Unable to resist weighing in daily, though the trial protocol recommended only twice a week, Emmett despaired that he still hadn’t lost any weight after the first six days. He remembered reading that some of the participants would be given placebos, and he began to worry he was one of them. It’s not like they would tell him, right? It was just his luck to be admitted to a trial like this and then get stuck in the control group, so much time, energy, and hope wasted on nothing. But what about the procedure? Surely they wouldn’t have put him through all that if they were just going to give him a weekly saline injection? Either way, he wasn’t losing weight, and desperate measures were called for. After digging his track shorts and zip-up hoodie out of the dresser, he drove the entire 0.7 miles to 24 Hour Fitness, signed in for the first time in eight months, and immediately ran into a guy he’d hooked up with fifty pounds lighter. Jesus fucking Christ. It was bad enough that the guy looked damn good, bearded and swole and tatted to hell and back. Worse was what (hadn’t) happened last time they were in the same room together. Emmett could barely think about the late-night encounter without blushing. After years on Grindr, it was twenty-three-year-old Emmett’s first time meeting someone from the app. The thirty-one-year-old man, whose username was simply J, had agreed to host at his apartment around the corner from the gym. From the moment he arrived, Emmett was awkward, nervous. They k ept their voices down to avoid waking J’s roommate. He escorted Emmett into his bedroom, put on Donnie Darko, and they sat watching it on the bed. “Nooo,” J r eprimanded, moving Emmett’s hand from his crotch to his thigh ninety seconds into the movie. Emmett apologized, mortified. He didn’t know the proper etiquette, was just doing what he thought J wanted. Afraid of messing up again, he focused on the movie and let J make the first move. Things progressed—he allowed Emmett to touch him, unbutton his jeans, roll his dick around in his mouth for a minute or two—but nothing seemed to do it for J. Not even hard, he finally pushed Emmett’s face away and dragged his underwear back up. “I thought I could make this work, but I’m just not—” His eyes flicked over Emmett’s body. “I’m tired.” Emmett was so naïve he might have believed it, were J not back on Grindr in seconds, his phone pinging with the app’s distinctive notification. Brrrrup! Brrrrup! Brrrrup! These days Emmett remained on the app only as a lurker: no profile pic, no name, just a green dot showing he was online. It turned out, he got more messages with a blank profile than he did with a face pic. Gay men—the kind he was typically attracted to, anyway—could be ruthless, blocking him as soon as they saw his message. Lizette encouraged him to get on GROWLR and Grommr, sites geared toward bears and “chubby chasers,” but ninety percent of the messages he received were from men thousands of miles away wanting to exchange
photos, or locals some thirty or forty years older than him. The whole thing made him uncomfortable; somehow, being fetishized for a body he hated was worse than being rejected. As he entered the cardio area where J was st epping off a treadmill, Emmett’s weight gain for once seemed to work in his favor. Mopping sweat off his forehead, J walked past him. A flicker of recognition behind his eyes, and then it was gone. Emmett had gotten away with it. Thank fuck for that. The cardio section was as busy as ever, a dozen ellipticals and treadmills facing a floor-to-ceiling glass window. Mounted TVs played mute subtitled sports and soap operas. Emmett climbed onto his favorite elliptical, whose position beside the wall meant he could be perceived only from one side. His phone piped high-energy dance pop to his earbuds as he churned his legs against the foot pedals, hands driving the handlebars. He ratcheted up the resistance. The music flowed through him, fueled him, set his pace. He’d forgotten how good this felt—the unleashing of his pent-up energy, getting out of his head and into his body. The way he moved with and responded to the music was the closest he’d ever get to dancing in public. A woman st epped onto the machine beside him, blond, tiny waist, peach- emoji perfect. Emmett withdrew into himself instinctively, like an anemone prodded with a stick. Suddenly he was hyperaware of his breathing, concerned about odor. Could she smell him through his body-hiding hoodie? Did he disgust her? The woman had done nothing to warrant this reaction, barely even looked his way—but it wasn’t about that. Enough had been done and said over Emmett’s lifetime, both to him and about others like him, that the response was automatic. The cruelty of others tattooed into his psyche by years of tiny, needling pricks. Being here only amplified the voice in his head. The further he pushed himself out of his comfort zone, the more loudly his self-loathing urged him back into the safety of home. Home, where he couldn’t impose his abnormality on others. The one place he could exist totally free from judgment. When he could take no more, he dismounted the elliptical and took the stairs down to the lower level, a crowded sweatbox of weight machines and grunting glistening men, pushing, curling, bending over each other, spotting one another’s r eps. The chest press was free; he hesitated, then started over. It was one of six or seven machines he’d learned how to use with Chad, his former personal trainer. Straight and toned with tanned hairy legs, Chad had slotted right into this world and couldn’t seem to fathom that Emmett, being a man, could feel any different. “What do you mean you’re not gonna do burpees?” Chad said a few minutes into their first session. Emmett’s explanation seemed to go over his head—that it had nothing to do with the intensity or physical discomfort of the exercise, but the discomfort of making a spectacle of his body, of his shirt riding up and his crack showing, of drawing attention to his fatness in a place where he already felt like a sideshow
