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The El
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My Obese Cousin
A True Story by The El
We sat facing each other. The sweat that had eked its way through his pores gave birth to a vomit-inducing stench that quickly settled in the room. This irritated me. Only twelve-years-old and my cousin was morbidly obese. At the awkwardness of our silent eye contact, he turned his gaze, focusing intently on a chocolate-stained square of the bedroom carpet. His intense breathing brought to mind pictures of a sweaty fat man gasping for air after walking a single flight of steps. Struggling to conceal my irritation, I twisted my lips. The shirtless boy then wobbled onto his feet, leaving his undesirables exposed: waves of squiggly stretch marks chaotically circling his torso; the crack of an ass peeking through dirtied denim; the pull of gravity on his sagging belly.
My cousin wobbled his way into the kitchen. He pulled a filthy glass jar from a sink full of dishes and filled it from the tap. No rinse, no wash. I shuddered. He stood in place, gulping. I watched droplets fall from the lid of the jar onto his tits, erratically streaming downward and settling in his navel. He let loose a sloppy belch, showing no signs of embarrassment. A decent-sized roach darted out from underneath the sink. My cousin squashed it with his bare left foot and returned to the room. The mattress he sat on reeked of piss. (It once belonged to another cousin of mine who peed in the bed until he was sixteen-years-old!)
I rose from the small, wooden table chair and placed it back in the kitchen. Something about the mattresses at my grandma’s—(perhaps the piss?)—causes my face to break out, so I sleep in chairs whenever I visit. At ten o’clock, I showered. Midway through my shower, grandma entered, shat, and left all while humming an obscure gospel tune. The lock on the bathroom door’s been busted for as long as I can remember. From the corner of my eye, I noticed a tiny roach desperately trying to avoid the tsunami-like bombardment of shower water splashing the tiles. For two seconds, this saddened me.
When I returned to the room, the stench had intensified. My cousin had gone back to sleep. He slept on his back, snoring. His eyelids were partially open and he had a boner. The thought of him waking up while I changed clothes terrified me! Rushing, I dropped my towel and threw on a pair of jean shorts. Who wears underwear on a New Jersey summer day?
I left my grandma’s around eleven o’clock, ran some errands, and returned around one. My cousin’s position hadn’t changed. Again, I left. I met up with a woman friend and had sex with her. At four-twelve, I returned to see my cousin still sleeping. In this, there was something inherently repulsive.
I unplugged the fan and coughed in his face. Still, no movement. Grandma, startling me, yelled, “Let dat bwah sleep!” from behind. She hit me on my right shoulder with a leather-coated Bible. The blow didn’t hurt. I subdued my reactionary impulse to strike back and faced her.
“You see dat bwah sleep! ‘s wrong wit you!” she exclaimed, holding her Bible to my nose. “Nah iff I catcha one mo’ tahm messin’ wit dat bwah, I’m gon’ whoop ya.”
I thought, “I’M TWENTY-ONE!” but dared not utter it. Grandma and I stared each other down for three more seconds and then she proceeded to the living room to read her scriptures. I stood over my cousin, arms folded, ready to concede defeat. And then, he woke up on his own. He sat up and began grinding his left foot against the carpet, peeling off fragments of the roach he squashed earlier. Inside, I burned.
Last edited by The El on 24-08-2005 at 14:30
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24-08-2005 14:23
obese junkies
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