The plane boards and he has a window seat
way in the back of coach, Row 20, Seat D,
and he arrives before his two seatmates
because nothing is more embarrassing than
having to ask two people to move out please
so the fatass fattenheimer can grab a window.
Thus he is spared this moment of indignity,
and even gets to comment about the heat
to a lady sitting two rows back, but when
she shrugs, he stares at his airplane seat
that seems smaller than the highchairs
he sees at McDonalds, a place he knows
he shouldn’t frequent but does. Frequently.
He stows his carryon luggage in the overhead,
needing all the leg-room he can possibly get,
then waddles across to his seat, apologizing
to a bald spot ahead for grabbing a headrest.
He plops hard, imagining it shakes the plane,
and smiles at no one in grim appreciation
of this minor success.  Finally relaxed, he jams
down the divider that will separate him and
whoever the poor sap is who drew middleseat,
now having become a three-quarters middleseat.
Well, there’s nothing he can do about it except
pray it’s not a full flight, that the middleseat
went unsold, or sold to a heroin-chic addict.
But neither is the case, and a regular woman
looks in and gives him a sigh that is half hate,
a quarter venom, a sixteenth fear, and the rest
a kind of disbelief at her rotten stinking luck.
She’s the worst case scenario, a thickish stump
who’s probably struggled her entire life just
to be nominally fat and hates the heavier for

their lack of will and consideration for others.
She takes her seat anyway and then a tall guy
sits next to her, closing off all chance of escape.
There’s nothing to do now, and the bathroom
is impossible until the plane touches Houston
five hours from now.  Oh, well, he’s suffered
greater indignities.  Like that time he tried
that ride at the fair, the one where you lift up
the handle and the car that’s carrying you rises,
only his wouldn’t rise, his bulk being too much
for the hydraulics, and-- while everyone sailed
above him-- he spun in his red car like a bug.
Then there was the time… but the stewardess
is now giving instructions about buckling up,
so he grabs his belt and yanks it across
the vast expanse of himself and it stops.
He yanks it twice more, not quite believing.
The lady next to him sniffs with satisfaction.
He sits straighter, and when it only helps a bit
he sucks in with all his strength but remains
an inch from connecting the male and female
and hearing the glorious snap skinny people
never think twice about, like they never think
twice about anything, how they glide from place
to place, how they can fit in diner booths without
being sawed in two by the edge of the table,
how they can sit in their children’s desks during
parent-teacher talks, how they can step on a cat
without killing it.  He gives it one more go
but it’s no use.  For the first time in his life
he will have to ask for an extension, the strip
of extra belt they give the opprobrious obese,
and he’ll have to shout this request across
two strangers, certain others will hear as well,
including the stewardess who smiled at him
when he stepped on the plane, smiled like
he was a normal man, when he was indeed
still somewhat normal, and he said to himself,
in what seemed now the last thought of an old life,
Maybe she likes a guy a little on the husky side.