The World's Thinnest Fat Man

by

Joe Taylor

Follow the world’s thinnest fat man through his more than occasional blunders and less than occasional insights in these linked stories. Who knows? There may just be a “dazzling jewel” for you—even if Josey, aka TWTFM, never discovers it.

ISBN, trade paper: 0-930501-23-3 price: ($14.95)

ISBN, library edition: 0-930501-22-5 price: ($25.00)

Excerpt from the book:

    “I lived with her for one year and one month. A funny thing: she never talked. I thought her silence meant love. Typical male ego, huh?” The woman I was telling this to shrugged sleepily, since she had barely opened her shop. Mid-morning in the French Quarter hovers like fog on a predawn riverbank. The only other movement came as a black cat behind the counter rubbed against the stub of an old water or gas pipe jutting from the plaster wall. The cat’s golden eyes saw through me.
    “When Sally did finally talk, we were at our favorite Italian restaurant, and—you’re not going to believe this—she told me she was running away to Maine with a lesbian lover.” I waited for a reaction, but the woman turned to stare at a young couple in the back of her shop, near the shriveled voodoo chicken feet and Louisiana Love Spice. Sassafras root, the ingredients read—you slip it in a wayward lover’s hot drink. Minutes before I’d read those ingredients through the shop’s filmy display window and thought: Maybe ten kilos will do me.
    “Lesbian. I mean, I didn’t know how to handle that. I just clammed up.” The woman’s breasts rose and fell under her black, tasseled dress. She had beautiful butterscotch eyes and café au lait skin. The combination prompted me onward. “ ‘Josey, either get a new girl or get out of town,’ all my friends told me. So I was going for the latter, I was going to chase Sally to Maine. But she panicked over the phone when I called, and promised she’d try things with me again in two weeks.” I caught my breath, just as the au lait woman once more inhaled deeply.