Fatty McLiarson

Fatty McLiarson

By Bob Respert © 2008

"I used to be a competitive skier," she said, "until I blew out my knee and had to stop racing. And I absolutely love yoga."

Good, I thought, athletic.

Emily and I had been talking for quite some time over an instant messenger on the computer. Her in ski-country and me in the suck-belt. Ugh, the Midwest. What a fucking dump. Nice job basing almost your entire future existence on the American factory worker and his union. Well played, Midwest. I can see the abandoned factories now.

Literally. They're everywhere already. While Mexicans, Asians, and pretty much everyone else in the world laughs at our fat, bowling-crazy factory workers as they crank out better quality goods for less. Anyways...

It's amazing what the whiz kids of the world have done for my quality of life and the general laziness with which I enjoy coasting along. I can instruct the pizza artists at the local Papa John's on how many garlic butters to place on the side of my order. On my computer. Right from the couch! I can order presents and have them shipped to where I'll be showing up to give them. I can find any kind of porn that I want. (Lord, don't get me started on porn.) But one of the more important technological breakthroughs of my generation is the ability to converse with people in other parts of the world in real time from the luxury of my well appointed bachelor pad.

"Great, because I'm all about keeping in great shape." Not really, I silently mused, I just don't want you thinking you can half-ass your down dogs over the next month before we have a chance to meet in person.

Everything had started with her sudden interest in my totally gay online diary. Not gay in the sense that I'm gay. Cause, I'm not. (Hear that ladies?) But a blog is a nothing more than an online diary and diaries are gay.

I'm not sure how she found it, but I always welcome new readers. Anyone who can read my insane ramblings and find them entertaining is automatically good in my book. At least until they prove themselves otherwise. Boy did she enjoy my site. Comments all the time turned into the occasional email. The occasional email turned into more persistent emailings and eventually she dropped a proposal on my lap.

She thought I'd be really fun to do a podcast with. And of course she was right because I'm really fun to do just about anything with. The persistence paid off for her as I eventually hemmed and hawed enough to feel like I had to.

So we began having phone conversations.

Her voice was velvety with notes of coriander and spice. (Fuck, I drink too much wine. Sorry about that.) I mean to say that she had a sultry voice that lent itself to the eventual flirting that took place.

While there was plenty of getting to know each other there were equal parts flirtation and fantasy. She talked freely of her past jobs and the occasional relationship while I, per usual, talked about everything and anything. It was fun. I was starting to like her.

She lived in a really nice home, had a vacation home in a ski-town, and was running an online boutique clothing store. She seemed to be doing really well for herself, which is great and all but I cared not for what she did or how much money she made. No, I was more interested in what she looked like.

There are certain things a guy can put up with and they all can be suffered through for certain periods of time. Here are some examples:

A beached whale worth ten million is an absolute no-go.

An ugly face with a killer body gets a couple drunken tussles in the sack.

An ugly woman with a bad body gets nothing.

A hot chick living the Jerry Springer lifestyle (trailer, kids, abusive ex) is an absolute go for between 2-3 months or until she starts trying to get her kids around you, whichever comes first.

A mediocre looking woman with tremendous sex appeal rates 2-3 months of behind the scenes relations with friends never meeting her in person and an additional 1 full year of late night booty calls.

A hot chick with money gets as long as she wants.

So, needless to say, I was interested in what she looked like. She was really hesitant about sending me a picture. Now, I know any sane person in this situation would assume she's a fatty, but there was a reason I didn't. She was really hesitant with other things as well. She only called from a cell phone and wouldn't call from, or give me, the home phone. She mentioned some past things that gave her caution in this arena, as well. So I wasn't shocked when she didn't want to send a picture. It seemed par for the course with her overall caution towards strange guys.

But really, what bad can come of a picture? If she's all hot and fit like she claims she is then where's the issue? I guess I was blinded by the light (Potential booty call light) and wrapped up like a douche.

So I eventually convinced her to send a picture and she sent along what appeared to be a picture taken by her, on her bed, and from above her face angled to catch her body. It worked. No head, but nice body. Oh, and it was in lingerie. Excellent.

With flirtation going on for quite some time it seemed appropriate to meet. At least that's what my penis thought, and I have come to trust his sound judgment and sense of timing. We began to discuss getting together to meet, and I'll be honest here, that totally meant we'd be hooking up. The conversations had clearly gone down this path by now and I had a couple grainy, faceless pictures that looked good enough for me and my penis.

