Brenda Richmond is after me. She's been on my ass ever since the first time I walked into Mr. Katsoris' shop, the Big & Fat over on Yonkers Avenue. Considering the size of my ass, I guess that's no spectacular feat. That was a joke. You see, and I want to make it completely clear I have no trouble saying this out loud: I have a weight problem. I am fat. Ten months ago I couldn't use the words I and fat in the same sentence, can you believe that? But now, with Boom-Boom and Pibb and the rest of the guys in the program, things are looking up for me, with or without Brenda Richmond chasing me around all the time. The first thing they teach you at the meetings is, everyone has a weakness. For Brenda, I guess it has to do with guys like me, guys bigger than your average bear. One more thing I have to tell you up front, so there's no misunderstanding: I loved this woman. In her own way Brenda loved me, too, and as you will see she still does, for better or for worse.

Most people you meet have no idea how much trouble it is for a guy like me just to find a pair of pants. You might as well be looking for Atlantis or Bigfoot or that guy who jumped out of the airplane with a suitcase full of money. Good luck. Try walking in a department store and asking the salesperson if they have any slacks in a 62 waist and a 32 length, see what kind of response you get. I had one lady, a real peach, point me towards sporting goods to take a look at the tents. Nikos Katsoris' shop is wedged between a Baskin-Robbins and a pizza parlor, and when I walked in off the street for the first time, I knew this was my kind of place. Nikos is the kind of guy who makes you feel like you're skinniest fat guy he's seen all day. He's this tiny gent with a shaved head and a handlebar moustache, and when he's got the tape measure on you he likes to sing opera. At least I think that's what he's singing. Nikos says that everything - walking, working, even watching TV - should be done in the key of G. I still don't know what that means. He's got a big voice for a little guy. "We have a pair of pants for you, my friend," he'll sing, even if he doesn't.

Brenda works there, too, or at least she did, until Mr. Katsoris had to let her go after all this craziness. She was only part-time, to help out on the busy days, and to be honest she didn't look like somebody who should be selling big and fat: she looked like she should be a ballerina or a Solid Gold dancer or one of those women who do infomercials for exercise gear or something. When she held up a shirt or a blazer for you to look at, all you could see of her were her hands and the tips of her shoes. When she wasn't at the Big & Fat she was teaching water aerobics at the Y or getting her mileage in at Prospect Park. That's what she calls running, mileage. Personally, I haven't run a step since the forty-yard dash in third grade, so you could imagine my surprise when a girl like Brenda wanted to go out with a guy like me. I've heard opposites attract, sure, but this was like putting celery and pork rinds in a bowl and calling it a salad.

She asked me out to dinner. As a rule, I usually try to steer clear of fancy restaurants. I know how people look at me, what they say under their breath. Brenda said she knew just the place, she knew the owner of this Italian joint.

"I like big men," she said, spooning some of her manicotti onto my plate. "When you walked in the store, I said to myself, Brenda honey, there's the man for you."

"There must be a lot of big men who come in."

"Sure, but not like you. You're the biggest one yet. Look at you, you're a fucking giant."

"Thanks," I said. "I think."

"You bet you are. I bet you're pushing five hundred. Am I right?"

"You want to know how much I weigh?"

She looked me up and down. "I already know. You're a keeper, that's for sure." Brenda took a compact out of her purse. "Are you ordering dessert?"

If you get to the meetings a few minutes early, they have these little wheat crackers set out along with the coffee and tea. The crackers take the edge off if you're having trouble making it to dinnertime, and they're not that bad. You don't want to take too many, like more than four or five, because all the old timers will give you the stare and then you won't want to eat any of them. The coffee is a good bet. They used to let you bring your own drinks, but a few months ago some joker sat in the back with a thermos full of cream of chicken soup, and when he screwed the top off, well, you can imagine the stink.

They have a weigh-in every week. You don't have to get on the scale, but people can figure out who had a bad week by who's sitting down or hanging out around the coffee until weigh-in's over. Some guys take it really seriously, though. One Loser timed his honeymoon just right so he could get the limo to swing by on the way to the Poconos and weigh himself. When you lose a lot of weight, say more than just a couple of pounds that week, Craig or Ernie hands you this corsage made out of sugarless lollipops and says, "Take a look at Mel (or whoever) everybody. This week Mel's a Big, Fat Loser," and everyone claps or says way to go or something. That feels good.

