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**PRINT: MIXTAPE: THE2NDHAND’s 29th issue builds on a concept we introduced to the Chicago reading/performance scene in July 2007 -- the Mixtape reading, wherein several writers cast short-short stories inspired by pop songs. The concept evolved after several incarnations of its live component to include a published series here at the2ndhand.com and, now, a broadsheet. This latest includes 2008 Birmingham Artwalk contest winners Nadria Tucker and Emily Self, both past contributors to THE2NDHAND and both writing from Birmingham, and a story by Zach Plague, author of the art-school satire/adventure novel Boring boring boring... **WEB: THE FAT GOTHS S. Craig Renfroe Jr.
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THE FAT GOTHS
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S. Craig Renfroe Jr.
Renfroe Jr. is the author of the short story collection You Should Get Looked At (Main Street Rag, 2004). He was a finalist for the 2007 Novello Literary Award and the 2007 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2003. He teaches writing at Queens University of Charlotte, N.C., and his work has appeared in numerous other magazines.
Henry saw them everywhere, outside the mall or in a Greek restaurant. The fat goths. There must be a word, he thought, for noticing something and then seeing it everywhere.
If only he knew that word, he would have used it as the fat goths blocked his exit from the bagel shop. The place was small, and they were big. He'd seen fat goths 20-odd times, but not these same goths, surely. He liked their fashion: the dark colors, fishnet stockings, raccoon eye shadows. But weren't goths a skinny culture, valuing thin for its skeletal qualities? These goths had girth, but still: the same black, the hose, the velvet elbow-length gloves.
After work, he'd gone in to get a bagel but then felt nauseated. He had no appetite lately. The fat goths came in just as he was deciding to leave. The fat goth in the lead was taller than Henry and three feet wider, his dyed-red hair long and mullet-like. The first girl behind him had on a tent of a skirt, ankle-length and black leather. The other one wore a preposterously stretched Catholic-girl skirt, her enormous legs clad in black and orange candy-cane tights.
Why did it bother him so much that all these goths were fat? He felt bad, like he was being racist. Their weight made a kind of sense. The way food had become death.
Henry had his own food issues. His ex-girlfriend had turned him vegetarian and the next one had made him buy organic. Now, girlfriend-less, he'd eaten less and less, hoping his body would attract the next one but also worried more and more about the hormones in the dairy, the chemical pesticides on the produce, the way cooked food smelled.
Henry nodded to the fat goths and tried to squeeze through the bagel shop threshold. He had to get out. He was afraid his nausea had given way to passing out. Once among the goths, he felt even worse -- his hand went into one of the girls' bellies, the tissue supple and giving. He was off his feet. The guy had him, carrying him into the parking lot. Someone must see this, Henry thought. A beep and one of the obese girls, the one with the Catholic-girl skirt, had a door open, climbing inside an SUV with tinted windows.
"Don't eat me," Henry said.
"There's more than one way to be consumed," the girl said.
The red mullet guy passed Henry up to the other girl and her satin shirt rode up, revealing a ribbon of her stomach when she cradled him into her lap. The more he moved, the more pale skin, mapped blue with veins, was uncovered. Soon all he could see was a folded malleable white. As the door slam shut, he licked the exposed flesh. It tasted salty. It was the first flavor he'd experienced in a long time. He licked it again.
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