Uncle Mac's Thanksgiving Glow
“I can’t believe Uncle Mac is making you all work on Thanksgiving night!”
“Maybe I wouldn’t believe it if it wasn’t the busiest day of the year, but it’s not a bad way to spend the holiday. It’s like getting to be with a bunch of families instead.” The twang in Ben’s voice helped to hide the mix of emotions over the phone. Days like this it was impossible to not think about his family, even after all these years. His parents decided they didn’t want anything to do with him anymore once he came out, and he’s been making a new life for himself ever since. He can’t help but picture being back at that dinner table on Thanksgiving night with his cousins but being at the diner really did help to help the wound. He was grateful for the real love in his life.
Ben and Lance had a new Thanksgiving tradition of hanging out with this father-son duo who found the restaurant some years ago looking for someone to cook them something special for Turkey Day. The story was sweet, and the dad- Whit- always started his tellings saying “I wish you all could have met my Sarah. She was an excellent cook. Food was her love language, the same way it’s all yours.”
Lance wonders sometimes if it was exactly the same as two feeders, but the results are pretty damning. Whit was big like a parade balloon when we first met him. His weight was in the mid 300s, and he carried most of it in a round gut that walked into every room before the rest of him. She also seems to have completely beat out any impulse of picking food beyond whatever sounds good and filling (and probably fattening). On the other hand, when you look at his son Walter, it’s clear that Sarah was good about keeping her boys fed. He was a puffy guy who had a magnetic attraction to anything sweet. He was noticeably smaller than his dad though; his weight was probably still in the 200s.
Whit and Walter started coming to Uncle Mac’s their first Thanksgiving without Sara. They said they wanted a homely holiday with all their favorite traditional foods: mashed potatoes, stuffing, and tons of gravy. They enjoyed watching regulars file in on the holiday, watching them hug on their way too and from dinner with their families. Friends crowding around the TV screen for football. The waiters treated them with all the care and love in the world. Most importantly: everyone loved their food. Whit liked hearing all the customers with their Thanksgiving plans.
“This year we have to go to have dinner with the in-laws and the food is always brutal. It’s always some fad health food that their trainers told them will be good for them. The stuff isn’t meant for human consumption, I tell you. It’s disgusting. Might as well sneak out for a real meal so I won’t be hangry like I was last year.”
“My wife has me on a diet right now, and apparently she was serious about not letting me cheat for Thanksgiving because she had something about every morsel of food on my plate. I shouldn’t be eating this, that’s too much, don’t over do it. Like damn, this is the one day on the calendar where it is okay to over do it a little.”
The men of Uncle Mac’s reminded them of all the joy that Sarah served them with their food, and now there was a place that appreciated fat men like them.
After spending an evening at Uncle Mac’s, food became an emotional touchpoint for Whit and Walter. It brought back memories of happy times and made new happy ones. Food was like a constant source of warm fuzzy happy memories that they could press over and over again. And without the guided hand and home cooking of Sarah, the boys were okay with eating anything. Gone were the feasts with balanced meals and in came all the trash they could possibly want. Stacks of pizza boxes, platters of ribs, and quesadillas and burritos wrapped in aluminum foil. Delivery and take out became their best friends. It didn’t take them long until they were regulars at all their favorite restaurants, and the cashiers knew their names.
They’re having fun. For the first time since Sarah’s death, they are having a good time. If food is what brings them together, then so be it. Whit loved bringing home giant bags of burgers if it means getting to see his boy smile. Walter liked encouraging his dad to have a big dessert as a midnight snack before bed. Neither of them ever take the bold step of shooting down a food idea. An extra couple boxes of wings with their pizza? Why not? A stop for ice cream on the way from the grocery store? Sounds good.
But after a while, these aren’t treats anymore. It’s the new normal. Walter and Whit systematically eroded their willpower until food was their focus all the time. They never said no. Walter bought something every time he passed a food court or a vending machine on campus. Whit was always eating the snacks in the break room.
