Who says I hate people?
Short story: On Weightlessness, and its Opposite (From the archives, never before published.)
Joseph Celestano, world-renowned taste-tester, sits on a park bench near the street fair beside the Metropolitan Museum. A woman dressed as a bride, accompanied by a handsome man in a tuxedo, gallop by, calling attention to themselves. They cut an elegant path through the gathered Saturday masses and into the nearby trees. Joseph, curiosity piqued, follows them at a distance (Not because he is cautious, but because he suffers from a bit of a weight problem, and thus lags behind anyway).
The couple, arm-and-arm, lead him to an elaborate wedding ceremony. There are guests everywhere snapping photographs. Bridesmaids cavort in Pepto Bismol-pink dresses. Joseph, in his oversized raincoat and “Woody Allen”-esque hat, which he wears to mask his receding hairline, feels incredibly underdressed, but he remains only because he spots the most beautiful woman he has ever seen standing next to the buffet table. Her name is Dora van Doren. She is in attendance as a bridesmaid. Dora is tall, blond, and has a body of such voluptuous proportions that a ragtime band breaks out whenever she starts to walk, even at the cemetery or in an elevator. Joseph is instantly smitten.
It turns out they have a common passion. Dora loves food, and they spend the next few hours discussing the most potent wines and satisfying chocolate mousses. She is the heiress to the Van Doren communications empire, but Joseph, who already earns a generous salary tasting every new food product whipped up for consumption, is not tempted by the money. Despite his visible weight problem, the beautiful Dora seems attracted to him. Joseph is suspicious at first, since his previous relationships with woman were not exactly the most satisfying. He is already self-conscious, despite one previous lover who had disclosed to him, “Your naked body is quite glorious, Joseph, particularly when viewed in complete darkness.”
Somehow, Joseph overcomes his self-consciousness. During a heated discussion involving clam chowder—whether it is an appetizer, as Joseph contends, or a beverage, as Dora vehemently argues, the two fall into a passionate kiss. The statuesque beauty and the… compelling gentleman! Photographers snap photos, while the priest performing the ceremony sniffs cautiously about for brimstone.
Fast-forward several months. Joseph Celestano and Dora van Doren are engaged. Outwardly, Joseph seems content, but inwardly, he suffers. For Joseph has finally begun noticing his fiancee's eating habits. Dora constantly eats, and not so much eats as gorges herself in the fashion of large aquatic mammals. She constantly devours. An entire pizza or gallon of ice cream in one sitting, a pan of ravioli for a midnight snack. This has always been her way, she once explained. She admits that she doesn’t exercise, and while at the moment she remains both lean and stunningly beautiful, with nary a trace of cellulite detectable to the eye, Joseph can’t help but wonder if, years down the line, it will not be safe for his sweetheart to ride on elevators.
It is a testament to the shallowness of the male ego that, while Joseph himself is overweight, he finds that same characteristic in a potential wife unacceptable. Yet Joseph is aware of this weakness in himself, ashamed of it actually. He refrains from broaching the subject with Dora, fearing both hypocrisy and the loss of her.
Joseph has a younger brother named Rudy, who had also been a food-tester, until an overdose of MSG permanently dehydrated his taste buds. Ever since, Rudy Celestano has had parched lips and is constantly thirsty. As he siphons an entire gallon of spring water, he warns Joseph that he will inevitably regret marrying Dora, whom he predicts will degrade into obesity. Rudy, it should be noted, had a wife at one time, but they split due to what he called, “irreconcilable differences.” At the divorce hearing, his ex-spouse referred to him as “the most loathsome human being she ever had the misfortune of encountering,” and added that whenever the two prepared to make love, she had the irrepressible urge to slit her own wrists. Rudy retains hope that he and his ex-wife may yet reconcile.
Months pass without any visible change in Dora, though she continues to devour enough saturated fat to kill a small family of polar bears. She remains slim and stunning, and as the wedding day draws near, Joseph finds himself increasingly anxious. Then he gets to meet Dora’s parents for the first time. The senior van Dorens, Walt and Mona, invite the couple to their beach house for a weekend to get acquainted. According to Dora, the estate is quite modest. “It’s not nearly the size of the one in Citizen Kane,” she says. However, she notes, “from its spot on the beach on Daddy’s private island, it gets a lovely view of the Australian coast.”
