Land Whale Colony 4. A, Wallowing Season, Peak Consumption

The Becky Clan had rented the entire four unit condo. Halfway between the automotive madness and peak consumption retail of Coastal Highway, and the hotel lined desert where fatties of all ages and races waddled to their recreational pilgrimage with all the urgency of a turd being flushed down the toilet, was “The Place” the cheap-built summer beach house where her family had come for two weeks at the end of every July since 1963!

It was insane, mind boggling and amplified by the fact that thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of fatties did the same thing every year. Becky’s upper middle class family of means worshiped leisure even as they worked for 48 weeks a year as mind slaves in various managerial and professional capacities, so that they could passively sweat before the ocean breeze and eat, and eat, and eat, and gobble meat until sweat beaded on their foreheads 2 weeks a year.

‘The other holidays must be feat weeks as well,’ he mused as they pulled into the lot and saw the grills smoking at 11 AM.

It was like a trip to a semi-sentient zoo complex. Becky and Brit had a top unit with a painted wood deck covered with a roof, a family flag and a baseball team flag flying in weird allegiance. The place was practically arranged and furnished to accommodate four in two bedrooms with a large open living room/dining room, kitchen with a bar-style counter for additional feeding.

The dozen or so family members lurched, waddled and chortled on by, calling Becky “Barbie,” rather ignoring her and then looking wide-eyed at Brit, to which the largest cousin said, “Barbie is engaged to an anatomy chart,” and slothed on by to smear mayo and ketchup and mustard on a fried fish sandwich piled with french fries.

Mom was big and fat and seemed like a fine work of art buried under blubber.

Dad was tall, man-breasted and dad-bodied, and served as a model of fitness compared to his younger family members, the two brothers, the four male cousins. The sister, Amy, was short and fat and openly thirsted at Brit, even caressing his biceps while they were introduced. As Brit was shaking Dad’s hand and smiling at Mom and Amy was touching him, Becky blurted—through the high-pitched dial tone of the inner siren that was his constant soundtrack this last year—“We had a hard trip—be right back...come on Brit. We’ll get the luggage in a few.”

Once they were inside of their unit and the eaters went back to their feast, Becky looked at him from harrowed soul wells, “You see, you see why I have to suck dick—why I have to blow you every day or I go crazy? My whole family has this hunger, this insecurity and look at them. I don’t want to be that. If I don’t suck dick I’ll eat—you understand?”

He suddenly felt less pleased with all of that oral attention, felt pity for poor Becky, who was so beautiful and high functioning in nursing, that it had never occurred to him to pity her, had never occurred that she was anymore insecure than any other girl.

She was crying and he meant to say, ‘I’m sorry,’ and she snarled, “Rape me, tear my clothes and fuck me stupid, right here on the floor.”

She was deadpan serious, not hyperbolic, not sarcastic, not even overly needful, but seemingly dedicated with clinical detachment to the idea of being sexual taken like some viking’s Irish slave girl.

He hesitated and she slapped him with a glare that melted in an eruption of tears. Her pretty face blushed red and fell into her soft, competent, long-fingered hands and she was crying a storm on his chest, his blue sleeveless T soaking up her pain in a vertical puddle.

“You don’t love me? You have some gym girl—some ring card girl?”

He grabbed her shoulders, kissed her, and tore her dress in half, down the front, as if she had purchased it with this in mind...and suddenly she seemed a little like Becky again.

…

An hour later, Becky in the shower, Brit put his sandals and cargo shorts back on and headed down to get his bag and her suitcase. The shirt was soaked. For a rich girl that dressed so thoughtfully, Becky traveled light. He was infused with more respect for her than he had ever mustered before and began to feel like marriage and children might be in the air.

Glancing at his tool belt in the back of the Wrangler he realized then that he had always secretly yearned too have a family and build their own house with his own hands, that this was as much behind his venture into the construction business and a return to the work of his youth as it was an expression of his contempt for the managerial life.

Brit was headed from the Wrangler in the gravel lot before the condo when Dad and one of the Eater brothers, stepped to him and offered him a beer, “Live it up, Bro.”

‘It must be nice to have a dad, even one like this,’ he mused through the inner siren’s blare.

He wanted to say, ‘No, I’m in training,’ but thought better of making Becky’s life any harder and took a beer, as Dad, said, “So how is dental supply going—heard you were a climber?”

“Oh, It—”

Dad then turned to the Eater manning the grill in his flowered tent shirt, “Ain’t the beer cold, Timmy!?”

Dad just stepped away as if Brit suddenly no longer existed.

‘Wow, what terrible people. It’s amazing that Becky is such a doll.’

The Eater brother in front of him clanged his beer to Brit’s in a friendly salute and said, “Skoal, bro. It’s always nice to meet one of Becky’s studs.”

Brit just nodded but started inside, ‘Studs?’

The Eater then said, “So, you’re like a management type. You don’t look it.”

Relieved to focus on work talk, Brit dove in, “Actually, I’m in—”

The Eater’s smart phone then rang and he turned away and answered as if Brit did not exist.

The inner siren wailed a little louder as the inane conversation of the Eaters, in person and on phones bandied about:

“Look at how thin these burgers are—this is a crime—rediculous. They aren’t getting anymore of my business.”

“Who dips pizza crust in ranch dressing? That must be an Ohio thing.”

“The Amish make these dogs fresh, every morning. I paid 5.99 a pound and it’s worth it. He gives me a discount when I buy in bulk.”

“Salt water taffy is better for work. You want something individually wrapped for the office staff.”

“Caramel corn, Ballinda, that is ambroshia, food of the gods! You don’t know what’s good.”

“I like caramel corn as much as the next girl, Amy—yeah, I think you’re thinking of unwrapping some beefcake!”

Realizing he was being looked at and commented on by people at the lower level table to the right, he did not turn, downed his beer, and put it in a pocket so he could get upstairs ASAP and out of the Eater continuum.

“These french fries were frozen. My You Tube viewers are going to hear about this! This is a disgrace!”

“Bro, pass the mustard...No, no, not the hot mustard. This isn’t your standard dog, the taste needs to come through. Hot mustard was developed to hide adulterated meat bi-products…”

“The crabs are running light, he says, so what, two bushels?”

“Yeah, yeah, two is good, a dozen a piece minus Barbie and Anatomy Chart.”

“Why is he even bringing her if she’s not making cheesecake this year?”

Finally, through the inner siren wailing, the sound of the sliding glass door under his hand offered a reprieve from the banal Eater discussion. Entering a cool air-conditioned space still scented with Becky’s ravished grace, brought him back to an inner human place unassailed by the chortling garble of the Eater race.