Hell, she constantly talked about yoga and skiing, the gym, and keeping in shape. At this point I was thinking she'd be pretty darn doable. Plus, as embarrassed as I feel mentioning this, I was really enjoying talking with her. If her body was what the picture showed, and the conversation flowed the way it did on the internet/phone, and as long as her face didn't look like Rocky Dennis from Mask, It'd be all systems go.

Back and forth we went, me trying to get her to meet up and her shying away and pushing for a certain weekend when I'd be away at training and she could fly in to see me. Eventually we settled on the training weekend.

I hit the exercise bike and pseudo diet hard, hoping to look my best when she walked in. I researched, and found, a nice hotel to book so that I wouldn't have to risk anything with the Nazi regime that runs our training sessions. (No visitors. No leaving on weekends. No expensing porn.)

Leading in the phone conversations got more and more sexual. It wasn't a question of were we going to do it any longer. It was how and where now.

Then I got a nasty sinus cold. It was really bad. I had a really painful headache and my face was in pain from the pressure in my sinuses. I was doped up on numerous medications and I almost called it off. But I figured I could dope up and hit the booze. Booze always helps with the pain.

I got to the place early and set things up. I had purchased some wines and wine glasses. I got a haircut, ate dinner because she'd be arriving late, and downed close to a bottle of wine to make my face stop hurting. It mostly worked. Along the way she called from the airport. Her flight was delayed a bit and she was in the bar waiting. She told me how a guy had asked to buy her a drink, which she explained as something that happens to her all the time. Nice. That's a good sign. Ugly women don't get consistent offers for free drinks.

The call came in that she had finally landed and was on her way over. I was set. I had booze in my system and booze ready for her. I had jimmy hats. I looked good. I didn't feel the greatest, but it was manageable at that moment.

The knock on the door sent my heart racing. How hot was she going to be? Would she be wearing a trench coat with nothing on underneath? Would she really want to lick bourbon off my chiseled abs?

In a word, ohmygodwhatthefuckIthoughyouwerehotthisblows.

She was as tall as me and a good deal thicker than she purported to be, a combination that wins no awards with me. Her hair was thick and almost mangy in a few spots, which can be attributed to the plane ride, I guess. When we hugged hello and I got my hands around her midsection it felt like I was squeezing my hands into soft dough. I even got scared for a moment, worried that her stomach might confuse my hands for food and try to eat them. She looked like a 15-20lb heavier version of what she said she was, and not in a good way. You know how some people put on a couple pounds and it distributes well and doesn't look that bad, right? But then some people put on a few pounds and it goes bad fast, like how ugly Charlize Theron became when she put on weight to play that serial killer.

Chubby Jennifer Tilly = Good.

Chubby Charlize Theron = Bad.

(By the way... Jennifer Tilly + Gina Gershon + Lesbianism = Excellent movie called Bound.)

This was not the package I was sold. A total bait and switch.

Her own phrases kept darting through my mind...

"Guys are always buying me drinks."
"I absolutely love yoga."
"I'm athletic."
"I ski all the time."

...And all I could think was, "Are you fucking kidding me? Does she understand what the words 'fit' and 'athletic' even mean?"

I couldn't (And still can't) get over how badly she set herself up for failure. You can't send pictures of when you were years younger, and tremendously more fit, to someone and not expect them to assume you look like that, can you? You can't talk constantly about how fit you are and the hours and hours of yoga you do without someone assuming you'll be in shape. Honestly, there's no way she actually does yoga with any sort of consistency. Nor does she have an athletic body. She might have had an athletic body hiding under a solid layer of once uneaten tubs of cookie dough ice-cream-turned-fat, but you don't tout yourself as the underneath layer and expect people to buy it when they meet you.

Here's the main thing. I felt hoodwinked.

Sure, she wasn't hot and fit, but she wasn't ugly and she wasn't so fat that I couldn't get my arms around her. She was just clearly not what she claimed to be, which turned out to be a major disappointment. One that, I might add, was perpetuated by her. She didn't need to lie. She didn't need to send pictures of what now looked like her younger, hotter sister. I probably would have still met up with her at that point if she had sold herself correctly. As a moderately attractive woman with the need to hit the gym to take a few pounds off, who was up for a good time. But no, she had to go and ruin it with the old bait and switch. And my dumb ass fell for it.

But I fucked Fatty McLiarson anyways.

I'll slot it under Slump Busting in my repertoire.


A 14 year old black Caucasian from Beijing, Bob Respert has traveled the world in search of answers and so far has only found three: Yes, not unless you want Chlamydia, and when all else fails just flop it out and see what happens.

