Fat kids are fun. Richard Simmons has a vagina.

What is the definition of food?

The chief comfort Southern women are born and bred to provide to their loved ones.

The Grandmother isn’t a true Southern woman in a lot of ways, but that heifer can cook. Fried chicken, mac-n-cheese, rice and gravy, biscuits. And bake...Boston crème pie, cheesecake, pound cake, peach cobbler. When she wasn’t cooking, she was feeding me store bought goodness. Cheetos, cookies, ice cream sandwiches, candy bars.

I would sit in my brown wing chair, watch “Clarissa Explains it All” marathons and stuff my chubby little face. Then I’d lock myself in my room and read about horror (Goosebumps) and pre teen angst (The Saddle Club).

Misty water colored memories....

Until...TG decided she was tired of my expanding, adolescent waist. She began her campaign then and there by making the most beautiful cheesecake I’d ever seen.

(There’s a long list of things I’ll do for good cheesecake and most of them are felonies and/or crimes of a sexual nature.)

She brought said cheesecake out on a lovely glass platter and called my 10 year old self into the dining room. “Look what I made”, she said as she extended her arms, bringing the platter level with my face.

As I looked, it sang its cheesecake siren song and demanded I inch just a bit closer. So I did. But as I took that one tiny step, TG took one back. I looked up at her in puzzlement. This was my offering, was it not? I was the chosen child, was I not?

“Oh, I forgot...you can’t have this”, she declared. Then she whipped around and toted it back to the kitchen.

That was the day my sister became the undisputed favorite and I became the “Oh, you can’t have that” grandchild. Even 15 years and a normal weight later, I’m still the “Oh you can’t have that” grandchild. Old habits die hard, I suppose.

Once TG started her campaign to shame me into losing weight, my mother jumped on the band wagon. She realized that she had found the perfect work out buddy to help her lose that 2nd baby poundage.

I saw my life flash before my eyes when she purchased matching work out clothing and a box set of Richard Simmons exercise videos.

But no matter how much I protested, I was told that the Department of Social Services most certainly wouldn’t consider it child abuse. No amount of threatening, begging, or bargaining with my candy stash could keep her from her goal: 3 days a week mimicking Richard’s scary, tan legs pump pump pumping away at the pony.

Have you ever seen a fat kid and her mom do the pony in spandex shorts? Don’t. Ever.

To this day I can’t listen to most oldies songs for fear of regression. If I hear Peggy Sue, my feet start doing the quick step heel toe heel toe heel toe and I start pulling out my hair in panic. When I watch Dirty Dancing, I put the TV on mute through the Wipeout song montage.

But copying and watching that giddy man stomp away wasn’t enough punishment for the fat kid. NO.

My mom thought Richard Simmons was sexy.

While we ponyed across the living room, he ponyed across the TV screen in his tiny red and while stripped shorts...tan, shiny legs flashing and afro bouncing.

And she would say, “OOOOO WEEEEE! Huff, puff left. LOOK AT THOSE SEXY LEGS! Huff, puff right. I’D LIKE TO LICK THOSE CALVES SOMETHIN’ FIERCE! Huff, puff left. LOOK AL, LOOK AT UM MMMM MMM! Huff, Puff right.”

Her favorite saying though, was “Richard Simmons’s legs were hand crafted by Jesus.”

Once she said it in front of my dad and through him Crown Royal replied, “Jesus don’t craft fag legs.”

My daddy was (is) an eloquent, well mannered drunk.

As you can well imagine, after weeks of being subjected to this treatment I was growing more and more agitated. Rebellion was inevitable.

It came on a Saturday afternoon. My mom had some kind of lunch get together for her friends and one brought their daughter for me to play with. Her name was Suzanne and she was a walking fence post. Of course I hated her.

As they fixed our lunch plates, our mothers discussed Richard Simmons and his “Sweatin’ to the oldies” tape. And then it came.

“His legs were hand crafted by Jesus”, my mom said reverently to her nodding friends.

And the angry fat kid in me heard those words, saw all the vegetables on that fucking lunch plate and lost it.

“Daddy says Jesus doesn’t craft fag legs and with shorts that small he probably has a vagina. And I bet he’s right! Richard Simmons is a woman!”

Crickets.

Crickets.

“Excuse us”, my mom said.

She grabbed me by the arm and pulled me down the hall, into her room, and beat my ass with the biggest belt she could find. I laughed.

She banished me to my room with my plate of vegetables and the fence post Suzanne. I dug out my candy stash.

“Are you supposed to be eating that”, she asked.

“No”, I said.

“But what if you get caught? You could get spanked again.”

“So what?”

“Well...I’D be scared!”

I popped a piece of chocolate in my mouth and grinned. “That’s because you don’t have any padding, fence post.”

Then I did the pony out the door.

(Ok, so I didn’t do the pony part...but that would have been awesome right?)

After everyone left, my mom called dad at work to tell him what I’d done. When he got home that evening he stopped by my room.

“Here”, he said, handing me a $10 bill.

“What’s that for”, I asked.

“For making me laugh and pissing off your mom’s friends.”

I bought lots of candy with that $10...and I never did the pony again.

Why I don't like (receiving) oral sex:

Aside from the fact that I’ve only met one man that could do it without making me feel like a turkey being glazed before stuffed.....

It’s all Michael Bolton’s fault.

