“Is this how it feels to die on the surface of Jupiter? What does it say for Brazilian jiu-jitsu when they give black belts to 400-lb teletubbies? To what depths of degradation have I sunk?”
The author and the finisher of these ruminations sat comfortably on my chest, his belly fat engulfing my face. I would have vomited, except for the airtight blubber mask suffocating me.
When Bill first brought him onto the mat, I took it for a joke. At 6’ 4”, he must have weighed 400 lbs if he weighed 1. Our instructor introduced him as his good friend Steve, and a talented Jiu-Jitsu black belt. Say what? I could have sworn that you said black belt? Sorry, I was busy enjoying the image of a beleaguered manatee, swimming slowly beneath a yacht.
The party really started when Steve, starting with the highest ranks, began throwing the students around like ninepins and generally wreaking havoc on the mat. This porker had moves! He moved with the lithe abandon of a Fantasia elephant, and the speed of Sally Struthers chasing the world’s last doughnut.
In fear and trembling I took my turn, and was thrown onto my back within 10 seconds. As Steve crushed me, I lay there completely helpless, and all my Herculean efforts to escape were about as useful as a cock-flavored lollipop.
Did I have it all wrong? Would the obese inherit the earth? I wondered bitterly how many babies he could eat in a sitting as I spat out his sweaty paunch hair. Mercifully, a clock choke cut my suffering short.
I still don’t know how I feel about the morbidly obese doing martial arts. On the one hand, Steve’s infinite mass gave him a supermassive advantage. On the other, he nearly had an aneurysm after 5 minutes of fighting. Chances are if I could have survived sans oxygen for a few more minutes, I would have won when he died of congestive heart failure.
The moral of this story? There is nothing that a tube of toothpaste, half a bottle of wine and a 45 minute shower can't cure.