When you break even on the scales, that's okay, you just chalk it up to a big glass of water you drank at lunch, and wait for the next week. But when you step on there and it says you gained, well, guys take it differently. I've seen guys faint when Ernie tells them they gained five pounds, right there in front of all the guys, whammo, like they just took a bullet or gave blood or something. When a guy weighs upwards of four-fifty and he faints, someone's going to get hurt.

Ernie Ermadillo has been running this meeting ever since anyone can remember. He's this stringy old guy who joined up fifteen years ago; you look at him and you think, there's no way he used to top three hundred, but it's true. He used to deal baccarat in Atlantic City until his wife died; he gained a hundred pounds the first year. There's a few other Big Losers like Ernie, guys everyone looks up to because they beat it, but some of the old timers like Boom-Boom have been trading a pound or two every week for twenty years. They say they're going to start getting serious, maybe when it starts to get warmer outside, but you know they probably never will.

"My name is Boom-Boom Finklestein, and I have a weight problem. I'm a real piece of work," he'll always start out. He's got this photograph, a black and white of him in his boxing gear when he fought out of the Yeshiva Hall in Queens back in the 70s. He likes to pass it around, especially to the new Losers, to show us how he used to look. My first meeting, he sat down next to me and passed it to me. "That was before I met my wife Carla, before I got my jaw broke," he said to me, rubbing his belly. It was my first day, and I was pretty nervous.

"Your wife broke your jaw?"

"No, it was this guy named Happy Capazzo. He was a middleweight like me, really bad apple. Used to find your wife in the crowd and spit on her by the sixth round. Fought him at the Garden, October the twelfth, 1973." He smiled. "You know who else was on that card?"

"I don't know. Muhammad Ali?"

"Muhammad Ali," he sneered, shaking his head. "Muhammad Ali doesn't hold a candle to this guy. This guy was ten times bigger than Ali, I can tell you that."

"Wow," I said. "Who?"

He smiled. He leaned closer, looking around the room like he was about to tip me on a horse. "Sol Schmidt was on that card. Now what do you make of that?" Boom-Boom tossed a feigned punch at my arm.

"Who's Sol Schmidt?"

"What do you mean, who's Sol Schmidt? Where are you from, the moon?"

"Brooklyn."

He snatched the photograph back and tucked it under his hat. "I'm watching you," he said, shuffling off towards the coffee urns.

When we were in bed together, Brenda wanted to me to be on top. I thought she was kidding at first, you know, trying to make light of the fact that I'm not the most mobile guy in the sack. We were at her place when she said, "I want you to stop messing around and put all your weight on me."

"I'll kill you," I said.

"I do two thousand crunches a day," she said, digging her fingers into my back. "I can take you." She wanted all of my weight on her, pressing her down deep into the mattress, knocking the wind out of her until she almost passed out. I read somewhere about some guys who get off by hanging themselves in the john; something about lack of oxygen to the brain. I can guarantee Brenda wasn't getting much oxygen, but that's the way she wanted it. Once I was on top of her she'd wrap her arms and legs around me and wouldn't let go until it was all over. It weirded me out at first, yeah, but when you look like I do, having a beautiful woman excited about having sex with you comes around about as often as the solar eclipse. Brenda made things exciting. Once, right after we made love, I said to her, "I think I lost ten pounds right there."

She sat up. "We'll fix that," Brenda said, putting on some slippers and going out out the kitchen. For such a small girl, she kept her place stocked with food, all kinds. She didn't eat much at all, but the cupboards were stuffed to the gills, and when she made dinner, it was a big production. She'd stand over me while I ate at the table, and if a clear spot opened up on my plate, she filled it: spaghetti and meatballs, fried chicken, corned beef, you name it. When I couldn't eat anymore, she'd cross her arms and say, "You put something on you plate, you eat it."

"But you put all this on my plate."

"Are you going to argue with me? Don't you appreciate all the work I do here?"

"Of course I do."

"Then eat. For God's sake, eat." Sometimes if we were up late she'd call down to Gennaro's and order a large pie to snack on while we watched TV.

Someone slipped a flyer under my door at work. With telemarketing, unless you're one of the newbies on the phones there's very little to do, and I do a lot of the day-to-day stuff from home: answering complaints, filing weeklies, that sort of thing. It was this pink xerox that had a picture of a man in a pair of pants thirty sizes too big. It read, "JOEL K. LOST 260LBS!!! JOEL'S A BIG FAT LOSER!!! YOU CAN BE A BIG FAT LOSER, TOO!!!" There was a number to call. Normally I wouldn't give it much thought; I had tried every gimmick in the book to lose weight: pills, diets, even hypnosis. But I guess it's a lot easier to lose weight for someone else. When you're alone, it's easy to lose motivation. I wanted to do it for Brenda. No woman wants to spend the rest of their life with a gargantuan fat slob, right?

