Story Time

Hello everyone. Marlene here. This is a story submitted by a nice man who works in the Marketing department of Grey's. I think it's lovely. Enjoy!

I’ve grown tired all the time and I think it has something to do with what I eat for breakfast. When I was a virile, young sprout, they told me, “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Stacy. So, eat healthy now. And, I don’t just mean a bowl of ‘Fruity Sugar Malted Balls’ or ‘Blackwell’s Chocolate Chunks’. I mean eggs, home fries, bacon, sausage, pancakes, French toast, an omelet, a crepe, some toast with some jam or jelly on it, etc. It’s all about energy. You need that energy to begin your day.” And, they were right. For 25 years, my breakfast has consisted of two eggs (any style, poached if I can have ‘em that way), four long strips of bacon, a glass of orange juice, two pieces of toast with strawberry jelly and a piece of cantaloupe. Time passed, I worked hard at my job and life became more complicated, so did my breakfast. As the years peeled away, I became larger (mainly my ass) and assumed that more food was necessary every morning to keep my energy level at its desired capacity. Gradually, I increased the amount I ate. My regime went from 2 eggs to 3 or 4, four long strips of bacon became a half dozen, a glass of orange juice, prune juice and a Vegetable Medley drink, 4 pieces of toast marinated in strawberry jelly, a piece of cantaloupe along with a side of three buttermilk pancakes or French toast powdered with sugar. Well, daily intake increased. And I now eat 6 eggs, 5 buttermilk pancakes and ½ dozen pieces of French toast, 12 strips of bacon alongside a big slab of Canadian Bacon, a crepe filled with cheese, a 2-liter of Mountain Dew (to make up for what I felt to be failing energy) and a small box of chocolate covered cherries. Yet, my energy level is still way down. I find I barely want to leave my room let alone board the bus and go to work. I long to change my breakfast diet, to make me more peppy, but I fear any subsequent loss in energy that might occur.

Of course, the tired could come from my family. I wouldn’t put it past them. My mother had died three years ago. She was a charming and gregarious woman who instantly became the life of any party she became a part of. A fun lady who enjoyed a big buffet as much as the next woman. My dad, in contrast, was a gym teacher. Yelling at kids all day takes the energy right out of ya, I guess. I never heard the man say more than five words at the same time at any time. But, after Mom died, everything changed. Dad suddenly acquired an “urge to live”, as he called it. I asked him what he’d been doing with Mom for all those years but he didn’t answer. He sold the family house as is, which was a little annoying as all our family photos and quite a few of our childhood belongings were in there. But, Dad didn’t even take notice. He took the money from the sale and rented space in the garage of the house across the street so he could have an “Eternally Nostalgic” view of the Homestead. The remainder went towards the purchasing of a ‘79 Plymouth Home-On-Six-Wheels trailer. A truly gross looking machine which had strange rusty stains all along the bottom and smelled like a small, sheltered, damp place no matter how much you disinfected the thing or aired it out. I asked him why the sudden urge and he claimed that Mom came to him in a daydream and told him to spend the rest of his life traveling around the country and then from the North to the South Pole. By time he left on his journey, one year ago yesterday, he had taken to living entirely in the trailer. The man couldn’t use a bathroom anywhere but in that trailer. “It’s cramped, yeah...it’s cramped!” he’d say stumbling towards the RV’s permanently stained kitchen table, “But, it just makes me appreciate, so much more, the enormous expanse of the world when I get out.” I thought maybe it got a little too hot for him in there. But, despite my pleas, he set off across Our Great Land and then up to the North and down to the South. The last thing I heard him yell, as he drove out of sight, “I’m hoping to pick me up some hitchhikers! With short shorts so tight!” A month later, he started sending requests for money as he’d left his ATM card in the garage. He was my dad. How could I turn down his request? I also have one brother, Trevor, who ran off years ago to become a traveling troubadour throughout Europe. We haven’t heard a thing from him since. Oh, except some bi-monthly requests for what he calls “Troubadour Restitution”. It’s not much, though. 2/5 of my income went to the two of them and, with that, almost all of my love, hopes, tears and wishes. Working lots of overtime to help them out barely kept my eyes open at 8AM unless I had three big, big cups of coffee.

The job, which I’ve held for the past ten years, has just recently begun to make me tired. I don’t know if it’s the primary source of my tiredness but it certainly doesn’t help. Ten years I’ve been there...and I’m convinced that they are not looking out for my happiness. I have been bucking for this job for weeks. I worked for it, campaigned for it, shmoozed the bosses, greased palms and did every damn thing I could think of. It didn’t work. I couldn’t get it. I mean, it was there in my grasp and they gave it to Danny D! “This is Danny D! Can I get you somethin’ nice?” Jesus, that guy makes me angry! Well, he did make me angry. Now, he just makes me tired. That job in Government Reporting - Verifications should have been mine. The president of the branch said I was the best employee Government Reporting, and maybe even the Retirement Plan Division, ever had. I was the #1 man in Government Reporting - Statement Exceptions and I missed a job in Verifications (who are, by the way, closer to the windows) to that spud Danny D. My anger became rage that became tired because it had nowhere else to go. I gotta get a new job. Or a second one. But, I just don’t have the time to look.

And, whose relationship with a certain woman named Sally wears them out? I’m afraid that’s me. Sally is what I like to call a “big girl.” Not fat, mind you: Big. A bit thick. And, since I’m a bit thick, I think my women should be likewise. I met Sally a year ago out at Seneca Park during the big Employee Picnic. There had been hot dogs, enormous amounts, and I sincerely enjoy hot dogs. After about 8 or 9, my ass felt particularly lugubrious and I decided a walk round a couple of nearby trees would work wonders. So, I began walking and bumped, after a 2nd revolution, directly into the most beautiful vision I’d ever encountered: Sweet, Plump Sally. A shock to all my senses. We spent the rest of the afternoon talking and talking. Over the next six months, we were together every other night in our pre-wedlock bliss. Of course, wedding bells were in our future or so we figured. There is, however, an obstacle, a force larger than both of us that is cheesing her off to no end. My great and enormous love for my own ass. Here’s where it ties in and I can see now that the threads of my own destruction, my feelings of great lethargy, were purely my own creation. I suppose then, as much as I try to ignore it, my love for my enormous ass makes me tired.

My fanny intrigues me in a way that may be considered unhealthy. I remember when it was a tiny little compliment to my body and how it’s grown, gotten a little hairy, a little flabby. Wherever the wind blows it, I let it go. Let it run wild in whatever pair of slacks I happen to have on at the time. Why not? I believe it to be an ass of epically, beautiful proportions and I am so glad it’s mine. And yes, it is for this reason that I eat so much breakfast (watching my ass increase in size increases my self-worth), this is why my family’s gone (they have no love for one who cares more for his posterior than them), this is why I lost the promotion (Danny D. has the smaller ass and can fit in any chair, regardless of size. Mine must be custom built. You know why.), this is why Sally is leaving me (a woman does not appreciate a man who prefers his own ass to hers) and this then is why I’m tired. Chasing my tail for all time.

I’ve grown tired all the time but I’ve become accustomed to it.

Fat Narcissus
By Daniel R. Budnik

Copyright 2005 by Daniel R. Budnik