Day after day, week after week, the calories went in and they didn’t disappear. Whit and Walter’s chunk frames started packing on pounds at breakneck speed. The waiters at Uncle Mac’s are experts at seeing guys get big; their estimates said they were gaining somewhere around 15 pounds a month. They were spiraling out of control, faster than they could even register. It seemed that every time they stopped by, they were always squeezed into shirts that couldn’t cover their whole belly and pants tight enough to outline the rolls inside their upper thighs. Raul thought it was cute that they still tried to squeeze themselves into the normal sized booths even though they could only fit if they sat on the same side and pushed the table back.
When the coats came off in the spring and they saw just how much rounder they had become from months of binging, the waiters at Uncle Mac’s were in a dilemma. It was obvious that no one was willing to be honest to Whit and Walter about just how much they had grown. They theorized that their friends were apprehensive to tell them how fragile they were emotionally right now. After all, the most important woman in their lives had died just a few months ago, who were they to say ‘move on with your lives and put down the fork, you’re comfort eating yourselves into immobility’?” According to their inside straw poll, not them. The vote came out five votes to four, so they all agreed to keep their mouths shut.
Lucky for the losing side of the argument, reality finally crashed through by the next time they came in a couple months later. Someone was doing a presentation in one of Walter’s classes and they had to use a different room for the day. Unlike the sturdy industrial metal ones he was used to, these were cheap plastic with attached armrests and desks. It was still wider than a lot of other chairs with armrests, so Walter thought he stood a good chance of being able to squeeze in. He leaned back to drop his body into the cup of the chair and got stuck. Really what happened is his love handles were too wide to slide into the chair. Thinking it had just been a fluke, Walter tried to push on the creaking chair to let him settle in. He was closer, but nowhere near the bottom. The creaking of the chair got louder. Walter slowly slid down and the plastic around his ass was starting to bend and warp. Snap! Walter looked down and a big new hole appeared. Snap! Snap! Snap! Now there’s multiple holes and one of the armrests and has almost entirely popped off. Crackle! Pop! Thud! The force of Walter falling to the floor shook the whole classroom from the chairs to the walls. All of the eyes in the room began to focus on him. The window of the door was filled with people peering in to find the source of the thunderous vibration.
When Walter came home and told his dad, the older man couldn’t help but feel bad as he searched for the scale. How could he have let things get like this? He looked down at his own body and thought about how lucky he had been to not have to go through something just as embarrassing. The yoga ball sized gut that sat in his lap all day was growing just like the pillows around his arms and moobs that kept him from ever putting them down at his size. Whit slid out the scale and let Walter step on. After a few tense seconds and a brief struggle to see the result past their billowing bellies, Walter read out:
“Error. Guess we’ve outgrown this old thing too, huh, Dad?”
Whit nodded in response. “Yeah, I think this has a capacity of around 300, so we’re going to need something pretty serious to replace it.”
So they went into the supermarket and stood on the industrial scales before the crowd bustling around them. The dial was big enough for them to see with ease and big enough for anyone passing by to get a glimpse of the number too. Walter stepped on the scale and the needle went flying into the 300s, landing squarely at 376. Whit took a deep breath before taking his turn. The number couldn’t be any worse than the feeling of the weight on his chest when he lays on his chest, he reasoned. The step onto the platform revealed the number: 487. Just one good meal short of 500.
“Walter, I’m so sorry. I’m supposed to be the one taking care of us and now look at us.”
“But Dad, you did take care of me. So maybe we’re not fitness models, but I’m okay. You kept joy in my life when it wasn’t a guarantee at all. If you don’t believe me, then we’ll have to go somewhere people really know us so they can tell you.”
Walter brought his dad to Uncle Mac’s and explained the whole situation. The waiters were frankly relieved to be able to talk out the guys’ weight freely. Now they could offer actually useful advice.
“There is nothing wrong to look for something comforting in the aftermath of a traumatic event like the love of your life dying. Unhealthy would be picking up drinking or crime or trying to suppress the emotions until they explode.” Taylor explained as he took their order and added an extra appetizer to the order.
“And there’s nothing wrong with getting big and being fat. We happen to like guys that way, and we’re not the only ones.” Lance said as he dropped off their food.