Timmy

By Bob Respert © 2005

Timmy always rolled out of the rack early on Mondays. Most people will tell you they hate Mondays, but not Timmy. Mondays meant cash. Monday was collection day.

This wasn't an ordinary Monday though, today would be tough. So tough, in fact, that he’d told that bitch Jennifer to leave as soon as he was done boning her last night. He needed the time alone to think.

Normally in a situation like this, Timmy would fire off a phone call or email to his longtime mentor Pauly.

He always counted on Pauly for advice. He thought back to a few of the more memorable replies he’d gotten from his buddy. Pissed off at his dad for trying to send him to baseball camp, Pauly convinced him to confront his dad's desire to live vicariously through him, and demand he be allowed to "chase muff," as he had so succinctly put it. There was also that time his asshole principal had caught him running a March Madness pool and wanted a 50% cut. Fucking prick. Pauly was dead on when he suggested finding some dirt on that douche bag to level the playing field. Who knew anybody liked fucking donkeys?

He’d be calling this morning, but not for advice. This time it was business.

Becoming the largest bookie in a state where sports betting was illegal wasn't easy. If you start at a young age and immerse yourself in the degenerate lifestyle it helps. More importantly though, you need to make nice-nice with plenty of unsavory people. That’s how you get your connections. That’s how you become known.

That’s how you find yourself collecting a debt from your mentor when you know he can’t pay.

Seriously, who bets a hundred grand on a WNBA game? Fucking Pauly, man. How did he let this happen? Normally, he was a good judge of when to cut his friends off before they hurt themselves. Normally, it worked. Normally, shmormally. Where was the rest of that fucking whiskey?

Knowing full well he couldn’t pay the bet off, the numbers were dialed. No answer. Now he had to find him. That would take time. Time would favor someone before it was all said and done. Maybe time would allow Pauly to win the fucking lottery. Maybe time would cool off a conflicted, degenerate bookie. Things weren’t looking good for Pauly.

There were only a few spots Pauly would be. He might be exactly 100 yards from the front door of some chick in Brooklyn. She was an heiress to some elevator button company that he had dated some 15 years ago. That was one of three restraining orders that Timmy knew about. Another spot you could find him was down in Chinatown trying to hawk his paintings and novels. If he wasn’t at his apartment, or either of the other two spots, he was in Vegas.

A quick search of each spot confirmed for Timmy what his gut was already telling him. He was in Vegas spending more money that he didn’t have. Money that he owed. Looked like time was going to give Pauly about five hours to come up with a jackpot. Timmy was heading for the airport.

As a 6'5" monster of a man, Timmy always flew first class. He always used the same carrier as well, and they knew him by name. There’s something comforting about being able to just smile and nod your way quickly through what should be a slow, and annoying process.

Almost to Vegas, Timmy was strangely compelled to buy something from the Sky Mall catalog. Who knows why the fuck it happened. Maybe it was just to be able say he did it.

Taxi to Excalibur. Beeline to the poker room. Beating of a lifetime. That was the plan.

Plans are just plans for a reason. You follow them as closely as possible, but sometimes plans change. When Pauly wasn’t there, and Timmy overhead that the World Series of Poker was going on at Binion’s, he knew right where Pauly would be.

The crowd was huge, but Timmy was bigger. He pushed his way through to the front of the spectator area, all the while scanning the crowd for his mentor. His left fist was having a hard time not balling up, preparing for the inevitable beating it would help deliver.

Scan. Push. Scan. Shove. Scan.

And there he was. Sitting with one two other guys at a poker table, right at the center of this madhouse. Not being much of a poker guy, he asked some kid in a pair of sunglasses what the deal was. The weird fucker wearing sunglasses indoors told him it was a heads up battle for the WSOP title.

"What the fuck is that," asked Timmy

"The biggest poker tournament in the world, man. The winner gets $4 million dollars."

"What about the loser?"

"Around $2 million."

Timmy grinned like a 15-year old boy seeing real live titties for the first time. He couldn’t help it, he was given an out. There would be no beatings, there would be no awkwardness, and most importantly, there would be one hundred grand. He noticed Pauly finding him in the crowd, and he smiled.

Pauly smiled back as he pushed all the chips he had into the center of the table. The announcer was yelling something, but you couldn’t hear it over the screaming from the audience gathered close.

BZZZZ....BZZZZ....BZZZZ

What the fuck was that? Some sort of fire alarm? A weight limit like in an elevator? There were a lot of fat people scattered around the second floor of this casino.

