Hungry for Happiness. James Villas

      Well, after I finished up at the shelter, I waited and waited and popped two Nips in my mouth since I really felt hungry. Then I wondered why he hadn’t called me on his cell and began to worry myself sick he might have had a wreck or been stopped for drunk driving or something. But when he finally showed up, he was mad as a hornet and explained he had to take a construction detour off Katy Freeway and said his cell’s on the blink. Then, on the way back to his place, I was scared as the dickens we were going to total the Cherokee the way he kept rubbing and squeezing my thigh while he was driving, and all I could really think about was flexing my leg as hard as I could so it wouldn’t feel flabby to him. When we get home, he says he is hungry as a horse and that I must be starved since I hadn’t eaten a thing all night. So he takes a meat loaf he’d gotten at Central Market outta the fridge, and pulls off a big piece with his fingers, and pops a can of Shiner Bock. What I do is cut off a small slice with a knife and eat it, but I gotta say nothing ever looked so good to me and I could’ve eaten that entire greasy meat loaf if I hadn’t known what the consequences would be.

      “Tastes good,” I say, “but that’s a little heavy this time of night, don’t you think?”

      “Doll, you gotta eat,” he says while he wolfs down another chunk and washes it down with another slug of beer. “At this rate, you’re gonna waste away to nothing one day.”

      I guess that’s the closest I’d come to telling Vernon the damn truth about my fat problem, but I kept my wits about me ’cause I still wadn’t ready to do or say one thing to screw things up. Things were just going too well, and I realized I was getting really crazy about Vernon—crazier than I ever thought I could be about anybody. In fact, I was all ready to jump in bed with him and be wild the way he likes, but after he’d finished his meat loaf and beer, he just pulled off his shirt and jeans and flipped the TV on and was dead to the world by the time I’d brushed my teeth and gargled with this green stuff he has.