That’s right. That long haired crooner of the 90’s ruined oral sex for me.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I liked him alright. “When a man loves a woman” was a classic...a ballad for lovers young and old. “How am I supposed to live without you” made me want to get on my knees and raise my hands to the sky and shout, “WHY! WHY!” before collapsing into a heap of teenage angst on the floor.

My mother was completely obsessed with him. I don’t mean, “Gosh, he’s just so handsome. I love his music. I have all his albums. My friends and I are so excited his concert tour is coming through!”

Nuh uh.

I mean, “OH MY FUCKING GAWD LOOK AT THAT MAAAAN! I WANT TO CLIMB UP THAT BODY AND STAY THERE TILL I MELT OFF! SCREAM! THEY’RE PLAYING MY FAVORITE SONG! IT’S MICHAEL IT’S MICHAEL! WHEN A MAAAAAN LOVES A WOOOOMAN! SWOON.”

She had so many t-shirts with his face plastered on them. Most of them were sleep shirts so she could “lie against his face”. Yeah, I’m serious.

I still remember the day the announcement came over the radio that he was coming here for a concert. We were in the car. I almost died that day. She swerved and yelled and if it’s possible to do the mambo while driving...she did it. I still blame my bad (selective) hearing on her Michael screaming fits.

She’d hidden her camera in her pants to get it into the concert and came back with 4 rolls of film. Where she put them all, I never want to know.

Evidently, while singing one of his soulful songs, Michael decided to walk down an aisle and into the fevered group of middle aged women. Schmuck.

My mom had an aisle seat. As soon as he got to her row (and I’ve heard this story 70 thousand times) he stopped. He looked at her as he crooned into the microphone. He got right.up.in.her.shit...and took her hand. After a second, she jerked her hand back, whipped out her camera, and snapped a picture right.up.in.his.shit.

Her friend said the poor man couldn’t move for about 15 seconds. Just stood their singing and blinking while my mother screamed, “MICHAEL MICHAEL I LOVE YOU”. It’s lucky for mom that her friend hid the camera. Otherwise, I never would have had the pleasure of gazing into an 8x10 blown up photo of Michael Bolton’s startled face every single day for about 10 years.

And now, we’ve come back to ME.

I was young, dumb, and full of false bravado when it came to boys.

I was also home alone quite often. My sister stayed at a sitters or a friend’s house until my mom collected her, as I was not to be trusted. Something about feeding cat food to her and her friends. Whatever.

One summer I had a very eager and experimental boyfriend that we shall call Big Nose, or BN for short.

BN didn’t live very far and he would ride his bike through the woods to come see me almost every day.

After weeks of making out, he finally convinced me to allow him access to the Holy Grail. (Yes, I said weeks. I wasn’t always slutty.) And so we progressed from only under the shirt feely action and tonsil hockey to fingering.

I was less impressed by this fingering business than my friends. Mostly because BN had no idea where the clitoris is....or probably even WHAT it is. Probably thought it was a myth, like unicorns and free hookers.

I braved his fingered onslaught like a champion, only occasionally saying, “Would you hurry up”, when he got a little too excited.

Then one afternoon he made me an offer I was too bored to refuse.

“Wanna let me...you know?”

“What”, I said, popping my gum.

“Go down?”

Big sigh. “I guess. Saved by the Bell doesn’t come on for another half hour anyway.”

He dragged me back to my parent’s bedroom, of all fucking places, because “they have a water bed and I hear it’s better.”

To which I replied, “I’m not having sex with you.”
And he said, “I know that...I mean I think it’ll be more fun.”
Gum pop. “Uh huh.”

And so we arranged ourselves on the bucking water bed. I was nervous and hiding it pretty well behind my practiced disdain.

He reached over to hit the play button on the tape player and said, “Just for a little background...” and out came Michael’s voice.

I gritted my teeth and looked up at the ceiling as he made his move.

Ok. Alright. This was fine. Weird, but fine.

As I turned my head to the side, Michael started in on “Time, love, and tenderness” and my eyes locked on the giant framed photo of his face. Staring at me.

And the water bed was making little slosh slosh noises...and BN was making weird slurping noises and poking me (unpleasantly) with his gigantic nose...and Michael was staring at me and singing, “Oh baby, oh baby, you just need some tiiiiime love and tendernesssssss” and BN started moving his tongue in time with the lyrics and it was FREAKING ME OUT. Time, lick, love, lick, and, lick, tenderness, three fast...lick lick lick.

And it scared me, ok.

Something about the combination of the water bed, that giant nose, and Michael Bolton timed licking knocked me off oral. It took me years not to hear that long haired fucker in my head every time a man dined in.

The one that finally managed to make it seem like a pleasure and not a thing to get out of the way was, go figure, a man whore and the kid’s dad. I’m sure he could tie cherry stems into knots with his tongue. Maybe even lift a five pound dumbbell with it.

The first time he came after me with that thing, I ran. Well, crawled relatively fast across the bed. Once I explained the problem to him, and he finished laughing hysterically, he held me down and tried to cure me. And there was no love and tenderness involved.

Now that he’s out of the picture and leading a life of abstinence, (ironic laughter) I’ve reverted back to my old issues. There’s just not been another that knows what the fuck is going on down there.

And that is how Michael Bolton gave me an oral sex complex.

The End.