yr 10/Monologue/ANP

Hy my name is Keith, I’m 32, I’m Virgo I love chocolate and I love children. Yes I have worked with children before and I have excellent recommendations (yeah right), yes and I prefer little children. Well I charge $8 per hour. No, no it’s not too much because I am excellent at what I do. I promise you won’t regret it. Oh yeah but be careful when you see me because you will not be sure if I’m woman or a man but I’m a woman and my name is Keith, oh and I’m pretty big so I might scare your children. Oh the kind of big that…. weights,…about mm….200 pounds?

Well tell me, how am I supposed to introduce myself? Even if I lie I will get fired the following day because children cry as soon as they see me come into their rooms and parents don’t trust me. When I travel, I need to buy two seats because I don’t fit in one. I mean I don’t occupy the whole two seats, it’s only that some of my fatty stomach slims down to the neighboring seat and I used to get a lot of complains from my next-seat passengers so I decided to end that thing.

I weight 222 pounds and trust me it is not easy to live with. People nowadays are pretty harsh with their comments and little kids, they are the worst. One day I was walking in the park to try and lose some of this excess weight and this kid, not even 7 years old screams at the top of his voice to his little brother “look peter, that old lady looks like the elephant we saw in the zoo the other day, except she ain´t grey”. Okay, a) I’m not that old and b) for gods sakes I’m not that fat.

I have had weight problems all my life. When I was little, one night after dinner my mom asked me if I was puking up my food. At first I was mad because she had asked me that question but I didn’t know what to say to her. I mean I didn’t actually puke all of it, just some of it, but it’s not what you think. I was just thinking ya know, if I didn’t eat so much bad stuff then maybe I would loose some of this excess weight. All my life I have tried to loose weight. I’ve gone to nutriologists who made special diets depending on what I liked to eat, I went to doctors who told me the problem was my slow metabolism, I tried gyms and special workouts to loose weight fast, and I even once tried these “super pills” that “burned up your fat in only a month”. They never worked; the only thing I got from them was a “super” headache.

I´v given up all of that now. I gave up my dreams of becoming one of those super skinny, super hot, awesome body popular girls. Boys never looked at me, less even now. The only looks I get are those that look me up and down as if I were an animal, and those looks hurt. The thing that hurt me the most was when I realized I would never meet my true love. I used to dream about him, my perfect guy, how he would give me my first kiss, how he would hold me and how he would look at me with those loving eyes, regardless of my appearance. My first kiss was in our graduation party (yeah! I was that old) but it was only because this guy Timmy dared his best buddy Tom to kiss me, in front of his girlfriend. So he did and he got $100, and he probably got his girlfriend back at the end of the day. But common, was it that bad to kiss me?

I’m 34 now, and I’m broke. I’m broke because no one will give me a job, partly because I didn’t go to college (I couldn’t face the pressure) and partly because they don’t appreciate the sight of my gross body.

I’m feeling sorta week right now. It must be that horrible fried chicken I practically stuffed in my mouth last night because it is all I can afford. I can't believe this. It’s getting harder and harder to get up the stairs to my humble flat each time. I can’t even do simple things like eating my burger or reading the newspaper without falling asleep. Maybe I will move to Huston Texas, the fattest city in America and I will not be criticized. Maybe I will even find my better half. But I won’t be too positive about that because as some very wise guy I read today on the newspaper said “love is like magic, although magic can sometimes be an illusion”, and I’ve never been in love so what can I know? Oh and one more thing: I look like a WHALE! So I don’t think may looks will be coming my way. But hey,even a girl with a weird name (like Keith) can dream right?