Josh goes to design school in Los
Angeles. He wants to be creative
for a
living.
Josh gets out of class one day and his
friend invites him to a Dodgers game.
Josh obliges.
At the Dodgers game, Josh cannot stop looking
around him, looking at the
crowd. The Dodgers crowd. Everyone is fat,
Josh thinks. He is not fat. He is
just right. Maybe a little too skinny. Josh
starts to hyperventilate. He
sees people eating, everywhere. Food is
falling on people's shirts. People
are licking their fingers too much. Smacking
noises. All Josh can hear are
smacking noises. How can the baseball
players hear over smacking noises? The
crack of the bat is drowned out by smacking
noises made by sixty thousand
people simultaneously smacking at once
eating nachos or Dodger Dogs or
french fries.
Josh passes out.
Josh wakes up five minutes later. His
friends have not noticed. They are
drinking and throwing popcorn in front of
them.
~
Josh comes to design school the next Monday
carrying his manbag. The manbag
is full of cookies and white-powdered
donuts.
His friends ask him why he has all of the
cookies and donuts. What for, they
ask.
Josh doesn't reply.
In design class, Josh's design teacher picks
at his fingernails and makes a
scrunched-up ugly face. Josh opens his
manbag from Target and gets out a box
of 24 powdered donuts. Josh eats a donut.
Josh sees his friend sneeze without covering
his hand. Josh eats another
donut.
At a stoplight, Josh sees a girl putting on
makeup in her car. She has too
much makeup on already. Josh starts sweating
and struggles to grab his
manbag from his backseat. The light turns
green just as Josh puts a donut in
his mouth.
~
Two months later. Josh is fat and unhealthy
feeling. He now carries a
backpack full of food. He has dropped out of
design school. He sits at the
outdoor cafe of a Target in Burbank and eats
donuts and cookies as he
watches people. All day. Cookies and donuts.
That mother let her child
become that way, Josh tells himself. I must
eat for her. If I eat for her
then she will not want to eat. That's how
the universe becomes stable, Josh
says out loud. That's how the universe
becomes stable.
Why can't there be beauty everywhere, Josh
says.
~
Josh goes to a Dodgers game by himself. This
is the ultimate test, he tells
himself.
Josh begins eating immediately. Bad
hairpiece. Too tall. Laughing too
loudly. Josh eats three boxes of white
powdered donuts before he gets to the
front of the concessions line.
He orders five Dodger Dogs, two Supreme
Nachos, and a Souvenir Cup Mug Root
Beer. Josh sits down in the nosebleeds. Not
very many people around him. He
watches the large screen instead. The
baseball players. Josh eats all of the
food he ordered.
Josh watches number 24. He falls in love
with him. He is perfect. He does
not make stupid faces. He is beautiful.
Josh looks down at himself. His t-shirt is
covered in mustard and relish. I
am one of them, Josh says. I cannot control
myself anymore, Josh says out
loud. I cannot control myself. I will never
be number twenty-four, Josh
says.
Josh runs down the steps and throws himself
over the railing.
Ken Baumann acts and takes pictures for a living. His writing
can be found