BZZZZ......BZZZZ.....BZZZZ

Pauly woke up in a cold sweat. FUCK! Was it Monday fucking morning already?

Damn, Pauly hated Mondays. Mondays were collection days, and that was one weird fucking dream to start off the week.

Bob Respert is a drugs salesman from Michigan.

Cleotis

By Bob Respert © 2005

Cleotis was incensed.

He was also confused.

When his buddy Jay told him that he looked incensed about something, he wanted to ring his neck. He doesn’t have a sister, and even if he did he wouldn’t have sex with her. It wasn’t until he said those exact words did Cleotis realize that Jay hadn’t said incest, but instead a word that sounds familiar and apparently means angry.

Stupid words.

Maybe finishing college wouldn’t be such a bad idea. People seem to like using big words and stuff. One of these days, he thought. A time when he wasn’t in such a good place, maybe.

Get yourself a sweet studio apartment right down the street from work and your favorite hangout, and you’ve got yourself something sweeter than Yoohoo. Damn he loved that movie Kingpin. It sorta hit close to home for him. Cleotis lived in a small town, he hung out at the bowling alley every waking moment, and he was the best in his town at a game you played inside those walls. No, I’m not talking about bowling.

I’m talking about Dance Dance Revolution.

Nobody was better. In fact, he had battled every kid in that puny town of his and won. Early in his career he was still an unknown, able to fleece unsuspecting punks out of a few bucks in a challenge match. Some of the money he saved, but most of it he spent to pimp out his ride. He owned a phat ride, a 1996 Dodge Neon. This wasn’t your ordinary Neon though. He spent hundreds of dollars on the right fin (2 feet high), the perfect decals (flames and such), a new hood with one of those humps in it designed to allow for more engine to fit (still has the original engine), and special lettering to announce to everyone how much of a badass he and his car are (Turbo, Loco, etc.)

He was the shit, and he knew that everyone knew it.

Evenings were spent leaning up against his baby, the DDR machine, gently pulling swigs from a Miller High Life, and waiting for challengers. Most were in their early teens but he didn’t mind. He wasn’t looking for big scores in this shitty town any longer. He’d outgrown it. He was waiting for his Neon to get out of the shop so he could head to LA, the premier DDR battleground, and the site where they film Dance 360 Degrees.

Cleotis was going to make it big, he just had to wait for his $300 muffler to be installed. It’s a special muffler that is specifically designed to sound as if there is no muffler on the car. He was pumped.

But like I said before, he was incensed. Not from his car taking longer than expected. Not from his baby’s moms getting pissed off that he hadn’t paid child support for 6 years either.

Nope. He was pissed from losing his first battle in over 8 years. To a girl no less.

Nobody beats Cleotis. Worse yet, she didn’t even offer a rematch. Even worse than that, he was strangely attracted to her. He thought she looked a bit familiar, and it wasn’t the fact that she was trying desperately to rip off Britney Spears’ wardrobe and persona.

Maybe that was why he lost. He couldn’t concentrate because he was constantly trying to place her face. He chuckled as he thought of where else he might like to place her face. He needed a rematch.

In a small town you can track people down. She wasn’t from around here, but generally you don’t make it to the local lanes if you don’t at least have friends or family in the area. Cleotis started asking around. He was able to decipher what type of car she arrived in from Louie up front. Louie stands on a chair and waves to cars all day long from just outside the bowling alley’s doorway. He’s gotta be retarded. At least a little bit. Nevertheless, when asked which car the cute girl drove, Louie muttered “Neon…Neon.”

Damn, a woman after his own heart. There were only two other Neons in all of the town so he set off on his bike looking for the odd Dodge out. He found it quickly, parked in front of the towns only motel. Door 1A.

He could tell that little Cleotis was excited to see her Neon jazzed up with a drop kit, sweet rims, and a brand new exhaust system similar to what he was waiting on. Little Cleotis fueled him to the door and he knocked.

Answering in just a long softball jersey, she looked at him seductively.

Cleotis regained his composure in time to ask if he could come in.

“Only if you promise to play nice” she said softly, as she pulled him in by grabbing the top waistband of his jeans and deftly moving him in while swinging the door shut.

They tore at each other like wild animals, each frantically trying to get down to business as soon as possible. Cleotis helped with his tighty whiteys, the last barrier to what lay ahead. Immersed in a Tazmanian Devil-like cloud of clothes, sheets, and bodies, they made sweet love for upwards of three minutes. A personal best for Cleotis, and she seemed quite pleased with his efforts.

