How did I get this fat? What happened? I used to be a handsome, somewhat in shape young man with charm and an air of confidence. But that was yesterday. High school, maybe a while after that, but as the Stones said - it's all over now.I woke up like this. I went to bed thin and awoke as this mammoth of a man. A sloth. Gigantic. I admit, there has always been some weight on me, but back in the day I was still the chubby, cuddly cutie-pie who carried some extra pounds but made it work. Cool clothes from Urban Outfitters still actually fit me. I looked halfway decent in purple jeans and flowery shirts, even if I looked like the keyboard player for Erasure. Women still found me attractive. They still wanted to sleep with me. I'm funny. It helped balance out the weight end of things. Now even that doesn't work. Any joke I crack around a woman comes off as perverted or creepy or both. This weight has killed me. The me I used to know and love. It has buried the real Mark Phinney.
These are not uncharted waters for me. I have gone over this shit for years and I arrive at the same conclusion every time. I need to lose weight. Period. I could just end this right here and now and go for a walk, but I must press on with the work - even if it means sacrificing a walk.
I've talked about my weight issues at length. To doctors. Friends. Nutritionists. At Overeaters Anonymous meetings. I have performed one-man shows about it. Written about it in scripts, books and articles. I've promised myself a million times over that "This will be it. Today I start. Today I lose weight!" I have said this so many times a friend once suggested my memoirs be titled Starting Tomorrow - The Mark Phinney Story. I've stop/started so many diets and have joined so many gyms (never went, just joined). I've cried myself to sleep after eating a chicken parm (last night). I've done it all.
I'm not here to make this some Oprah bit about my triumphant weight loss and life gain. Mostly because it hasn't happened. I have yet to achieve such a thing. I've come to realize that I may never kick this and that is my biggest fear in life. I go to sleep thinking about it and wake up to it everyday. I go through that with many things: fear of no career, heartbreak over a woman, etc., but they come and go. This one has stuck. It is the constant in my life. I know what people say - only you can achieve this. If you think you can't, then you won't. It's all in you. While I understand this, it is never that easy. I also try to look at it from the angle of - well fuck it, maybe there's a freedom in knowing this is what it is and always will be. I don't have to try or sweat it anymore. This is probably the wrong attitude to have, because I want to lose it. I want to look and feel good. To be healthy so I can play football in the yard with my son Conner. Conner is my imaginary five year old. He's adorable, but I'm having trouble finding the right preschool for him right now. You imaginary parents out there understand where I'm coming from.
I often think about how much better my life would be if I could actually lose the weight. It would contribute to so many great things in my world. Confidence. Health. Emotional stability. Women. Always women. Skinny = laid. Believe me. I've seen so many ugly dudes with girlfriends, and they are not 10's, but they are women and that guy is having sex. It's the weight. Girls just want an in shape guy. I have been told this by ex-girlfriends and read it in their diaries. This weight has been the bane of my existence. I've lost relationships over it. I've missed job opportunities because of it. I have suffered health afflictions from gout to diabetes and even that hasn't stopped me from gorging on pizza, fries and ice cream. All of this, combined with a horrible depression, makes for an emotional breakdown cocktail. I know this is on me too. I'm not making some plea to feel bad for me or for this to lead to some Eat, Pray, Love book deal (though I will do that if commissioned. My version - Fat Broke & Horny (and Pray)).
The diabetes scares me, though. I fear they will have to cut one or both my feet off and when I can't afford the prosthetic limbs I would have to glue roller skates onto my ankles and be pulled around on a rope. A great conversation starter, true, but at what cost?
But yea, what if this doesn't end? What if I can't tackle this beast and take it down? What if I wake up one morning and I'm 50 years old and worse than I am now, if that's even possible? I have nightmares of going to my 20 year high school reunion weighing 400 lbs., rolling around in a Rascal scooter cause I can't walk anymore. Even at 5 chins in, I'm trying to dress cool for this reunion, but it doesn't work. My old chums feel bad and cater to me, getting me apps and punch. Lots of apps and punch.
Let me explain to you that in my head I'm not this big. In my head I'm a thin, dashing stud that can still rope in women at a manic rate. More of a 007 type instead of a 300 lb. type. I never wanted to be the FFG, or Fat Funny Guy as an old friend coined it. Oh, I thrived off the fat for a while, I'll admit. Booking TV roles, entertaining friends and audiences with stories and stage shows. But again, I never wanted to be the guy who is secretly excited about shows on the Food Network. It all worked at around 230 lbs., but it's out of control now.
