My Bed-Stuy friend insists she has a fat ass. No, I say, you don’t. Yes, she says, I do. My Bed-Stuy friend is five-foot-ten and one hundred pounds. I once liked to bicycle with my Bed-Stuy friend, but since she decided she has a fat ass she’s refused to ride. They will all be looking at my ass, she says. But we’ll bike fast, I say. You’ll bike alone.
The change in my Bed-Stuy friend predates her discovery of her own fat ass. We went to a waterpark in New Jersey and when I returned with lemonade, she was crying. A text message from Derrick had ripped her heart open. He said he still thought of her, but only when he didn’t have another woman to think of.
Don’t listen to him, I told her.
I didn’t listen to him; it’s something I read on my fucking phone.
Does that mean it’s easier to dismiss?
I don’t like talking to you. You’re always on your own side. Then she put a towel around herself though she hadn’t gotten wet. Derrick’s text messages only made her eat less and worry more, and she announced there would be no waterparks in her future, no Coney Island, no Mediterranean either.
Soon my Bed-Stuy friend does not return my calls because her sister is sick, but she must have forgotten I know she doesn’t have a sister. I spend two weeks talking about my Bed-Stuy friend with my therapist. I miss work. I miss my mother’s birthday. I begin to look at my ass in the mirror every morning. It’s getting bigger, I tell my teddy bear. And it’s amazing it’s getting bigger because I’m not eating food. I can’t. The penance of not eating will surely bring a halt to the non-ballooning of my Bed-Stuy friend’s non-existent fat ass. It has to. I get birthday candles and fireworks to celebrate the disintegration of her fat ass, but mine only grows and I have to buy new corduroys. I call my Bed-Stuy friend to assure her all the weight she thinks exists in her ass actually has been deposited and continually grows in mine. She dubs me dumbass, but I entreat her to see it for herself and she agrees. But we can’t meet in Bed-Stuy, she insists. Better in Bushwick, where no-one will recognize my fat ass. Or mine, I add.
So we meet in Bushwick and my Bed-Stuy friend is frail—she doesn’t have cheeks of either variety. I plead with her, and when I steer my rump her way, a choking sound starts in her throat. I shimmy because I know my fat ass has charm. I giggle and the giggle rips my cheap-ass corduroys and I will have to go another ass size up, but I know my Bed-Stuy friend’s ass will return to normal, and that’s all I can ask for.