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This older fellow on the stationary bike next to mine at the gym said, "Is that your bike squeaking? I thought it was my knees!" That might not be the greatest come-on line in the world — unless, like me, you live to be under big fat hairy old men. As I pedaled furiously to make the squeaks more piercing, I pictured going back to his place: He tells me I have to wash all his dishes. He's in a wifebeater and no pants or underpants on the La-Z-Boy watching TV with a bottle of Heineken. I'm in just a shirt as well, washing the dishes, which must have been sitting there a long time. He mostly watches TV but glances my way on occasion, tells me to spread my legs wider, rubs the bottle absentmindedly against his cock,
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The Big Fat Hairy Old Guy (BFHOG) is not a man who just happens to be fat and old, a state which eventually befalls the best of us. You know him as the one with misplaced yet somehow vortical confidence, emerging from the pool in a wet hair-sweater and Speedos, yelling in German at his kid to bring him a Tab or a beer. Or the Guy Already in the Sauna at Someone's Gym — men around the country keep telling me about this guy. They look disturbed when they describe him; they pretend not to have felt his allure, yet they carry on about how "strange" it was, this nearly obese, nearly naked MAN taking up two-thirds of the hot tub, legs spread obscenely. They mention his hairy chest and arms then ask me if I think they're gay. No, you're not gay. The BFHOG is compelling beyond sexual preference. You can't help it.
To roll about in the stained paws of a guy who knows none of my friends or family or readers or tastes, to be here and not here simultaneously — that's my BFHOG dream. It happened once for real, back when I was eighteen and not afraid of being murdered by strangers in strange states (West Virginia, to be precise). He was a whiskey-drinking, cigar-smoking, bacon-munching, gray-headed farmer in overalls; I was lithe as a piece of gristle stretched between a tooth and a forefinger. This guy never once emptied an ashtray; he'd fill one up and just leave it there, then start sullying a fresh one. In his house, overflowing ashtrays sat under the card table, on the seats and arms of dog-torn chairs, under piles of newspapers, atop the refrigerator, on the counter. Six or eight of them formed a half-circle — an ash-moat — around the couch he and I were bouncing up and down on. The brass cross that hung over the couch glinted dully. His mother had probably tacked it there fifty years earlier. A single drop of sweat hung off his forehead, growing, swaying, until finally, finally, it dropped square onto my forehead just the way I knew it would. The goats tied up outside would have to wait for their dinner.
My favorite Dover BFHOG is Big John. I first saw my living doll in the summer of 2001 at Carabella's, a lounge where roofers play pool and drink for seven hours straight, communicating with grunts and shouts and, in the seventh hour, incredibly sad yet really weird soliloquies. "Big John, no!" rang out voices from the back of the bar in the sixth hour of that hot and fateful night, and
I turned to see Big John wrestling another guy almost his size — so
deliberate in their every thick-fingered shove they appeared to be in slow
motion. When I rewind, the shadowy pair get slower and slower and
slower. I can only imagine the heavy sex that went on that night between Big
John and his scrawny, hysterical, jean-jacketed girlfriend. She must've been
crushed not only by his weight, but also by his supreme confidence, which
comes from knowing in one's bones the secret: very little effort is required
to make an impact. Whim ("I should pound him for looking at my woman) converts to action before anyone notices it has changed shape. I hear toned,
chiseled, expensive-haircutted
men brag to similarly-coiffed friends at the airport about what they're
"having done" — maybe to the house or the boat. It's like plastic surgery,
except outside the body. Big John has nothing done. He is outside the
struggle, standing tall, and I slide down in my booth at Carabella's hoping
for another glimpse of him.
Since the farmer, there have been many Big Fat Hairy Old Guys in my radar, but none have landed between my thighs. Somewhere along the way something ossified my limbs while making my mind run like liquid through my stone body. When I was eighteen, I didn't contemplate sleeping with the farmer to escape existentialism, I did it. Now I only watch. And think about Big John while in my husband's smooth, skinny arms. One more night with a BFHOG could crack me open again, I just know it.
Sometimes I try to imagine an actual relationship between me and, say, the farmer. He'd treat me like one of those green-tinted tin ashtrays: fill me up and then toss me aside. I'd go rinse myself out and come back to be used anew. I'd never lay in HIS house with eyes open in the dark, agonizing over whether I should leave him (because I'd know I was going to leave . . . probably in two hours) or how I spend too much time indoors or my best friend's $50,000 debt and suicide wish or if my son is getting enough love or whether my writing is any good and am I fulfilling my destiny or totally missing it or maybe I don't even have a destiny and hunting around for it has been a waste of my life. BFHOG would take me outside my world, but not into his. I'd hover nowhere, without tension. His lack of interest in the Real Me (and my disbelief that there is a Real Him hiding) would pare everything down till there was nothing left to do but mop up after him, maybe let him have sex with me again. The simple pleasures.
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR: | |
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Lisa Carver is the author of the books Dancing Queen, Rollerderby, The Lisa Diaries and Drugs Are Nice. She's written for Hustler, Index, Icon, Feed, Newsday and Playboy, among others. She lives in New Hampshire. |