summer-only bike valet parking service), instead its shopper members and co-op shift workers walk in pairs, chatting amiably, across a roughly 30-block radius, the worker in a neon orange vest pushing a jangly two-tier shopping cart that’s usually full of wholesome, non-fattening food that is half to three-quarters the price of the fatty, processed, and packaged foods that form the basic diet of (I’m guessing here) about 99.3 percent of the American grocery-buying public.
That means, in People’s Republic of Park Slope, they are smaller. Butts, I mean. ’Cause walking, jogging, cycling, scootering, skate-boarding, racing-after-doggie-during-Prospect-Park-off-leash-hours is what people do. So even the fat folks don’t look fat against the really fat folks visiting from out of town. (And with the Barclays Center, home of the New Jersey Nets, we’re about to get a whole lot more visitors.)
Now to the sexual part of the post. Under such a title, size being relative, a nod to sex would seem to be called for. So, here it is. The nod. Yes, when it comes to sex, size is relative. Size is also relatives. Because it’s something inherited. So blame Dad. Or Mom.
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Polls and economic indexes now substitute for news. Consider the Big Mac Index, which extrapolates on the economic health of the nation from the cost of a Big Mac. Or the straw polls of the current crop of Republican candidates looking to unseat the still-learning-on-the-job Dem President Barack Obama. (You’ve got to be kidding me, the lameness of this group! I hope NJ Gov. Chris Christie joins the race if only to give something that fits the theme of this post. Like being named honorary chairman of the BBC. And man, what a great matchup that would be. The boniest-ass president in American history against the biggest-ass Republican challenger in American history. Wow!)
The index I’d like to see: Rather than the cost of the Big Mac, I’d like to chart the growing use of our corner TD Bank’s spare change machine, which is free to all comers, as a measure of the hard times so many people are feeling. We recently converted all our free change to bills, and I’ve been watching a steady stream of folks, from all walks of life, doing the same these past few weeks .¤.¤.
Next: Running for Your Life: Canada! A Visit
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