Walt and Mona are courteous hosts, almost as polite as the security guards who frisk Joseph as he steps out from the plane at the van Dorens’ personal airport. Looking at Dora’s parents, Joseph recognizes a couple that has been together a long time. Thanks to years of cohabitation, Walt and Mona have developed near-identical hand gestures, smiles, and facial hair. Walt van Doren bears a strong resemblance to Sam Elliott. Mona, meanwhile, turns out to be, well, an ample-sized woman, to be kind about it. At dinner, she ends up exacerbating Joseph’s fears when, as she gazes down at the younger Dora, she remarks, “Looking at you now, dear, I see myself at your age. Would you believe, Joseph, that at one time I was just as much a head-turner as her…?”
It was meant as a compliment to Dora, of course, but her suitor cannot reply. He is too absorbed in staring at Mona, whom he perceives as his own wife several years down the line. The future Dora van Doren, no longer slim and beautiful. Joseph feels that he is becoming ill.
The van Dorens, for their part, more than readily accept Joseph as a future son-in-law. In fact, they had traced his last name, Celestano, to his ancestor Gianni Celestano, who had been the personal food taster of Archbishop Otto XI. It had been documented at the Archbishop’s rectory in Florence that Gianni Celestano, before one fateful supper, ingested some poison capon that had been prepared by Otto XI’s enemies. Joseph’s ancestor’s last words had been, “the capon is dry.” Then he dropped dead onto a plate of roast pheasant. The rectory was moved by Celestano’s sacrifice, and the Archbishop released an edict that very same evening: “Death to anyone who allows the capon to get dry.” The law remained active in Florence for the next hundred years.
As for the descendant, Joseph, he wishes he could get off so easily. Instead, he is consumed by his dilemna, which only a person of his shallowness could actually see as a dilemna, being engaged to a beautiful, rich woman whom he shares the same electric passion, and whose parents accept him with open arms. Yet he fears the impending marriage. He has visions of Dora’s inevitable decline. Joseph Celestano, in the lavish guest room of the Van Doren manor, tears at the remnants of his hair, uncertain of what to do, how to politely call off the engagement without wounding poor Dora’s feelings. In the end, caught between either confronting Dora or going through with the marriage, Joseph does the only honorable thing: he swallows an entire bottleful of aspirin.
Joseph Celestano wakes up in the van Doren's private hospital, his beloved Dora and his future in-laws hovering over him. They have worried looks on their faces. Joseph remembers the aspirin overdose. “I had a headache,” he replies, a sheepish smile masking his guilt. “I, uh, had a really bad headache. I think it’s gone now.”
Feeling guilty over the failed suicide attempt, Joseph does not try a second. And so, the marriage of Joseph Celestano and Dora van Doren proceeds as planned. Bound to Dora in the eyes of the church and God, Joseph finds himself sinking into a quagmire of depression. He can no longer get enjoyment from life, not even from food, his lifelong passion. The sight of it reminds him of Dora’s inevitable fate, and so he shuns it, focusing his energies on producing and starring in a syndicated exercise program instead.
The program becomes a hit, and shown all over the world on the van Dorens’ cable television network. Poor Dora, however, is left neglected at home. Worse yet, she finds herself less attracted to her husband with each passing day, as he sheds pounds like a refugee at the English border crossing. The day Dora finds she can wrap both arms around her husband, she becomes inconsolable. Well, almost inconsolable. A gallon of cherry ice cream and pint of rasberry liquor later, she slurs the word “divorce” on the phone to the van Dorens’ lawyer. Naturally, her teeth are a succulent red.
The divorce turns out to be the best for both parties. Dora flies to Japan, where she rediscovers herself in sushi. As she tries to put the failed marriage behind her, many suitors vie for her attention. Not surprising, for she remains stunningly beautiful. But the only man to ever make her fall so hard again is the national sumo wrestling champion. Legend has it that, during dinner at the most well-known sushi place on the island, they collected so many empty saki cups between them that it took spelunkers two days to dig them out. Joseph, meanwhile, remains a media darling. He even develops a following in France, where only the most unpalatable icons flourish.
In fact, Joseph decides to relocate the program to Paris, after falling in love with a bakery shopnymph named Linette. Joseph was immediately smitten with her, after overhearing that her eating habits consist of mineral water and induced vomiting. Also, that she never goes out-of-doors for fear the smog would go straight to her ankles. The two marry in a simple ceremony, and soon after Linette becomes pregnant. Much to Joseph Celestano’s alarm, Linette has already put on an unprecedented amount of weight.
