When you go to a small school like Xavier University, even when you don't know people you know people. It is like you are a part of an extended family. So I didn't really know Trent in school, but I knew him from a distance. He seemed like an okay guy. It was not until my interaction with him at homecoming that I realized that he is a fataphobe.
I recall talking to Tortilla a few years back about fataphobes. I define them as people who hate or are disgusted by fat people. Oddly enough, I had not had a lot of experience with them. Sure, there had been people that didn't like me, but I always felt like that was because I was loud and had a really bad habit of saying wild, off the wall ish. Then my childhood friend Teensy got a boyfriend that was always weird around me. I didn't get the feeling that he didn't like me. It almost felt like he was afraid of me or something.
"Yeah, he is a fataphobe," Teensy said regrettably at a dinner she was holding at her apartment. "I'm sorry he's being weird." I guess I should have been offended, but I was intrigued. I mean, he was VISABLY awkward around me. A couple of times during the dinner I thought that he was going to scream! At one point, I reached for a condiment bottle that was near his arm and he abruptly jumped to his feet and pretended to have to go to the bathroom. It was comedy!
Fast forward to last weekend. I was at a homecoming event and saw Trent having a conversation with his ex-wife.
Isn't that mature, I thought to myself, taking a seat next to them. There were about five feet between us. Now, he saw me walk over. He saw me sit down. Yet he did not speak. Now, if it's one thing I can not handle, it is rudeness. You speak when you see folks! That's just what you do! And I wasn't going to speak to him first, I'm the girl!
What's this n*$ga's issue? I asked myself. But I stopped that line of negative mental questioning because my therapist warned me that thoughts like that are fruitless...before she dumped me. But she was right. Obviously, he didn't speak because he was in the middle of a conversation. DUH! Not a second after rationalizing this, he jumped to his feet and gave a bro hug and dap combo to this guy from our class. After some light chat with the guy, he sat down but turned himself in a manner that was strange and dare I say looked painful so that he didn't have to see me. My mouth dropped. What was that about?!
When he walked into the class tent at the tailgate the incident from the day before was still on my mind. Perhaps I would have thought I was trippin' if I had not watched him literally come in and speak to everyone else but me. Had I offended him at some point? I mean, when you often speak without thinking as I do, anything is possible. I just knew he was going to speak as he was about to leave the tent, but he actually sped up to try to get past me without my noticing.
"Hey Trent!" I yelled so loudly that he had no choice but to stop.
"Oh hey Holly!" he exclaimed as if he really hadn't seen me there. He was hella squirmy and antsy and off, and I had seen this same type of behavior before from Teensy's whack ex. It dawned on me: I was in the company of a real live fataphobe.
Child, I wore Trent out with questions about his divorce and job and family and hobbies and anything else I could think of until he began to do this strange dance like he had to pee or something. He was beginning to sweat like Teensy's ex at the dinner party. I decided to let him go before he actually exploded, covering me in bloody, fataphobic bits.
"It was good to see you Trent!" I said with a huge, fake smile.
"You too!" he said, just as fake.
A second later I turned around to see him collecting himself on the side of another tent, dry heaving. I smiled. It would have been funny if he would have hurled. Ass hole.
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