Before our orbits collided, as a little girl, I was the one who had to play the daddy. At my babysitter’s house, we played pretend family. Even then, as a kid, I was a big girl: wide-set shoulders, developed muscles in my quads, traps that already looked intimidating supporting a squat neck. Powerful as a Mack Truck at just five years old, holding the stares of anybody brave enough to look twice. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll be your Daddy.”
I knew my role as the daddy. Come home from work, feel tired, kick my shoes off and watch TV. But the kids thought I was weird when I cussed out the girl playing the mommy to get my beer and my medicine. Shouting in the faces of my “children” who better pick up their crap or they’re getting the boot to their ass. I had to explain what getting the boot to the ass meant to these kids. I was like, “What don’t you get? I sound just like a dad.”
But those kids didn’t know that I never wanted to be the daddy, even if I was great at it. What I really wanted to be was the mommy and wear an apron or the house dress my babysitter kept in the dress-up box, to put that on and feel delicate. I would have liked to have the pretend daddy stand behind me and have to bend down a bit to put his arms around me. Then he would dance with me with my hands up on his shoulders or my shoes on top of his feet. I would twirl with my dress swishing and fanning out, looking like frosting on a cupcake. But even when I’d say, “My turn to play the mommy this time,” the kids would yuk-yuk at how some gigantic kid could even dream of being like their pretty little mommies—their mommies who picked them up in super-sized SUVs, which made the mommies look even smaller than their actual size, like it was all some optical illusion.
In elementary school, on class photo day, Angel Thomas always had to hold the sign in front of the class since he was so tiny—he was born a preemie and almost didn’t make it. I was always the monstrous kid, center in the back, heads taller than all the other kids. On the way out of school, I heard Xander Niccoli’s dad ask him about our class photo. “Who’s this grown-ass man with the long hair in the back row?”
“No,” replied the kid, “that’s a girl. She does one-handed pull-ups on the swing set.”
The parent, looking dumbfounded, uttered a “the fuck?” as he opened the driver’s side for his second grader and had no booster seat.
In high school, I shaved my head. Because I wished somebody would talk about something other than how massive I was. One afternoon, trying to make a copy of my neighbor’s hide-a-key, I strolled through Home Depot, rocking my buzz cut and grunge flannel. I pocketed a king-sized Kit Kat while I waited for a balding, sweaty guy with pit stains to cut the key that would allow me to “borrow” my neighbor’s video games when they weren’t home. Behind me down the aisle, an employee hollered, “Excuse me, young man, young man, hey!” When I turned to look at him in his orange apron covered in pins and patches, he apologized and let me walk out, no questions asked. I didn’t know if he was scared of me or felt bad for me, since by my eyes you could tell I’m a girl. My eyes, just not the rest of me. The Kit Kat didn’t even taste good, so I shot it like an NBA baller into the trash can in the parking lot. I missed. I didn’t pick it up.
In community college, I was the friend who carried my drunk friends home from the bar, piggyback style or fireman style if they were puking. One night, I said, “Kyra, I told you not to order another Hurricane.” This bitch, she drank anything any guy put in her hand. Earlier that night, I was post up near my friends at the bar, a natural dude-repellent for anyone within a ten-foot radius. Sometimes my girls dipped out on me if they really wanted to bring a guy home and smash. But that night, I wasn’t about to let Kyra get scooped up by some university kid bragging about banging girls without condoms. I mean, c’mon, University. Wrap up your dick and bang like a gentleman.
After almost finishing my associate’s degree because they said I plagiarized, I walked down the street to 7-Eleven near the college to get a Monster when two men passed me and just had to say out loud, “Oh damn, she’s like a linebacker.”
The other replied to his friend, “Bitch looks like a frigerator.” And they laughed and laughed, throaty, husky laughs all the way down the block while I pretended not to hear it. I downed my Monster and crushed the can in my hand until sharp aluminum pierced my palm. I just held it like that, waiting, waiting until those two assholes vanished around the corner and laughed themselves to death.
Before you, I suppose I might have seemed lonely at times. But at night, the weight of myself kept me company. I felt my well-shaped muscles. I had serious muscle definition despite the fact that I’d never seen the inside of the 24-Hour Fitness down the street from my apartment. I felt the effort it took to move my arm over my forehead or to move my legs to turn over onto my stomach. I was my own weighted blanket, my own partner lying on top of myself.
But when I did feel alone, I would lie spread-eagle on my bed, a terrifying bulk of meat. I would imagine myself melting into the mattress, rendered chunks of flesh oozing through the fabric, liquifying, trickling past the springs, and into a puddle on the floor beneath. What was left of me would reassemble itself as someone small, petite. Someone bony you were afraid didn’t eat or was dying of something really painful. Someone the shape of a flagpole, a lightning rod, or a y-axis. This new creation of me would look like she could be somebody’s pretty, doll-like momma cruising down Central in a shiny new Suburban. Newly formed me would be constructed with sharper edges, and the waste would continue to seep through the floorboards and congeal in the basement below. The new me, once I dried, would smile and wink up at a big, beautiful daddy who towered over me: You.
You were the man of my dreams. I thought we would never meet, that you didn’t exist. But there you were one day in line buying gas-station hot dogs. I liked that you were a man who took risks. You loomed over the cashier as you informed him they were out of orange soda, your favorite. Then you plopped down a glass jar of coins to purchase your dogs and a Slim Jim. You paid the impatient guy behind you buying bath salts no mind as you counted down to the pennies. Our eyes locked when you turned, half a dog swallowed, and spied me buying some sunflower seeds and expired deodorant. You held my stare, and I held yours. When you tell the story, you say I broke our locked eyes first, but I was certain it was you whose sneaky little grin and silver-capped tooth sent my heart pounding in my ears as you gazed down for a nanosecond before meeting my eyes again.
I felt like a scientist who had discovered your existence in the universe. My body finally appeared miniature and dainty. With your great mass surpassing mine, you reeled me in with all your gravity. A force like needing Cheetos and Dr. Pepper at two a.m., I could not fight it and did not want to.
When you moved in, you lifted me onto your hulking shoulders to prove your brawny toughness, though my head chipped some drywall off the ceiling when you straightened your back. You bench-pressed me while we were naked, and I giggled a girly titter in a key I didn’t know I could sing.
Intertwined on my lumpy double bed, too narrow for us both, you wrapped me in your arms, your chest hair tickling my nose, some other girl’s name tattooed over your heart. I didn’t really mind because I was the one counting your heartbeats. That metronome within your ribs reminded me of hearing the great wide ocean inside of a shell I could hold in my hand.
Like this, I dreamed the most wonderful dreams. I would dream I was a tiny speck of stardust just crackling off a comet. Or sometimes I would dream I was a molecule of carbon floating around on a lifeless planet, or tinier yet, a particle shucking off the laws of physics and doing whatever I wanted. And finally, at the end of each dream, I dissolved into nothing. You didn’t like these dreams of mine.
So you framed the selfie you took of us, me on your chest while I was sleeping. You liked pointing to the slightly upturned corner of my mouth in the photo, proving to me I could smile.
You walk me to that picture now again to remind me what I am.
Tremendous.
Colossal.
Whole.