freak. Chad had relented, then worked him so hard and with so little regard for his requests to slow down that Emmett had wondered if he was being punished. Less than twenty minutes in, he became lightheaded and nearly passed out. Sitting him down on the mat, Chad called an early end to their session but still counted it against the package of ten that had cost Emmett two weeks’ pay. At least he’d come away with some basic knowledge about sets, r eps, and how to operate the machines. Emmett adjusted the seat of the chest press, tested the weight, and lowered it by half. Four pumps into his first set, a guy in a skimpy tank top forced him to stop and pull out an earbud. “Sorry?” “Just wanted you to know you’re doing great, bud,” the gym bro said. “It’s dope you’re here.” Disjointed black tattoos like Harry Styles’s showed above the collar of his tank top and staggered down his arms. An angel-winged cross, the 619 area code in Gothic lettering, the words EAT ME stamped into the gym bro’s forearm. “Ke ep it up.” Emmett’s polite response belied the tight feeling constricting his chest, the sudden itch to grab his stuff and bolt. Men thought they were being kind saying shit like that, lifting someone up who “so obviously needed it,” but for Emmett, being singled out for his weight only reminded him how much he didn’t fit in. The gym bro was talking again. Emmett yanked his earbud out once more, struggling now to hide his irritation. “Sorry?” “How many more r eps you got?” “I just started.” The man’s smile flattened. “Alright,” he muttered. How quickly It’s awesome you’re here became Now hurry up and leave the second Emmett insisted on taking up space. The gym bro milled around, playing on his phone, putting pressure on Emmett to finish quickly. Making him feel that he was being watched, his form being critiqued behind a derisive smirk. Despite his insecurity, Emmett couldn’t ke ep his eyes off the de ep armholes in the gym bro’s tank, the muscled body exposed almost down to the waist: the inked pecs, the ripple of ribs, the chiseled V pointing down toward his dick. Emmett resented how badly he craved the taste of him, how badly he hungered for his meat. He let the weights drop and snatched up his water. “All yours, bro.” “Hey, you gonna wipe that down?” Emmett looked back at the machine, the seat shining with sweat. “Sorry.” Embarrassed, he grabbed some paper towels and disinfectant from the dispenser on the wall. “Guess you don’t come here often.” That smirk again. A prickling shame rose to Emmett’s cheeks. He scoured the seat and grips, tossed the paper towels into the trash, and hurried back upstairs. Looking back, he saw the gym bro giving the seat an extra wipe, making sure nothing of Emmett was left. As he walked out into the parking lot and climbed into his car, his phone buzzed in his pocket. Brrrrup! He unlocked it to find new messages from a profile named 4 Now. He could see from the profile picture it was the man he had once known as J.
With a low murmur of dread through his gut, Emmett opened the chat log and read. I thought you looked familiar (sort of) Fuck, what happened to you? Good thing you’re at the gym Emmett froze. Tears needled the backs of his eyes as he pocketed the phone and fumbled the key into the ignition. Wind buffeted through the open windows as the car peeled through the lot and turned onto the street. The signs of half a dozen taco shops and fast-food restaurants guided him home; he barely beat the lure of one before another came at him, whispering its promise of fleeting comfort. White-knuckling the thought of all the calories he’d just burned, all the good he mustn’t let go to waste (Feel the burn), he made it back to the apartment without stopping, before realizing Lizette was staying at Armando’s. Fuck. He was counting on her presence to ke ep him in check. He searched the kitchen. There was pretty much nothing: a few slices of pro volone, last week’s bread, peanut butter, the last bag of microwave popcorn. When Emmett was ravenous like this, it didn’t make any difference. However little there was, it was always enough to binge. He ate rolled-up cheese slices while the popcorn popped, chased it with a peanut butter sandwich. Craving sweetness, he toasted the heels of the loaf. Tore them up trying to smear hard chunks of butter over them. A generous sprinkle of sugar and cinnamon, and he had his dessert. He barely chewed, swallowed painfully. A good pain, though. A pain of pleasure, stretching his stomach and dampening the burn. Now he was glad he was alone. It meant he could relax, didn’t have to hide. He couldn’t help it, even when it was just Lizette. After all these years, Emmett was still afraid of what might happen if he was caught. Appendix H—Blog Post My St epdad and Other Monsters: Part 2 By: Emmett Truesdale Published: June 20, 2018 It was part of my mom and dad’s custody agreement that my sister and I would spend every other weekend with Dad and my older half brother Chris at Dad’s condo in the city. The older we got, the less frequently Abby joined us; Dad’s place was cramped, and he and Abby butted heads. A registered special inspector for construction sites, Dad was as structured and organized as my mom was loose, as spendy as she was bargain-savvy, as health-conscious as she was indulgent (excluding, of course, the two bottles of merlot he put away every night). It was hard to imagine the two having ever been married, but then again, the marriage hadn’t lasted long. Dad didn’t ke ep much food in the house, so when I came over the first thing he’d do was take me to Vons and let me pick out what I wanted—Pop- Tarts, tortilla chips, cookies. Even better, I could play my Game Boy in peace, disappear into the streets of Fortree City, and battle gym leader Winona for the Feather Badge.
