Heavy night. The twist of your underwear, snaked round your thighs. Thick sweat. Dry sheen. That swirling, groaning thump in your head, flush in the crash zone. Body splayed, pasty and warm, left for the sun to bless.
1pm. Too goddamn early. You bunker in deeper, cushions caressing your face. Dead leg. Youâre too lazy to roll off the couch. Scrape your body from the leather, grease slickening your weighty limbs, a bed of a dozen burger wrappers gracing your grip on the armrest. You sigh.
Woozy, your eyelids dip, narrowed on the box of cookies, garish purple and red melding your senses. Crumbs linger on your tongue as you reach across, tilt your head, and let the last slither of chocolate speckled dust tumble down your ashen throat. God - you need a drink. You slough a hammy hand free, pawing for the nearest half-empty can.
Flat, full-fat Coke. You flick the tab. Whatever.
Eyes on the numbers, the taste runs sticky. A hundred and thirty nine calories. Forty grams of sugar. Caramel, sweeteners, brightening your addled brain, flowing through your system, juicing up your muscles, all the strength you need toâŚ
Fuck. Your abs throb, gummed in your mass. Youâre not getting up in a hurry. You palm your big, bloated stomach, scratching your side. The topmost pizza box totters loose, sending the pile tumbling. Shaven donner crawls out the cardboard. Maybe, just maybeâŚ
You claw in, liberating a hardened slice of pepperoni. Gritty, but good. Shadows cross your smirk, widening your mouth, forcing the tasty triangle further in, gut grumbling in approval. You crunch the crust, eager for every last morsel. The box weighs heavy on your wrist. Plenty more. You shirk your backrolls, bulk sinking back into a state of blissful slumber. Guess you donât have to get off your arse for breakfastâŚ
Or much else, really. The can crinkles in your moistening fingers. The link in the chain, earth to the factory, factory to the store, store to your heaving grocery bag, to the car, to the kitchen, to the stack burying your coffee table. You ponder the odds of recycling it, feeding that link, watching work its way round the outside world to wind up next to the starchy ready meals in your fridge, full again.
But thatâd mean throwing it away first. Getting up. Bending down. Moving. Everything youâve been struggling to do lately, as youâve grown and grown. You let out a belch. That cycle of you started, all on your own. Getting hungrier. Eating more than you should. Getting heavier. Moving less than youâre suppose to. Getting lazier. Sleeping on a gut full of fast food, napping and snacking, stoking a greedy sweet tooth, working up an appetiteâŚ
Plumper. Every round, flaking off a flicker of discipline, seconds and thirds, fourths and fifths, excusing yourself, letting your memberships lapse, tucking your gains under longer, looser shirts, shying away from your family, watching your fit friends tour the world on your smeared touchscreen, takeout on another tab. Munching in your dressing gown. Feeling the pounds pile on under your beltloops, your fitness stumbling, your knees throbbing, your walks covering less and less distance before you have to stop for breath. More excuses. More embarrassment. More eating, to orgasmic excessâŚ
You glance around your living room â if livingâs what it is. More like damage control. Door locked. Curtains closed. Sealing yourself in musky walks, over layers of trash, over straining clothes, over layers of gluttony, frailing while you fatten up â swinging, grunting â perspiring as you find your feet at last, huffing and puffing, rolling to the bathroom, gut brushing the door, hip knocking the towel from the rail. Something else to grab on your hands and kneesâŚ
A pale, quaking blob meets you in the mirror. You gulp, detached, finger trembling, feeling where your jawline used to be. Your skinny ribs, swallowed in gelatinous flab. Your shoulders â wider, curving where they once stood firm, collared by obesity, spelt in the hang of your huge, soft underbellyâŚ
Youâre shaking as you step on, sucking in. Tiles punch your squeal from the walls as the digits shoot up, the number on the display striking twice, three times the size you entered your adult life, slender and unblemished; poles apart from the unsated drool, dripping down a naked body from a shocked, hanging mouth.
Zero self control. Link in the chain. Shackle to your predilections. Biting into your stretchmarked skin.
You can get off the couch.
You can get off the scale.
But your bellyâs gurgling, dense and jiggly.Â
Youâll never get off the ride.