I often describe myself as a skinny girl stuck in a fat girl's body. I feel skinny. I also say I have the opposite of anorexia, "I can eat what ever I want because I am skinny". But then I look in the mirror and am astonished. Whoa... I am fat. When did that happen? I constantly forget the fact that I am more than 100 pounds overweight. Or do I? Actually being fat is always on my mind. Sure I go to work, do my job, quite well I might add. But all of the time there is a voice screaming at me in my mind "YOU ARE FAT AND NOBODY LIKES A FAT GIRL". I just like to tell myself I forget so I can eat the bag of chips without feeling guilty. Save the guilt till the chips are gone.

Despite the fact that I am one hundred plus pounds over weight I know that I am different than other fat girls. I carry my weight better. I don't think that anybody, besides perhaps my father, would guess how much I actually weigh. To say that I look like a brick house is putting it lightly. I am tall, thick and solid. I am also pretty. Now I am not as vain as that statement made me sound. I know that I am pretty not from standing in front of the mirror and admiring myself, but because people tell me. When I was younger and not fat strangers would tell me how beautiful I was. Remarkably they continuedued as I put on the pounds. It almost seemed as if they where trying to say "You are so pretty, why are you doing this to yourself?"

Alexis, my best friend in high school and I went to one of those John Casablanca model talent search gigs in the mall once because she thought she had what it took to be a super model. Actually I thinks she could have made it big in the pages of Easy Rider. The talent agent guy who seemed at first glance like a classic receding hair line, thick rimmed glasses, geek, dismissed girls left and right. It wasn't until I saw the power he held that I found him attractive. Alexis' turn coming up....over in a bout 2.2 seconds, "NEXT" the wiry man screamed out. I walked up, he abruptly told me to take off my jacket. I could feel my face going pink instantly because I had a tank top on underneath and I can remember thinking, "Oh God I didn't shave my arm pits." He studied me carefully for what seemed a good long while, in actuality though I am sure that it was just a couple of minutes. Then he stood closer to me than anybody had ever done before who wasn't on their way in for a kiss and said, "How did someone as beautiful as you get so God Damn fat?" Uhhhh.... I did not have time to think of a reply before he was moving me along. "Lose 20 pounds and we'll see you in Chicago," he screeched. Mortification-glee? Which did I feel? I'm still not sure.

Up until about a year ago or so I still managed to feel sexy even though I am such a fatty. This I attribute to my ass. Since I am tall I am curvy, not round as most people would be this much over weight. And my ass...well lets say that the song Baby Got Back should have been written for me. And thank God for Mexicans! They love my ass. I often feel their dark eyes burning into me knowing they are thinking of bending me over. The only shred of sexiness I have left is due to this race of men who love me. I and I love them back.

In high school I was not fat, yet I had a butt that made all of the black boys in school gravitate to me, wide and round, and out there. While the white boys never gave me a second glance and there was not a single Hispanic. I had my pick of every black boy in school. Ten to be exact. After high school I developed a liking for my new flavor, Hispanics.

I was never popular in high school, probably because of the fact that out of the three hundred students in my tiny country school ninety-nine percent of the boys would not blink twice at being called a redneck and the other one-percent where black. Seeing as how the black boys liked me there "surely was something wrong with me". This did not give me much of a chance at popularity in my white-bred school.

There was one time in my life, when I would find white boys, as well as the rest staring me down. This is the brief period of time when I lived in Bakersfield, Ca. I was 20 when I moved to Bakersfield to go to school. I weighed 160 pounds and at 5'11 I floated across the Cal State campus feeling like a goddess. I had long golden brown hair, I was tan and I had all of a sudden figured out the confidence secret that made me sexy. I realized that if I look and act confident and like I could care less about a boy it would drive them crazy. I worked on this look a lot when I was alone.

I was determined to change things around in Cali. Now Bakersfield you may say...What's to do in Bakersfield? To the unknowing eye there doesn't seem much. Two hours from the ocean, two hours from the mountains, two hours from Los Angeles, Bakersfield just seemed to be the Nashville of California. True, to see a man in Wranglers and ropers was not unusually, however, when you dug down deep there was a little underworld punk scene, not itching to get out but seemingly trying to stay hidden.