Yom Kippur. The Jewish Day of Atonement. Along with my family, I used to fast, on this holy day, to expiate my sins, to assure that God would mercifully grant me yet one more year, during which, along with my family, I might sit every night before the TV, eating enough fruit and cookies to feed the whole block.
God was merciful. I lived, to sin again, and to eat again, and soon, like the rest of my family, I was fat. Not husky, or heavy set. None of the sympathetic adjectives, unguent for the ego’s tender skin, evoke the same awful associations as that incredibly lean and specific description. Fat. Which is to say unwholesome. Which is to say ugly. Which is to say profoundly, ridiculously, and irrevocably alienated from the rest of the crowd.
