Neighbors:
There’s a fat man who sits outside the Psychic’s on 4th every summer morning. I pass him on my way to the subway. His belly sits on his body like a medicine ball made of animal hides and filled with sand. He wears a gold chain that catches the morning sun in the cheesiest way. In one hand he holds a slippery bottle of baby oil that he lathers all over himself. In the other, his phone. Everyone stares. He’s a neighborhood spectacle, shamelessly near naked, with a body so extreme—round and hard, ripe and perennial. Like musical instruments, whose curvatures and bowed crescents yield purpose, this man’s shape appears built for some larger and unanswered intent.
I cannot think of a context where this man’s presence would not fall on cliches. Sometimes, I imagine gladiator sandals strapped onto his feet, tight against his shins. Other times, because his posture is very ‘pool side’, I decorate his close proximity with yellowed lawn furniture, and touches of neon pink: his plastic visor lid, a logo on his swim trunks, his beer cozy, his wife’s flip flops which he wears.
My one little puzzle with this man is the color of his skin. I cannot place it; nothing fits. Unlike his entire self which playfully fits into many scenarios, his color is a very set shade of burnt red that I have zero comparison for. His dogged tanning has created the most distinct and raw hue; a likeness that might only be debunked in a year or two.