“The real problem,” Ben insisted as he passed out dessert, “is that you lived in denial for such a long time and tried to pretend you were just the same as stick thin guys. You need to live fat guy lives. You need to get clothes that fit and stop trying to sit in flimsy chairs. Listen to Raul and stop trying to squeeze in between things like your ass can’t knock things over before you know it exists. Even if you tried dieting, which I don’t think will work that well but let’s assume, you won’t be thin tomorrow. You still have to live in the giant bodies you have right now. You might as well get used to it. You’re fat guys who enjoy their food, live it up.”
Whit wasn’t entirely sure he trusted the guys at Uncle Mac’s first, but he decided to give it a try. He started small by buying a seat belt extender for his car (because it had been a long time since he got that to buckle). Then he tried using two chairs to support his weight and avoiding plastic seats. When he went a full week without hearing something creak under him, he was convinced. He invested in buying new big and tall furniture for his house, rearrange everything to get rid of the narrow corners, he even switched out his belts at work for suspenders and found out that he was a lot more comfortable and ate more when he didn’t have a belt digging into him all the time. With just a couple alterations, Whit has turned the house into a haven for the two fat boys who call it home.
Cool air and the smell of stuffing rolled around again just three months later. Thanksgiving reappeared and the waiters were looking to see all their favorite faces. When Walter and Whit waddled in, Raul gasped. It was the kind of transformation that gainers could never get on purpose. They were gigantic. Their faces had gotten so inflated, they almost looked like different people. And when they ate, it was like they had unlocked different people. Gone were the timid guys who casually worked through half a chicken as a snack. Now they mowed through the food like true pigs. If something managed to spill out their mouth, they were coming behind it with a piece of bread and licking their fingers. They couldn’t get enough no matter how much they order.
Ben and Lance looked on as they observed what had become of the timid two who had walked in the year before looking for a little TLC. When Whit popped a button off of his shirt, a wide small spread across Walter’s face and that was the moment they knew. Walter was beaming with pride watching his dad get so big. Whit smiled back at his son. These were two more of Uncle Mac’s pigs, forever changed.
Two Thanksgivings later, Walter and Whit were waddling through the door once again with bright smiles on their faces. They said hello to everyone they saw, now knowing the names of so many of the other regulars. As happy as they were, the sweat forming on their brow in the cool November air was proof that the distance from their car was not such a casual trip anymore. A space on the benches in the waiting area appeared for the pair of them.
Walter is now one of the biggest guys in the whole restaurant, and people treated him like the massive superchub he was. It’s an impressive feat to cross the 600 pound mark before the age of 23. The only reason he seemed to stick in some people’s minds as smaller than he actually was, was because he always came in with his dad. Whit is so big now, every step seems like a triumph. Immobility is knocking on the door all the time and there’s no telling when it will come. He still wouldn’t miss being at the diner though.
Lance and Ben took care of their old friends and let them chow down as the food came out. Their orders were too big to fit on the table anyway, so at least this way they have time to sit and chat while they eat.
“I can’t believe you wake up every morning and still drag your 750 pound body into work everyday. That’s dedication.” Lance said.
“Well I like what I do, and besides how else are we going to keep food on the table if folks don’t go to work?” Whit responded.
“This is his coded way of saying that he doesn’t want me at home taking care of him,” Walter said.
“What do I need him home for? He’s not that much better than me at being able to pick things up off the ground or walking long or medium distances. He’s a young guy who has better things to do than hang around his old man like start his career.” Whit explained. Ben couldn’t help but chuckle. “Ben, you’ve got a good head on your shoulders. Would your dad put your life on pause like that?”
Ben’s eyes opened wide. “Oh I wouldn’t trust my dad’s opinion on anything.”
“He raised you. He must have done a decent job somewhere along the way. I bet he’s proud to have a son like you walking around.”
“My dad cut me out of his life some years ago. I haven’t heard from my family in forever.”
Whit cupped Ben’s face in his hand and said, “Well know that I’m so very proud of you. I’m glad to have you as my family. I know you’re busy at work, but know you’d always be welcome at our table for Thanksgiving.”
“Thank you.”
“Any time son. Now be a good boy and get your folks a glass of the sweet potato pie milkshake,” Whit said.
Ben laughed and said, “Yes sir. Comin’ right up.”