FAT EXPECTATIONS

My father‚s family name being Barrsanti, and my Christian name being Robert, my fat little tongue could make of both names no more then Barr, so I called myself Barr, and came to be called Barr

I led a peasants life. Growing up, I worked in a swizzle stick factory. I shined shoes on the dirty sidewalks of Nantucket Island. I even tried my luck as a male stripper at a club in P-Town, but none of these jobs fulfilled me. Nor did I feel that I could become fulfilled unless my dreams of becoming a man of wealth and stature were brought to life (although, truth be told, I had already become a man of stature in mere weight and girth. I will not hesitate to tell the reader that I was and am a large man with a larger head). In my feelings of worthlessness , I had tried to fill the void in soul and heart with cakes, pies, and sandwiches.

With a calorie intake that would kill a moose, I trudged through my meaningless existence day by day, a sad clown in the defunct circus of life.

Many a day I would stop by the grave of my dearly deceased pet pooch Pip, named after a character I had read in a book someplace. Pip had meant the world to me, and I had never gotten over his death.

The day was gray, as it often was on Nantucket Island. The smell of salt was unusually strong that day, and it gave me a craving for potato chips. I kneeled down before Pip‚s grave, and began sobbing uncontrollably, cause rounds of ripples to flow through my bulbous body mass.

„Hold it there!‰ a voice said „Don‚t you go crying, now! Quit blubbering! Stop that and give me your name!‰

„They call me Barr‰ I said, still sobbing a bit.

The man, dressed in an orange uniform with a number on his upper left chest, had chains across his feet that had been detached from other chains, which lead me to believe that he had once been on a chain gang.

He tried to lift me up and place me on a gravestone, but I was far to large for any one person to lift, and I suppose that three such men of similar strength to this convict would need to be called in to help lift me at all.

„Now listen here, boy, I need you to run... well... er... jog... eh... walk back to your house, and get me some eats. You hear me? Some food. Some bread and meat and maybe some brandy. Now go!

I started off, slowly of course, towards my home. When I got there, I managed to sneak away a bit of bread, with some roast beef, and some Mayo. I topped it off with a pickle, and was on my way towards the Graveyard. I was halfway there when I realized that I had accidentally ate the sandwich. Oh well. I walked back home, turned on the TV, and watched The Smurfs. I never saw the convict again. I wonder what happened to him?

One day, something happened to change my life. I laid my eyes upon Sid, and her evil and cruel father, Mr. Feeversham. Mr. Feeversham ran a few businesses, restaurants, but he never left his house. It was said that something had happened to him long ago, but I knew not what. He stayed in his bed like he was Brian Wilson. Never moving. The clocks were all stopped at the same time.

I was called, by way of messenger, to come towards Henrys House, Mr. Feeversham‚s residence. As I knocked on the door, it was opened by Sid. This was the first time I laid eyes on her, and I fell instantly into a love that I knew couldn‚t be. She guided me, coldly, up to her father‚s room. There he was, lounging in his bed, and, for some reason that I still have yet to discover, he was wearing a wedding gown.

„Young Barr,‰ Mr. Feeversham said to me, „I have called you here on an important matters. This may surprise you, but you have been chosen, that is to say, you are a child of Fat Expectations. Which is to say, young man, that I am a man who has found himself proprietor to many houses of eating, so to speak, by which I mean restaurants. You are to become a man of wealth and stature, so that you may, eventually, rule these fine establishments. You are, as I said, a man of Fat Expectations.