This is all material I would use at the reunion though, like I always do. The whole "LA" bit. That I was a writer and performer. I'd drop the names and places in hopes of getting laid, which is, as my friend puts it "what it's all about anyway. All the acting, writing and going to LA is, in the end, about pussy." He's right, but I will take it further and say that anything most men do is about having sex. If we could rescue damsels in distress from castle walls and fires we would. I firmly believe that any man in the creative arts does so in part to meet chicks. I cite Eddie Van Halen. Hell, you think Keith Richards just liked playing guitar? Fuck no! "Yeah, I did the whole Hollywood thing," I would say from my Rascal at the reunion. "Ran into Tarantino a couple of times. That place is full of politics and red tape. That's why I bailed. I'm an artist, not a whore." All this would be said in my fat voice that is stuffy and low from my chins pushing against my windpipe. It sounds like a record player at a slower speed.
This and other fears take me even deeper into the realm of sad possibilities. I have anxiety-filled visions of reaching 600 lbs and being incapacitated to where I can't even leave my room. I have to live in my aunt's house, in my old bedroom back home, in a giant bed specially made for me. I can't leave this bed and my sweet 65 year old aunt has to care for me in her retirement. In my own self-hatred scenarios I'm horrible to her, yelling after her for my remote control and pudding. She's so sweet about it all too, changing my shit bucket and catheter while I watch Jersey Shore in my sweaty underwear that I can only change once a week. It gets so bad that eventually the armed forces and fire department have to smash into the side of the house, lift me out with a reinforced cherry-picker and chain me to a helicopter to hoist me out. It's all being shot by 20/20 and every other media outlet, cell phone and web site in the world. My rescue is being documented as the most popular thing happening at that moment. As my enormous body, draped only a XXXL Morrissey tee shirt, is being flown off I'm crying "Why? How did this happen? Why?"
FADE TO BLACK
CUT TO - 2 YEARS LATER. I LOSE THE WEIGHT!
I actually do it! I'm a success story. I finally achieve the one goal that had eluded me for all these years.
After spending almost two years in a hospital in up state New York for the morbidly obese, with the help of doctors, I drop over 400 of the 600 lbs. The whole thing is documented on PBS by Ken Burns while NPR is doing a live simulcast of my release from the clinic. I become an instant celebrity worldwide. Everyone loves me and my miraculous journey from being at death's door to the picture of health. I'm the new Jared. I'm still sick when I first get out, though. Tons of skin hangs from my body and my face looks like it's been caved in, but I smile through it all. Through all the cameras. The interviews and autographs. Funny, the one thing that was killing me gave me what I had always wanted. Life is strange.
I'm on magazine covers as the story of the year. Even Obama has me to the White House where Bruce Springsteen performs. He was so inspired by my tale that it drove him to write a "Thunder Road"-type song called "Overweight Man Triumphs (on the Edge of Town)."
As if this wasn't enough, I write my autobiography with the help of Jonathan Franzen, followed by my memoirs and a graphic novel that is optioned and made into a film by Paramount with Frank Darabont at the helm. I never imagined I could imagine this happening, but the icing on the cake (that I refuse to eat anymore) is that I am to be portrayed by George Clooney in Starting Tomorrow: The Mark Phinney Story, Starring George Clooney.
The trailer plays before the new Will Smith film and features "Solsbury Hill" by Peter Gabriel.
In the film Clooney, or "Cloons" as I come to call him on-set, kills the role like only a pro of his stature can do and ya know what? He wins the motherfucking OSCAR!
Oprah has me and Cloons on to discuss the film, but no one has seen me for a while including Clooney and in this time... I gained the weight back. Well, not all of it. Just 350 lbs. We go on the show and he's clearly embarrassed, as is Oprah. This was supposed to be one of those message movies about obesity in America and the president even tapped me to be the ambassador to overweight kids across the country. I went to schools all over and preached against bad foods and the importance of diet. Now here I am, morbidly obese again, but trying to play it cool. I joke with George on the show, trying to keep it light. In that fat voice, now on my even bigger Rascal I talk about the filming - "This guy. Cloons. He's a joker. Practical jokester on set. All the Ocean's 11 stories ya hear. All true. He's a funny bastard." Clooney half-smiles for the cameras, but when he tilts his head at me the way he used to do on ER it's with a serious gaze of anger and hatred, like I'm the most hateful of mythological creatures: half-paparazzo, half David O. Russell.
We all know how this ends.
After being shunned by my Hollywood friends, I'm found dead after doing cocaine with a 15 year old runaway who rolls me for my wallet, leaving me for dead in a ratty motel in Glendale (but close to Silverlake.)
There's a small snippet about me in my hometown paper. The headline reads: Local obese man found dead. "Mark Phinney, the inspiration for the Oscar-winning film Starting Tomorrow: The Mark Phinney Story, Starring George Clooney, which starred George Clooney, has died. He is survived by his imaginary 5 year old son, Conner. Friends say he lost his lifelong battle with weight, but tasted his lifelong dream of fame, even if for a short time. May he rest in peace."
I better lose weight fast. That part is real.
