Verbal Portrait No. 8
The Fat Man
Everybody wears their hunger and their haunt. —Rust Cohle, True Detective
In earlier posts, I have explored the idea of verbal portraiture. Verbal Portrait No. 1 and Verbal Portrait No. 2 describe a bookish lady and a troubled writer, respectively.
I encourage you to read the above portraits in full for proper context on this style, however, I empathize with the there-aren’t-enough-hours-in-the-day crowd. Below is an excerpt that briefly explains my angle and aim:
From vivid descriptions of my most minute observations, I attempted to create a coherent verbal “image.” Like the pointillistic brushstrokes of Seurat, my words would obfuscate if read individually, but render clarity when taken as a whole. Hence, the idea of verbal portraiture was born.
A Verbal Portrait is a specific, hyper-detailed description of the reality an individual sees in front of him/her.
Verbal Portrait of a Fat Man
He let out something between a sigh and a huff as he reached the second-floor landing.
The thirteen stairs were like a half marathon to him. Each one a mile masquerading as a mere step. He felt the familiar sweat began to bead at the nape of his neck.
From his knobbly knees, his plump, pearly paws slowly swooped up and swallowed the cafe’s tarnished doorknob. He resembled Gulliver during his travels, except the only thing giant about him was his gut.
In walked the round creature and, as the door’s bells tinkled their song, two beady black eyes looked out between the rolls of flesh that surrounded them. They bounced around the room as did the paunch under his shirt.
He didn’t walk as much as roll.
He didn’t sit, he sank.
Plaque clogged his arteries and fog shrouded his brain.
A curious soul was buried in all this lard. Some days he regarded his bulk ruefully; but the distress of remorse was less powerful than the distress of dieting.
His friends called him the ton of fun. He liked having a nickname at first, but over time he realized that they were a lot like swords. They were heavy; they cut both ways; you lived and died by them.
Weight saddled him in more ways than one. It burdened his face and his frame, his mood and his joints. Together their cries formed a tragic chorus, screaming for help that would never come.
For, he was both jailer and prisoner; he held the keys to escape, but they remained unused.
Mindlessly, he kept returning to the trough. He was fat and happy and at home in the slop, a pig who knew nothing of the slaughter.
He was the lord of lard, the sultan of stomach, the prince of pounds, the king of kilos, sitting in a throne of his own making.
Though heavy is the head that wears the crown, he refused to abdicate.
He was starving and it was time to eat.
Feast your eyes on more verbal portraiture:
Per my about page, White Noise is a work of experimentation. I view it as a sort of thinking aloud, a stress testing of my nascent ideas. Through it, I hope to sharpen my opinions against the whetstone of other people’s feedback, commentary, and input.
If you want to discuss any of the ideas or musings mentioned above or have any books, papers, or links that you think would be interesting to share on a future edition of White Noise, please reach out to me by replying to this email or following me on Twitter X.
With sincere gratitude,
Tom
Fat & happy in-deed - lovely writing!