Gorillas in the Mist
Not all fat people are jolly. Take Lolly for example.
We were on holiday with friends at their gorgeous Hamburg home. Peace and tranquility. Then Lolly and her feeder/husband arrived. Lolly wears a kaftan, mostly because the only other option is a tent, and has a constant sheen around herself, evidence of the energy consumed by moving. In the words of Shakespeare: Lolly lards the lean earth as she moves along. Watching her grunt, sweat and complain through the vehicular extrication process was amusing. But that didn’t last for long.
Special outside chairs needed to be dragged into the dining room, because Lolly’s arse was too large and her weight to much for the more delicate ones. Although even they were robust by most people’s standards.
Lolly is a long-time friend of our friends and easily slips into the jibing banter they have always had. But Lolly likes to put down the people around her. ‘You have put on weight,’ she says to Antoinette. However, dear Toni is used to this by now and does not rise to the bait. But Lolly keeps picking and stabbing with words.
I can see it will get ugly, so retire to the upstairs verandah with my book, rejoining the group later for supper. By then the large woman has my children involved in a card game called Spite and Malice and is verbally abusing them with words like stupid and runt. My rage levels are high. I take a valium. One can’t be upsetting the people with whom one is staying.
Dinner deteriorates into an argument between Lolly and Toni’s husband. The argument is about breakfast. Lolly does not want an omelet, which we have all been happily consuming for days as a beginning to high adventure including kite flying, swimming, boating etc. No, Lolly wants fried eggs (4) and bacon. She is adamant because this is what her feeder always prepares and delivers on a tray in bed. Every day.
Toni’s husband, John, gets a tad, well, bitchy. Lolly staggers upwards and gets up to smack him. Repeatedly. She cuts him open with her rings. There is blood.
‘Fuck off Lolly.’
I squirm we never have anything like this in our lives. Certainly not from grown-ups and these are mature friends in their early 50s. I can see the rage. I go to bed. Discomforted by the display of petty anger.
Next morning I walk through and see John gazing through the large window at the sea. My two children are there, peering at the white, shimmering gloom which encompasses the little hills leading to the sea. Lolly is standing at the kitchen table.
John: ‘Tell me girls, have you ever played gorillas in the mist?’
KC Kids, in unison: ‘Oooh. No?’
John: ‘We send Lolly outside to hide and then we have to go find her.’
I snorted with laughter, turning puce, I am sure, to smother the belly laugh that was coming up like an unwelcome and ungovernable burp.
Lolly left that day.