I showed up that night, while Brenda was teaching late at the Y. I can't tell you where the meetings are, that's more or less a secret, but I can tell you that, right off the bat, it changed my life. I walk in there, into a room with twenty or thirty guys who look like me, and something happened. I was pretty nervous. I didn't look anybody in the eye. I sat down in the back and this guy who speaks funny comes right up and sits in the two chairs next to me.

"New?" he said.

Mr. Pibb's real name is Yuri Prybluzda, but the guys figured that was too hard on the mouth, so they came up with something easier. His English isn't so good, he's from Russia or someplace, but he tries real hard at it. His wife always picks up these audio books at the public library so he can listen while he's driving his van weekday mornings. His favorites are the old detective stories: Maltese Falcon, The G-Men, books like that. Pibb delivers coffee service to all these offices downtown: coffee, danish, you name it. It's a pretty cushy job, but he says that the worst is getting stopped in traffic with a van packed full of cheese danish and banana muffins when you have four hours and twenty minutes until you can take your lunch.

I thought I'd surprise Brenda at dinner one night. "What would you say if I wanted to lose some weight?"

"Honey," she said, draping herself on my lap, "I love you for who you are. I love you because of what's in here." Brenda pointed a finger at my heart. "You know that."

"I just thought it may be healthy."

"Healthy? The last thing you need is some fly-by-night diet to make you healthy. You should see some of the cases I get at the YMCA. Crackpots, all of them. They look like they've been run over by a truck. Do you want to look like you've been run over by a truck?"

"No."

"All right, then. No more foolishness. Besides," she said, running her hand over my head, "I like a man with substance." Things changed after that. I felt like Brenda was always breathing down my neck. She'd check the trash to see if I was wasting any of the food she'd make. Brenda would even try to get me to come down to the Y once a week to weigh myself, make sure I was "maintaining." I made sure I kept a lot of change in my pockets.

Things got rough the day Brenda got home from work and found some of my shakes in the fridge. I'd like to think that I put them there to stand up for myself, but to be honest I got lazy and forgot about it.

"What is this?" she said, holding a can at arm's length.

"Those are my shakes," I said. "I drink one for lunch."

"Since when?"

"I don't know. Since I started thinking about losing some weight. You know, get healthy."

"Not this again. Didn't we talk about this?" She dropped the can in the trash.

"Yeah, we did. But, honey, I really want to try. It'll be good for us."

"Listen. Let's get one thing straight. Who knows what's best for you? Me, that's who. So if you don't stop following these crazy ideas, there's going to be trouble."

I smiled, tried to lighten things up. "Trouble? What do you mean, trouble?"

She picked up a frying pan from the stove with two hands. "You told me you loved me."

"I do, honey, I do."

"Don't disappoint me." She put the pan down and started making dinner. That night, we went to bed early. I was tired, and I quickly drifted off to sleep. It must have been around midnight when I woke up. Brenda was on top of me, her legs straddling my belly. She had a plate of fried chicken and she was hovering a drumstick over my mouth.

"What are you doing?" I said.

"You're just having a dream," she said, whispering softly. "Go back to sleep."

"Is that chicken?"

"Eat, eat, for God's sake, eat. Here comes some chicken," she said, making a choo-choo noise and guiding the drumstick towards my mouth. "Chicken drumstick coming."

"You're crazy," I said.

"I love you." She bent down to kiss me, spreading grease all over both of our faces. I rolled out of bed, got dressed, and headed out of there. "You'll be back," she called after me. "You can't survive out there without me."

That's really the last time I saw Brenda Richmond. Not that she hasn't been in my life. There's been hang-up calls, letters, notes at work. I think she's been through my trash once or twice. She might let up soon: I heard from Nikos that the day he fired her, she hooked up with this 600 pound guy who came in looking for socks. Still, I double-track whenever I'm headed for a meeting, just to be safe. I feel like I've found a home here. The weight isn't exactly falling off, but that will come. Ernie always says, "Patience is fat man's best friend." I've been waiting for ten months now, and I hope it happens soon. I'm a lot better than I used to be, though. When I sit around the house, I still sit around the house, you know? That was a joke. It always helps to start off your day with a joke.