Skarmory used Sand Attack! Vil eplume’s accuracy fell. Vil eplume used Leech Life. It’s not very effective! For those of you non-Pokémon people, every Pokémon has a type, which reflects their natural habitat and what special attacks they can perform. Electric, fire, grass, rock—there are dozens, each with their own strengths and vulnerabilities. Like the character Misty from the original show, water- type Pokémon were my specialty. I’d grown up in the water. Almost every day I spent at Dad’s included a visit to the community pool, me doing cannonballs and secretly pretending to be a merman while he sat in the hot tub with a can of Coors Light. He and Chris were surfers, so often Saturdays were spent at Tourmaline Beach. Dad would go out on his longboard, and I’d wade out until the water was up to my chest. Jumping around in the waves, I’d imagine I was joined by my favorite water types: Staryu, a starfish Pokémon with a red-gem core; and Goldeen, an elegant fish type with sle epy eyes and a horn protruding from her white-and-orange head. Happy to be out of their Pokéballs, they showed off their agility in the water, nourished by the sea, like I was. One day, a boy my age and his younger sister appeared beside me in the surf. The little girl looked at me, making a face. “Why do you have your shirt still on?” she said, scanning the wet T-shirt clinging to my torso. I pulled it away from my skin and it inflated like a balloon, hiding the lines of my body in a way that felt safer. “I don’t like taking it off.” “Why? Boys are supposed to take off their shirts.” I wished I had the powers of my favorite Pokémon, Sobble, which turned invisible whenever its skin touched water. “Well?” Her brother leapt over a wave. “Because he’s fat, Kayla.” Without even looking, I could feel Staryu and Goldeen surface beside me. Could feel them quivering with anger, waiting for my command. The words buzzed at the tip of my tongue: Do it, Staryu. Use your Water Gun! I imagined Staryu leaping into the air, taking aim at the brother and sister, blasting them with a jet of water. Great job. Now, Goldeen, show them your Horn Attack! In my head, she skated over the waves, frilly tail fin dancing behind her as she lowered her head. KABAM! Goldeen used Horn Attack. Critical hit! “What the hell?” the boy shouted. His arm was bleeding. “You just scratched me!” “No I didn’t,” I shot back. Surprised but also pleased. It was like I’d brought the Pokémon to life with my mind. Like I at last had someone fighting in my corner. In November 1999, to coincide with the theatrical release of Pokémon: The First Movie, Burger King launched a line of kids’ meal toys that, in time, would go down in infamy as the one that ended in the deaths of two children and a national recall. But I didn’t know that when in 2004 my mom and I were browsing a local thrift shop for holiday décor and I spotted half a dozen of the toys on the shelf, each collectible Pokémon en capsulated in a plastic Pokéball. I begged my mom for them, but my tenth birthday had just passed and Christmas was just over a week away, a dead zone for fri volous buying.