As they lay together catching their breath, Cleotis realized he hadn’t asked her name yet. Nor had he placed why she looked familiar.

“I woulda asked sooner, but you know…I never got your name.”

“Jesse. Jesse Collins. I’m from up in Otsego.”

“Otsego? Collins? Are you related to Earle Collins from A & C Lumber?”

“Yeah, that’s my dad! Do you know him?”

And at that precise moment, Cleotis knew the difference between incest and incensed, and he was both.

Bob Respert is a drug salesman from Michigan.

Reunion

By Bob Respert © 2004

In preparation for heading out to my ten year high school reunion, some of my friends and I got together for food and drinks. I was concentrating on the drink portion of the meeting.

I have a HUGE problem with remembering peoples names. I actually dread going certain places when I'm back in town because you can count on bumping into somebody. So I wanted a nice headstart on the booze.

Sometimes, I just can't tell the difference between people I recognize as being from my hometown, and people I actually know from my hometown. I had the same problem in college because you'd see the same people in your business classes over and over, so when you were at a random party a year or two down the road, you had to determine if they looked familiar because you walked by them 600 times, or because you actually knew them, had a study group with them, or had sex with their sister.

Of course the chances of the last scenario being the one is slim to none.

Anywho, with a few drinks in the stomach, we head out to the reunion. The first person I see is a guy named Ivan. We always joked about Ivan because he was that guy who used Fuck, Fucking, and Fuckin as much as Paris Hilton say's "That's hot."

A normal sentence from Ivan would go something like,

"Fuckin Bob! Man, I was just fucking talking about you and fuckin...man, what was his fucking name...that guy with the fucking brother in the army....Fuck!"

So I walk in the door, and he drops two F-bombs in the first sentence he delivers. Ahh, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

We walk up to the desk to get our name badges, and I immediately bump into someone whose name I can't recall. Of course, to be hip, she and half of everyone else has their name tags in hard to read locations.

"Hey Bob!"

"Heyyyy, buddy!"

So I get through that without anyone noticing, and I make a break for my friend Andrea's side. We get in a conversation with some people I know, but one person I only recognize. Thus begins the phrase I mutter many times in the evening as I make an obvious attempt to read nametags.

"Sorry man, seeing everyone for the first time in ten years has my brain on sensory overload."

It seemed to be working alright.

Now there are only a few things you could do to make a reunion awkward for somebody, and one of those is to walk up and start right in on stories with somebody you were never really close with. You gotta ease into it, maybe they (me) are having trouble remembering your name.

So within 15 minutes of being in the building, a dude who looks a lot like Jack Osborne walks into the group of us talking and starts right in on me.

"Man, I thought that was you."

Then, looking at the girl next to me, he begins to regale her with stories about being my suite-mate in college, and how it was such great times. He was being pretty generic about it, and I didn't recognize him one bit. I thought he was just fucking around, cause he looked like the kind of guy with a quirky enough personality to do just that.

I actually said that I didn't recognize him, rather than pulling the "Oh yeah, how ya doin man, it's been a long time" crap.

I would have bet money he was bullshittin? me, and then he begins to tell me about the suite-mate that I do remember, and before you know it, I'm 100% certain that I shared a bathroom with this guy for at least one semester in college, and I still don't recognize the guy at all. In fact, I don't remember the other guy even having a suitemate.

To make the situation even more ridiculous, he didn't even go to my high school. He married a girl that was in my class. She was the one that I was greeted by at the desk where I couldn't remember her name.

I figured it to be a long night.

Everybody was married, mostly to goofy looking bastards. As I saw person after person from my past, I had a certain feeling that I was having trouble describing. It wasn't until I saw this guy who was still rocking the same pony tail from high school that it hit me.

It was like the scene from Old School were Luke Wilson's character is drunk and giving his best man speech. He looks into the crowd and with sincere giddiness he says something to the extent of

"I haven't seen your dad in like, ten years, that's awesome. Congratulations!"

I kept looking over at people thinking,

"Hey, he's still got the same ponytail. That's awesome!"

or

"Wow, so that's why Meijers is always out of Twinkies!"

It really ended up being nice to see a bunch of old faces from the past, though. I was amazed that certain people didn't change at all, but then again, I don't think I changed all that much.

Seeing that guy who was still rocking the same ponytail though, that made my night.

That was awesome. If you're reading this, congratulations on that.

Bob Respert is a pharmaceutical salesman from Michigan.