The hooker slips his shirt off. In the moment where he can’t see me I steal a glance at his chest. His ribs. The lines of muscle showing abdominals. Not an ounce of fat.
I look away before I’m noticed. For years I’ve printed shirts in this shop for a man teetering on the edge of what’s right and wrong. A front is what they call it. Laws were meant to be broken, or so he’s always saying.
I simply shrug.
A moment ago the hooker came to the open emergency exit whistling. When I turned he asked avez-vous une chandail toute fucké, something unsellable? The boss stepped in demanding quelle taille and without missing a beat the old queen said tight.
When I was a boy I was the same, lithe. Nothing but skin and bones my father’s wife would say, Eat up…don’t you want to be big. Her words made think of men like my father, her brothers, all of them with heavy guts.
No thanks.
Alone in my room at night I couldn’t see anything wrong when I looked in the mirror. I’d play my fingers up and down my ribs like piano keys. The melody in my head better than that shit kickin’ country music my father’s wife blasted from the kitchen radio.
The weather’s warm for October, leaves still green on the trees, so the hooker doesn’t rush pulling the t-shirt on. First time I’ve seen him up close. Usually I catch him through the shop’s dusty windows moving down the street at a scurry, right arm crooked, oversize purse swinging against his hip.
He admires the t-shirt. I know the design without having to look. The boss made an error. My hands printed the mistake three hundred twenty-four times. Two words, bright yellow meant to be silver over the heart: Nique toute.
The hooker laughs. Fuck everything, parfaite he says smiling wide, teeth glisten. He’s handsome. I bet he makes money. I rarely see him wear the same clothes twice.
Standing here in my filthy pants sweating for my pittance I wonder, could I?
In puberty I put on the weight they said I needed. Before I knew it my ribs disappeared. A layer of fat took over my body, ate my waistband, chaffed my inner thighs as I walked. A youthful version of the men I didn’t want to be. We lived in a small town with a beach that stretched into the sunset. I was too embarrassed to go.
They didn’t understand.
The boss asks the hooker why the change of clothes. J’en ai entretien, au resto grecque au coin-la he says pointing towards the canal. I know the place. A failed Italian joint gone Greek down where the quarter changes from ghetto to picturesque. Quaint little homes made of stone with docks for boats in backyards leading to the water’s edge.
From hooker to waiter.
Nothing stays the same forever.
But I hate to see him giving up. Becoming one of us, lowered to the level of gainful employment. Often I stare out the window when I should be working, admiring them. They’re real life while I pass my nights exhausted. After I shower, eat and smoke a cigarette, I heed the call of the couch. The television. Bourgeoisie bullshit rotting my mind, making me soft.
It’s how I got fat in the first place.
The hooker’s not only thin but defined. Does he have weights in the room he rents across the street? In the basement of my father’s house sat an old set he claimed he bought a decade beforehand. I never believed him.
He didn’t lift a god damned thing he didn’t have to.
On afternoons when I got home from school I’d take off my shirt in the shadow of the furnace. Visions of myself looking good deluded me. A trim stomach, muscled arms. In the eyes of the girls at school I’d no longer be that kid who pissed his pants.
I started with the biggest weights.
It didn’t take long to get discouraged.
The hooker turns the t-shirt around. Lifted arms show his ribs more prominently. His muscled stomach. I shouldn’t have let myself give up when I was young. I’ve hated what I saw in the mirror ever since.
C’est jolie says the hooker smiling at the shirt, like this is the key to getting the job, from escaping the streets. I’m not as sure imagining him alone in his room. A bare bulb. Dirty bedding. A hotplate in one corner.
Do his ribs play the same songs mine did?
He undoes the top button on his red and black striped pants to tuck in the new shirt. Zipper teeth release their bite. Designer underwear cuts the line of hair leading from navel down. Arms through the sleeves and silver hair so coiffed it doesn’t even move as he pulls his head through the neck.
I’m impressed.
When I filled out like she wanted my father’s wife began to call me lazy. A pig. She’d roll her eyes and say no wonder looking at my plate, devouring a mountain of slop herself. One night I called her food just that, fit for a pig. She made sure I was never so bold again.
Her taunts followed me when I left. Last year I bought a jump rope. Started small and worked up to an hour. I’d laugh in the mirror when I was done. Underwear so wet it looked like I swam at the beach I grew up on. The hooker and I are almost the same now.
Excess skin is a reminder of what I really am.
Merci beaucoup mon gar the hooker says as he looks at himself in the camera of his cellphone. Newer model than mine. With a wave of his hand the boss tells him aucune probleme as I mutter bonne chance and he’s off with a smile.
I think of the day I left home. My grin was even bigger.
Every morning before the sun comes up I stop in front of a large round mirror hanging on the living room wall. A red light on the stairs casting shadows daylight doesn’t while I twist my torso, admiring my ribs. Playing my songs.
With no distractions I go back to work. Push ink through the design. Screen up. Shirt off the board and into the dryer. I replace it with a blank. I repeat the process over hoping the hooker gets what he’s after. It’ll create a hole in the local economy, and I’m awfully bored of this.
reading list (this is what i've consumed recently)