Still, it ended up being a pretty decent Christmas. We spent Christmas Eve at Dad’s house—he got me the new Pokémon Leaf Green Version for my Game Boy—and Christmas Day at home, Mom making a big fuss of everything, buying too many presents and cooking way too much. In my stocking I found two of the thrift-shop Pokéballs and a card from my grandma with another fifteen bucks. Despite all the amazing gifts I’d received, I was desperate to return to the shop when it reopened a couple of days later, but Hank had to work and Mom and Abby were out running errands. Unwilling to wait, I walked the mile and a half to the shop. Returning home with my new battle partner, I stopped by the kitchen on my way upstairs, more out of habit than anything else. Might as well, while Hank was still at work. Nothing in the fridge grabbed me, so I tried the pantry, where I found a package of two orange Hostess Cupcakes. No. Anything but those. Since he’d broken down and begged for my forgiveness, Hank had mostly laid off me, but I could see in his eyes that it wasn’t easy for him. He still didn’t like it when I ate, and the disappearance of his precious cupcakes for a second time was certain to send him over the edge. I tried to make do with safer options: Cheez-Its, Ruffles, a handful of salted peanuts, again sampling from open boxes and cans, taking only as much as wouldn’t be missed. But now that I’d gotten my salt, my body demanded sugar. The cupcakes whispered to me, We’re all there is. Go on, eat us. He might not even notice. And even if he does, he promised to be nice. I wasn’t sure I believed that, but who was I kidding? Trying to fight a craving as strong as this never worked. Sooner or later I was going to eat the damn cupcakes. As I reached for the pack, a voice spoke behind me. “Fat pig.” I jumped back, a cold tremor rattling up my spine. It was Hank. His jaw was clenched, his lip curled in a little sneer. “I wasn’t—” “Don’t lie to me, pig.” “I’m not a pig!” My grip tightened on the toy Pokéball still clutched in my hand. “No self-control. You’re an animal.” “That’s not true.” I was so angry I threw the ball down on the floor like a challenge. Bulbasaur, I choose you! “I look at you and want to throw up.” Hank used Poison Sting. It was super-effective! Emmett was hurt by poison. Tears of frustration slid down my cheeks. He was right—I was going to eat it—but I would’ve felt embarrassed and ashamed whether he caught me or not. Why did he have to be so hurtful about it? I imagined Bulbasaur jumping up off the floor and launching herself at him, tentacle-like vines poised to strike, a cartoon vein throbbing out of her forehead. I wished she were real. I wished they all were, Sobble and Zangoose and Wobbuffet. Just like I wished my mom’s threats were real, and Hank’s promises that he would change, that things would be different. But that hope was as imaginary as my pocket monsters. He st epped toward me. Emmett is paralyzed! He can’t move! Walking past me into the pantry, he grabbed the cupcakes. “Come on.” He pulled me down the hall by the back of the collar, his voice a taut chirp.
“If you’re hungry for a snack, then you’ll have a snack.” I was so confused, I barely resisted. He shoved me into the bathroom, facing the mirror, and held out the cupcakes. “Here.” “What?” I flinched at the cold surprise of his hand against my stomach. He was grabbing my shirt, wrenching it up over my head, exposing my naked belly and boobs. “Eat them,” he said. “Watch yourself in the mirror.” “N-no.” I crossed my arms over my stomach, ashamed. It had been years since anyone had seen me shirtless. When I wouldn’t take the package, he tore it open with his teeth. “You’re gonna eat these cupcakes, sport,” he said, pulling them free from the cellophane. “I said no—!” Seizing his opportunity, he smashed a cupcake into my open mouth. Panicking, I grabbed his hand and bit. “Argh!” He ripped his hand back. “Frick!” I’d gotten him good. Blood dribbled down his fingers and dripped onto the linoleum. The mirror showed a bit of it smeared across my lower lip. I could taste it, mingled with the synthetic zing of the orange, the mallow sweetness of the cream filling, that bitter coppery tang like old pennies. Before I realized what I was doing, my tongue slid out and licked. Hank backed out of the bathroom, his face shining with horror. “Monster.” I relished his fear. I’d had my first taste, and I liked it. Maybe I didn’t need a Pokémon to defend me. Maybe I was all the monster I needed. Appendix I—Online News Article Point Loma coyote sighting leads to grim discovery October 8, 2023 / 9:22 AM PT SAN DIEGO – Local police found a human arm after residents r eported seeing a coyote walking down the street carrying the severed limb in its mouth, authorities said early Sunday morning. The arm was found in the parking lot of the Presidio Apartments in the Point Loma neighborhood, assistant police chief of centralized investigations Darryl Bautista told the Union-Tribune. The coyote was not present when police arrived on the scene. Coyotes are native to San Diego County but rarely spotted in the neighborhood. Bautista said the arm appeared to show “numerous bite marks,” possibly from “more than one set of teeth.” However, he declined to comment on the nature of the marks. “I leave that to the coroner to tell us,” he said. Ace Selder, a resident of the Presidio Apartments who claimed to have scared the coyote off, said, “I got a good look [at the arm] before they took it. Those weren’t just coyote bites. There were human ones too.” Bautista refused to comment but described the sight as “very disturbing.” He said police were working to identify who the arm belonged to. He noted the presence of several distinguishing tattoos, including a tribal symbol, a cross with angel wings, and the words “Eat Me.”
Selder corroborated the description, calling the marking “ironic.” Authorities are treating the case as a possible homicide. “If anyone can help identify the victim or saw anything that could be useful to our investigation, please come forward,” Bautista said. “There’s a potential killer loose in our city. Man or beast, the sooner we find them, the safer we’ll all be.”