Why did you have to desert me? Secret Fat Love and Lust

In Fat Poets Speak 2, I have a poem entitled "Forgiveness." It is about one particular interaction with someone I was batshit crazy about during my college years. He chose not to speak to me any more in 2003 for reasons that remain murky.

I was thinking about him tonight because I am sure he would not have approved of Fat Poets Speak or of FatLand. The ironic thing is that he always appreciated fat women aesthetically but then kept saying that we should lose weight, even as he looked at us with lust in his eyes. It was as if he were pushing himself to like slimmer women.

What it adds up to is that if he and I were still speaking, it would have been that much harder for me to write FatLand or edit and write in Fat Poets Speak.

There are so many men like him. (Perhaps women, too.) They know that they appreciate and lust after women (and men) who are fat and luscious, but they are embarrassed to admit even to themselves that they adore us.

And this is yet another thing that I hope Fat Poets Speak and books like it will continue to accomplish:  to make it that much easier for people like my former friend to like fat women and fat people and not to be ashamed that they like us.